From Ending Sweeps to Freezing Rents, the New Mayor’s Platform Centers Housing Over Enforcement
Newly sworn-in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made clear his intention to stop encampment sweeps, which advocates and several studies have criticized as traumatic and ineffective at connecting people with suitable shelter.
He has also pledged to create a Department of Community Safety to coordinate homeless response and provide mental health support, rather than have police get involved. After ages under Adams, Mamdani could be just what New York needs to turn its homeless services around.
Stop the Sweeps
Unlike his predecessor, Eric Adams, Mayor Mamdani has promised to end encampment sweeps in the city, recognizing that they do much more harm than good. According to city data, over an 18-month period under Eric Adams’ leadership, the city conducted more than 4,000 encampment sweeps, displacing over 6,000 people and placing roughly 260 in temporary shelter. Advocates note that very few of those individuals ultimately received permanent housing.
Those results have fueled calls from advocates and some policymakers to try a different approach. Mayor Mamdani has vowed to stop the sweeps, potentially freeing up the $6 million former Mayor Adams spent on trying to get rid of encampments. Mamdani has long criticized the sweeps, describing them as the city taking people from one place where they’re living in the cold and forcing them into another place where they’re still just living in the cold.
At a news conference, Mamdani spoke clearly about the severely substandard success of sweeps, saying, “If you are not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing that they so desperately need, then you cannot deem anything you’re doing to be a success.”
Speaking of his own approach, Mamdani has said, “We are going to take an approach that understands its mission is connecting those New Yorkers to housing. Whether it’s supportive housing, whether it’s rental housing, whatever kind of housing it is.”
Developing the Department of Community Safety
Mayor Mamdani also has an idea for reducing the level of interaction between unhoused New Yorkers and police officers. The Department of Community Safety, which Mamdani proposed during his campaign, would aim to send trained professionals to assist with mental health matters and other homelessness services, rather than police.
“Police have a critical role to play, but right now we’re relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net, which is preventing them from doing their actual jobs,” Mamdani said in a campaign video. “It’s one of the reasons so many crimes are left unresolved.”
Under Mamdani’s proposal, the DCS could station dedicated outreach workers in subway stations and take over vacant subway retail spaces to provide medical services and connect people to long-term care when needed. Instead of relying on police hours, the department would be staffed by peers with lived experience of homelessness or substance use, social workers, mental health professionals, and EMTs.
According to Mamdani’s plan, the DCS will prioritize “prevention-first, community-based solutions” that supporters argue can improve safety without exposing communities to a greater possibility of police violence.
Freeze the Rent
Recognizing the root cause of homelessness as the unavailability of affordable housing, Mayor Mamdani has called his plan to freeze rents “the most powerful tool in the fight against homelessness.” He has also referred to housing as the key to addressing street homelessness, particularly for people with mental illness, and has emphasized the importance of “strengthening rental assistance, increasing transitional and supportive housing, expanding respite residences, tripling city-produced affordable housing, and fully funding eviction-prevention services.”
While freezing the rent is not within his sole power as mayor of New York City, he will be able to appoint 9 members of the Rent Guidelines Board, which is the authority that determines increases for rent-stabilized housing units. Mamdani has also expressed a desire to lower rent prices, repair housing that’s fallen into disrepair, and increase the city’s housing stock.
On his first day in office, Mayor Mamdani signed several executive orders aimed at addressing the city’s housing crisis. One of them reinvigorates the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and appoints tenant advocate Cea Weaver as its director. Two others establish new task forces dedicated to increasing housing construction and supply.
Mayor Mamdani also announced that the city would intervene in the bankruptcy case of The Pinnacle Group to ensure that tenants in its properties would be made whole after years of neglect and mismanagement left many of them living in decrepit, falling-apart buildings and paying for the privilege.
Protecting the rights of renters is a highly effective homelessness prevention, and it looks like Mayor Mamdani is not afraid to stand up to the large corporate landlords that see New York as nothing more than prime real estate to get rich off of at any cost.
Other Changes on the Horizon
Undoubtedly, Mayor Mamdani’s approach to homelessness services will unfold and adapt over his full term. He may even have plans to address the sorry state of many of New York’s homeless shelters. He certainly understands why some New Yorkers would rather sleep on the streets than in shelters, and, better yet, understands that it is the government’s responsibility to change that, not the responsibility of individuals.
“We have to use the power of example. We have to get to work to ensure that when any New Yorker looks at shelters, looks at supportive housing, they see a better option than living on our streets,” Mamdani has said.
Mamdani has also spoken publicly about New York’s involuntary commitment policies. In an email correspondence with the New York Times, Mamdani reportedly responded to a question about involuntary commitment by saying the following:
“My Department of Community Safety will build a whole-of-government approach to mental health, housing, and substance use services.”
He added that the department would prioritize programs that focus on “long-term stability, engage people into treatment, decrease hospitalization, and reduce substance use. The goal of this approach will be to ensure that involuntary hospitalization — which often fails to put people on a path to recovery — is rare and a last resort.”