As New York City Council members declared Manhattan’s West Side a humanitarian crisis, they sent a letter to Mayor Eric Adams describing grim scenes of streets lined with drug-abusing and mentally ill homeless people.
In a letter dated July 18, 2024, Councilman Eric Boettcher, representing Manhattan’s 3rd Ward, asked Adams for “immediate assistance to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding on the streets and subways of New York City.”
Bottcher highlighted several areas as “particularly critical,” including parts of Times Square, the Garment District and Washington State Park.
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At noon on Monday, September 12, 2022, a man was sleeping on 8th Avenue in Manhattan, just a block from Times Square. His face was covered by a SEIU Local 1199 sign demanding “Higher Wages!” from workers. (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
“A significant number of individuals in this area and elsewhere are involved in a range of illegal and anti-social activities, causing considerable distress and fear to their members, often elderly people and families with young children,” he wrote.
The New York Post dispatched a reporter to the area following Bocher’s letter. During their visits over the past two weeks, the reporters described several “unstable, bewildered homeless eccentrics.” The outlet highlighted needles regularly found on the streets and “drug addicts with dead eyes walking around with needles in their hands.” Along 36th Street near the bustling Pennsylvania Station, people who appear to be mentally ill lie sprawled on benches and sidewalks, or wander the streets, often barefoot, taunting tourists and locals.
A security guard working in the area, identified only by Fisher in the Post, told reporters that he saw people using drugs “all day long, all night long” in the public courtyard of the Midtown Holiday Inn hotel. He said public urination and defecation were common.
“It’s crazy here,” Fisher told the Post. “They even have sex on the benches. They pee and defecate on them.”
NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 30, 2022: A homeless person sits in Times Square in New York City on November 30, 2022. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has unveiled a plan that would allow homeless people with mental illness to be hospitalized against their will. (Photo by Leonardo Munoz/VIEWpress)
According to the Post, employees at the Midtown Holiday Inn began turning on sprinklers to try to keep the homeless out.
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“But some homeless people are turning it into a showering experience, even using soap, as one hotel guest complained in an online review,” the outlet wrote.
“Other people come into the hotel and swear at us,” Rocky Caban, 45, the hotel’s front desk manager, told the Post. “They try to beat us up and do everything. We had to bring security outside to try to keep them from coming in,” he said.
“Every day we have to go through this. I see the same people every day. I see them being picked up, taken away in an ambulance, and then the next day they go out again,” Caban added.
A homeless person partially blocks the stairs of a subway train in New York City on September 10, 2022. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
New York City-based PIX11 also visited the area last week and reported similar findings.
“Within 10 minutes of arriving at West 30th Street, the PIX11 News crew found a man being carried off the sidewalk by emergency responders, another man exposing his body, and a third man who appeared to be suffering from mental health issues,” they wrote.
Bocher called it a “heartbreaking reality.”
“This is not only causing tremendous distress to these individuals, but is also having an increasingly negative impact on residents and businesses as we approach mid-summer,” he wrote.
He said the NYPD was “struggling” to respond to reports in the area of ”open drug sales and use, destruction of property, 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 professionals and is already operating in 31 locations across New York City, according to PIX11. The program dispatches paramedics, social workers, and other unarmed emergency responders to respond to certain 911 calls. NYPD police.
As Mayor Eric Adams speaks at a news conference, an NYPD officer says he was the mastermind behind a campaign donation scam aimed at helping the mayor. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)
According to reports, Adams had promised to expand the program citywide last year, but the plan has now stalled.
“The West Side of Manhattan needs this program now,” Boucher wrote.
He also urged Adam to support a bill he introduced that would require the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to assign licensed social workers to NYPD precincts across the city.
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“Our neighborhood needs help now,” he wrote. “The status quo cannot continue.
The mayor’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
