Photo from Sunday by Stacie Joy
City agencies returned this morning to Ninth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C, where a group of unhoused residents has been living in tents under the sidewalk bridge at the former P.S. 64.
The result: 8 arrests.
Here's more from The New York Times:
The protest began as dozens of police officers, accompanied by a sanitation crew and a single homeless outreach worker, forced out the people living in the encampment for at least the seventh time in the last six weeks.[Tompkins Square Park] has become ground zero to the small but vocal movement protesting Mr. Adams's policies for addressing homelessness. "Housing is a human right, fight, fight, fight," the protesters chanted as police vans pulled up on neighboring streets around 9 a.m., and campers and supporters from a host of mutual aid and tenant activist groups taped off the tents with red packing tape.
After a standoff, police arrested seven activists and one of the unhoused residents.
All went willingly except Johnny Grima, 37, a homeless man who has emerged as the public face of the protests. He has been arrested three other times in the last month.As officers wrestled him out of his tent, then carried him toward a waiting police van, a protester shouted: "Shame on you. Is that how you treat houseless people?"
According to city stats cited by the Times, there have been more than 700 cleanups from March 18 to May 1 — many of them of the same site multiple times — and 39 people have accepted the placement into shelters.
Unhoused residents have said that the shelter system is not safe. Read our interviews with some of the Ninth Street residents here.
Previously on EV Grieve:
14 comments:
Cops have been using the LRAD on homeless people and protesters. This is never mentioned in news outlets.
Good. It is absurd that people are trying to act like this is some heroic last stand. Having growing encampments benefits no one - most certainly not the homeless. People should really put their energy in encouraging these people to get help not ruin our neighborhood.
By all means let criminalize poverty in the richest city in America
BAD NEIGHBOR NO DONUT !!!!!!
@Neighbor,
If your solution only worked there would not be as many homeless people as there are now. I am certain these people found this as the only option which was viable or safe for themselves. I have thankfully never been in their situation but I don't believe a simplistic "go find help" is not going to solve anything.
Hilarious that people seem to understand there will always be a homeless population and then turn around and say that anyone who lives on the street should be pushed into a government funnel. “Let the cops deal with it.” Is the biggest non-solution around. Watch this attitude disappear when tourism levels go back up and there’s enough people to mask that some of the people walking around, sitting, or lying down are homeless. No one cared until the pandemic painted a picture.
The state of being homeless is not the issue, but a symptom of the problem with our society. Telling them to go somewhere else doesn't solve anything. What made them homeless in the first place? Fix that and you fix everything.
Neighbor is right. These specific people have been encouraged dozens of times with offers of shelter and other help. The article says that one was offered a safe haven private room and she said that she holding out for a free apartment instead. How many of us have been given free apartments? They prefer the situation where they can get first choice of any food in the church fridge, can enjoy being treated as martyrs and saints by activists and the media, and can hold the surrounding community hostage to get more charity from the city than it has ever given to any of us. That is why they come back to the exact same place over and over again. Everyone saying there is no point in telling them to go somewhere else lives in the privileged position of not having a politicized encampment next door.
It is that simple. Go to the Bowery Mission. Call the Coalition for the Homeless. Go to the nearest drop in center. Go to the men's intake center and get a shelter bed. There are plenty of options. People aren't aware that these options exist.
Portland, Seattle, SF, etc... tried the idea of allowing encampments...
It's certainly not an easy life but it's not complicated to live on the street off the radar in Manhattan. This crew is reveling in the activism by coming back to the same places over and over, which I personally have no problems with as they aren't serious druggies. But others might disagree and that's a worthy discussion.
However, currently there are dangerous addled street characters on the same blocks who sleep encampmentless on the sidewalk and assault locals only to be back and joking with the cops the next day if they are even detained. A big show cracking down on a few non-violent tent dwellers while leaving the scarier crazies to spit or worse on passersby and fight with trashcans seems selective enforcement.
You go to the Bowery mission. Or a ‘Drop In Center’ and surrender your human rights. Really. Go. See what you get. Human trafficking at its finest.
The same homeless people keep returning to the same spot every time they get evicted by an NYPD overkill "terrorist" task force, complete with automatic weapons. Both sides are making a CLEAR statement. Now, the 9th precinct has a cop car with flashing lights posted at that spot 24/7. FOR WHAT?
SOMEONE on that block has a lot of clout with the NYPD, that RUSHES to their calls about those bad bad homeless people who dare to seek shelter under the scaffolding in front of the abandoned school that the city had NO BUSINESS selling to a "developer" has allowed the building to ROT AWAY over the past 20 years when the city could have restored that building as a public school and/or community center.
WHOTHEFUCK is the NYPD "protecting and serving" on East Ninth Street?
Anon 1125 - people like you will sideways criticize but never offer practical solutions. Because you can't. I've volunteered at these locations, and they are a valuable resourve for unhoused residents willing to go clean.
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