Six New Yorkers living in homelessness announced Wednesday afternoon that they are suing the Adams administration over its nearly three-year, controversial tactic of removing their encampments and tossing their belongings into the trash.
The encampment sweeps began in 2022 at Mayor Eric Adams’ direction. A coalition of cops, homeless outreach agents, park officers, the Department of Transportation, and sanitation workers dismantled crude cardboard shelters and curbside tents that many of the city’s most vulnerable used to shield themselves from the elements.
In the eyes of those caught up in the sweeps, these actions amounted to inhumane treatment — culminating in the legal action announced on Oct. 30 against the Adams administration.
The lawsuit was announced during a rally in Washington Square Park late Wednesday afternoon, where supporters brandished signs and photographs of the sweeps in progress which showed cops grabbing homeless people and tossing out tents.
“Sweeps are cruel, counterproductive, and cause immense harm to homeless New Yorkers,” said Natalie Druce, staff attorney with the Urban Justice Center Safety Net Project. “Permanently depriving homeless people of their personal belongings, including life-sustaining property, and forcibly relocating them during sweeps violates their civil and constitutional rights. Not only is the City’s conduct unlawful, but it is punitive and ineffective — homeless people are being policed, punished for their existence in public space, and pushed further away from permanent housing.”
Eduardo Ventura, a man who amNewYork Metro previously interviewed regarding his struggle with homelessness and the sweeps, is one of the six people bringing forth the lawsuit. Ventura described the sweeps as a setback that, instead of helping, pushes the unhoused further into a downward spiral.
“Imagine being outside living on the street and people come up to you telling you to leave the area, but you don’t know where to go,” Ventura said. “Do I go to another street, do I go to the subway station, do I go to another corner just to get pushed out again? It’s a huge disruption to our lives. As a homeless person, you already have nothing – but you’re trying to get better and then you are forced to be pushed around. It causes a lot of mental distress. How do I get out of the streets, when I’m constantly pushed out and being harassed?”
Both the plaintiffs and the attorneys representing them declared that the ultimate goal is to seek an injunction prohibiting from continuing the sweeps.
“The most harmful thing about sweeps is that they are limiting the things I can do to better my life,” plaintiff Damian Voorhees said in a statement. “I have to make a choice between leaving my belongings and going to work for the day and possibly coming back to nothing or staying at my site and babysitting my stuff. It’s a virtual leash. It’s keeping me in the position that I’m in that they’re supposedly trying to get me out of.”
In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson from City Hall stated: “The city’s homeless encampment outreach and clean-up efforts operate under one defining principle: that there is nothing dignified about being forced to sleep on the streets. Rather than walking past an encampment and doing nothing to help those in need, we treat people experiencing homelessness with dignity, offering to connect them to housing, health care, and to properly store their valuables while temporary structures not meant to be lived in are removed. Thanks to this administration’s critical investments in outreach staffing and expansion of high-quality, specialized beds, more than 2,000 New Yorkers who were living unsheltered in public places are now in their own permanent homes.”
