Mayor Eric Adams boasted Wednesday that New York City isn't as bad as Los Angeles.
“This is another American city,” Hizzoner declared to a room full of reporters Wednesday afternoon, holding up a photo of a packed homeless camp in L.A.'s notorious Skid Row neighborhood.
“This is what I saw when I drove through the city on January 1, 2022. This is an example from another American city.”
Adams flashed the tragic scene while touting the Big Apple's year-end crime statistics, showing that crime across Gotham was down slightly (0.3%) in 2023 compared to the previous year.
“This is when you raise your hands. There are fires burning in the streets and children are here. There are no toilets!
“Go look at other cities and see what we inherited when I set up a homeless camp task force. You won't see anything like this in New York,” he boasted.
“And some people say I'm harsh because I don't allow things like this to exist. That's what I'm fighting for. Do you want this in front of your house? ? Do you want to show your kids this? Is this what you want to show your kids? Not while I'm mayor. That's not going to happen.”
But overall crime rates in the Big Apple have increased by more than 31% compared to 2019, according to NYPD data.
Adams did not say at the press conference where the homeless encampment was located, but the Post tracked the image and found it was taken on a Skid Row street in February 2023. did.
The photo shows a 56-year-old man warming donuts over a fire he lit on a sidewalk in a downtown area of Los Angeles known for vagrants.
Adams' rant came after a reporter asked NYPD Sergeant John Chell about the increase in grand theft auto fees in New York City, which have increased by 191% since before the coronavirus pandemic.
Chell had just finished speaking about homelessness, claiming that the mayor's task force had cleaned up more than 5,300 encampments through 2023.
“Now I don't see them as much, and I'm sure you don't either. Calls from the public about encampments have gone down by 30 percent, so the quality of life is going well,” Chell said. he said.
Homelessness has been one of Adams' major touchstones since he took office, but the problem has exploded as immigrants continue to flow into the city and overwhelm shelter systems and streets.
More than 161,000 asylum seekers have passed through the Big Apple since the crisis began in spring 2022.
Hitzner has maintained that so-called “right to shelter” provisions do not force cities to provide housing to immigrants, and has repeatedly called for eliminating the decades-old requirement to provide housing to those who request it. requested it.
The Adams administration took the issue – a legal requirement stemming from a series of decisions dating back to the 1980s – to court, but it's unclear what specific relief the city sought from the court.
