New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is preparing to torch one of the most visible pillars of the Adams administration, announcing Thursday that he will end all homeless encampment sweeps the moment he takes office in January.

At a Manhattan press conference, the Democratic Socialist insisted the policy was not just ineffective but fundamentally misguided.

“If you are not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing they desperately need, then you cannot deem anything you’re doing to be a success,” Mamdani said.

The incoming mayor pledged a full pivot: no more tear-downs of makeshift shelters under bridges, in parks, or on sidewalks.

“We are going to take an approach that understands its mission is connecting those New Yorkers to housing,” he said. “What we have seen is the treatment of homelessness as if it is a natural part of living in this city, when in fact, it’s more often a reflection of a political choice.”

But Mamdani — who will take office amid one of the largest spikes in homeless-encampment complaints in years — offered no concrete plan for how he intends to address the thousands of tents, tarps, and makeshift shelters that have proliferated across the city.

City data shows officials received over 45,000 encampment complaints in the first 11 months of 2025 alone.

And while critics agree Adams’ approach did little to secure stable housing, they say Mamdani’s move could worsen conditions for neighborhoods already overwhelmed by unsafe encampments.

Adams made encampment sweeps a centerpiece of his early mayoralty, arguing the city couldn’t tolerate “makeshift, unsafe houses on the side of highways, in trees, in front of schools, in parks.” But the outcomes were awful. A 2023 audit found that 95% of individuals cleared from encampments ended up back on the streets shortly after.

City Hall, however, continued to defend the policy Thursday. “Cherry-picking numbers and sharing them out of context paints a disingenuous picture,” spokesperson Fabien Levy said, insisting the sweeps connected “more than 500 New Yorkers to safe, stable housing.”

New York, Levy added, “continues to have the lowest rate of unsheltered homelessness of any major city in the nation.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)