EXCLUSIVE: Mayor de Blasio takes tour of filthy, needle-ridden Bronx drug den — vows to clean up homeless encampments
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, September 2, 2015, 8:37 PM
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The encampment, pictured Tuesday night before de Blasio's visit, is located on a stretch of abandoned rail tracks underneath St. Ann’s Ave. in Mott Haven.
With the city ramping up a five-borough crackdown on 80 homeless encampments, Mayor de Blasio traveled to the Bronx Wednesday to see the quality-of-life crisis firsthand — and was taken aback to find a deserted druggie lair.
De Blasio, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his face grim, grilled top city officials — including Sanitation Commissioner Katherine Garcia and Homeless Services Commissioner Gilbert Taylor — about the city’s plans for the eyesore, a litter and needle-strewn stretch of abandoned rail tracks underneath St. Ann’s Ave. in Mott Haven.
“I don’t believe a homeless encampment is an acceptable reality in New York City in 2015,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Daily News.
The mayor said the visit was eye-opening. “There’s nothing like seeing the real thing and understanding the human consequences,” de Blasio said.
“These are human beings whose lives have come unglued. The goal is not just to clean up the site. The goal is to get them into human services.”
But he did not get to meet any of the 15 to 20 men who live at the site. Everyone had cleared out before the mayor arrived, probably tipped off by the army of police, Sanitation workers and Homeless Services staff who arrived before the city’s top executive.
De Blasio did inspect the horrific living conditions underneath the overpass that crosses the tracks at E. 150th St., across from IS 162 and University Prep Charter School. And he saw incontestable proof that the encampment was also a junkies’ haven.
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'I don’t believe a homeless encampment is an acceptable reality in New York City in 2015,' de Blasio said.
As NYPD Chief of Transit Bureau Joe Fox briefed him, de Blasio looked down from a ledge overlooking the filthy site.
Five mattresses were lined up under the overpass, with a makeshift cardboard teepee in front, surrounded by piles of trash.
To access it, the men scamper down a steep hill from the street with a rope, or pop up out of a manhole that leads to and from the subway tunnel.
And everywhere — on the beds, the concrete path and tossed among the rocks and litter throughout — were hypodermic needles.
SUSAN WATTS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSDHS Deputy Commissioner Jody Rudin said that some just used the area as a drug den to shoot up, although most who stayed there were homeless.
“So many of the people have a substance problem?” de Blasio asked his aides.
The DHS and NYPD workers nodded in agreement.
“This is what’s really going on,” the mayor said.
DHS Deputy Commissioner Jody Rudin told the mayor that some of the people who hang out on the tracks aren’t even homeless — a fact that seemed to startle de Blasio.
“Not all are homeless? Explain that,” he said.
Rudin told him that some just used the area as a drug den to shoot up, although most who stayed there were homeless.
The city planned to send in workers Wednesday night to clean up the site and has set aside 10 beds in a Bronx shelter designed for chronically homeless individuals — like some of the addicts who live at the site — and will try and persuade them to come in.
SUSAN WATTS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSThe city planned to send in workers Wednesday night to clean up the site and has set aside 10 beds in a Bronx shelter designed for chronically homeless individuals.
The Mott Haven site is one of 80 encampments that de Blasio — under intense pressure to curb the city’s homeless crisis — has ordered cleaned out.
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said the department visited 50 of the sites last month, cleaning up 10 of them so far, and warned 161 homeless people that they need to get out. Only 10 have taken up the offer for help.
Not everyone is convinced the strategy will reduce homelessness and help those in need.
“The vast majority of the homeless we are seeing on the street aren’t drug users and are suffering quietly,” said Mary Brosnahan, president of Coalition for the Homeless. “I don’t know if encampments are indicative of what New Yorkers are dealing with.”
She dismissed the breaking up of the encampments as an idea Bratton recycled from his previous stint as commissioner in the 1990s.
“He’s reverting back to what he knows from (Rudy) Giuliani, which is let’s go bust these places up,” she said.
City officials said the encampments are just one part of the strategy, along with more social services and housing for people with mental health and drug issues.
In the South Bronx, some locals are skeptical that a long-running eyesore will disappear.
“It’s not going to happen,” said the owner of nearby Fresco Pizza, who would not give his full name. “They’ve closed it so many times.”
Officials told de Blasio during the visit that the camp had been cleaned out in 2006, but the drug addicts came back.
De Blasio insisted his was a unique approach because of the number of city agencies involved. “This is the humane approach, but it’s also going to help us maintain safety and order,” he said.
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With Rocco Parascandola
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