More than 2,300 homeless New Yorkers were forcibly removed from the streets in encampments sweeps last year — but just three of them wound up receiving permanent housing afterward, according to an audit that City Comptroller Brad Lander announced Wednesday.
The city’s fiscal watchdog called upon the Adams administration to immediately halt encampments sweeps across the city while announcing the audit’s findings on June 28 at Tompkins Square Park, in the shadow of what was once Anarchy Row — a homeless encampment that became the infamous casualty of the sweeps in April of 2022, seeing the arrest of several unhoused individuals for refusing to pack up and leave their small patch of sidewalk.
