New York City council members have declared a humanitarian crisis on Manhattan’s west side, describing dire conditions on the streets with homeless people suffering from drug addiction and mental illness in a letter to Mayor Eric Adams.
City Councilman Eric Bottcher, who represents Manhattan’s 3rd Ward, asked Adams for his “immediate assistance” in addressing the humanitarian crisis on New York City’s streets and subways. Letter dated July 18, 2024.
Bottcher noted several areas were “particularly dire,” including Times Square, the Garment District and parts of Washington State Park.
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At noon on Monday, September 12, 2022, on 8th Avenue in Manhattan, just a block from Times Square, a man was sleeping with his face hidden by an SEIU Local 1199 sign demanding “Maximum Wages!” for workers. (Kelly J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
“In these and other areas, significant numbers of people are engaged in a range of illegal and anti-social activities, causing great distress and fear to residents, many of whom are elderly people and families with young children,” he wrote.
The New York Post sent a reporter to the area after receiving Bottcher’s letter. The reporters detail During a visit over the past two weeks, the outlet encountered several “unstable, drug-addicted, homeless weirdos” and noted that needles were a common sight on the streets, with “dead-eyed drug addicts wandering around with needles sticking out of their hands.” Along busy 36th Street near Pennsylvania Station, people who appear to be mentally ill lie on benches and sidewalks, or stumble around the street barefoot, taunting tourists and locals alike.
A security guard who works in the area, identified only as Fisher by The Washington Post, told reporters that he sees people using drugs in the public courtyard of the Midtown Holiday Inn hotel “at all times of the day and night.” Public urination and defecating are commonplace, he said.
“It’s insanity here,” Fisher told The Post. “People have sex on the benches, they pee and defecate on them.”
NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 30, 2022: A homeless man sits in Times Square, New York City. New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to allow homeless people with mental illnesses to be hospitalized against their will. (Photo by Leonardo Muñoz/VIEWpress)
According to The Washington Post, employees at the Midtown Holiday Inn have begun turning on sprinklers to keep squatters away.
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“But some homeless people have a similar experience when it comes to showering, using soap, as one hotel guest complained in an online review,” the outlet wrote.
Rocky Cavan, 45, a front-desk supervisor at the hotel, told The Washington Post that some guests have come into the hotel “swearing at us.” “They’ll try to hit us, they’ll do anything. We have security outside to stop them from coming into the hotel,” Cavan said.
“Every day we have to go through this. I see the same people every day. I see them being loaded into ambulances and taken away and the next day they’re back outside,” Cabán added.
A homeless man partially blocks a subway staircase in New York City on September 10, 2022. (Robert Nickelsburg/Getty Images)
Based in New York City PIX11 reported similar findings When I visited the area last week.
“Within 10 minutes of arriving on West 30th Street, a PIX11 News crew found a man being carried off the sidewalk by emergency personnel, a man who was nude and clearly mentally disoriented,” the report wrote.
Bottcher called it a “heartbreaking reality.”
“This … is not only causing great suffering for these people, but also increasing the negative impacts on residents and businesses as we head into the height of summer,” he wrote in the letter.
He said the NYPD is “overwhelmed responding” to calls about “open drug sales and use, property damage, physical and verbal threats, shoplifting and other illegal activity.”
He urged Adams to expand the controversial B-HEARD program to Manhattan’s West Side. The program, which launched in 2021, aims to connect people struggling with mental health issues with experts and is already operating in 31 precincts across New York City, PIX11 reported. The program dispatches paramedics, social workers and other unarmed emergency personnel to respond to certain 911 calls. New York Police Department Officer.
Mayor Eric Adams appeared at a press conference where an NYPD officer said he was the mastermind behind a campaign fundraising scheme to support the mayor of New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Muñoz Alvarez, File)
Adams promised last year to expand the program citywide, but plans have stalled, the outlet reported.
“The West Side of Manhattan needs this program now,” Bottcher wrote.
He also urged Adam to introduce legislation that would require the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to place licensed social workers in police stations throughout New York City.
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“Our community needs help now,” he wrote. “We cannot continue as we are.”
The mayor’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
