Thanks, Zohran! New York City’s grinning young communist-Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani changed Town Hall policy on dealing with homeless encampments early into his term. Notably, he removed all oversight of the issue from the NYPD and placed it instead under the auspices of the Department of Homeless Services (DHS).
Mamdani pretended that he still intended to clean up encampments, though. "Mamdani’s approach to the sweeps will go something like this," reported City Limits:
- On day one, DHS will place notices on encampment sites saying that the location will be cleaned by the Sanitation Department (DSNY) seven days later
- Each day after, DHS outreach staff will go to the site and engage the people there to offer shelter placements or other services
- On day seven, DSNY will clean up the site, with NYPD on hand if the situation escalates
In last winter's deadly cold snaps, when the homeless were freezing to death in the warmth of collectivism, Mamdani explained the superiority of his system to the old method of removing people from the streets: “Whereas previously, a homeless New Yorker might have only two points of interaction with city government — the first day they’re served a notice and the seventh day when that notice comes to an end — our administration will meet those homeless New Yorkers every single day. And we will meet them looking to connect them with shelter, looking to connect them with services, looking to connect them with a city that wants them to be sheltered and indoors and warm and safe.”
If only it were that simple. But in his infinite and empathetic wisdom, the mayor ignores the reality underlying these encampments: The people living in them don’t want help. They don’t want to leave, don’t want to stay in a shelter, don’t want to clean themselves up, and don’t want to get sober. They want to do drugs, period. And they will do whatever it takes to exist in that state, indefinitely, until they are forced to leave.
As a result of the mayor's fantasies, a massive homeless encampment has sprung up on Manhattan's west side, stretching from at least 34th Street up to the floating Intrepid Museum at 46th Street, obliterating the quality of life for normal, bill-paying New Yorkers who have the misfortune to live or work in the area.
“You see people walking around half naked in the street,” local mom Diana Khabbaz told the New York Post on Monday. “They are smoking whatever they’re smoking. You see needles on the street every 20 feet. Sometimes you see a homeless person. And all day long, all night, a lot by the parks, there are a lot of people and there are tons of tents, and people are sleeping everywhere.”
The Post has been doing an excellent job covering the seedy crisis. On Tuesday, the outlet reported:
“Almost one month now – getting a little bigger every time I come back,” one Flixbus driver told The Post. “They put the garbage here on the sidewalk so the people have to wait in the street when I come with the bus.
“They’re asking the people waiting for the bus for money,” the driver said. “It’s no good. My boss called and complained and they do nothing.”
As always happens when officials refuse to police these situations, bums have set up semi-permanent structures, ready to stay for the long term, and the sordid encampment grows by the day. Drug use, waste, trash, prostitutes, and nodding addicts litter the sidewalks, forcing normal people to walk in the street. So comfortable and brazen have the vagrants become that they've even been tapping into city utility lines and stealing power from New Yorkers to electrify their shanties.
But then, the slide into and tolerance of squalor has always been among the most objectionable characteristics of socialism and communism.
Related: Spooked by Creepy Mamdani Video, Billionaire Prepares to Flee Hostile NYC and Take His Jobs With Him
Mamdani has already got the billionaires and millionaires on the run. Policies like standing by as crime, drug use, and homeless encampments take over the city will chase out many of the middle- and working-class people who remain.
You can watch the Jesse Watters Primetime show's excellent three-minute report on the intolerable situation below:
🚨MUST SEE: WELCOME TO SOCIALIST SKID ROW
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) July 15, 2026
Homeless man: “Mamdani is a MAN of the PEOPLE!”
Homeless woman: “I LIKE sleeping on the STREETS.”
Homeless man: “I hold up TV reporters at gunpoint!”
😳 What is happening in Mamdani’s NYC? pic.twitter.com/ZrGsNViXGi
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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