To Mayor Eric L. Adams:

As faith leaders, we agree that the streets and the subways are not homes. But the encampment and subway sweeps your administration is conducting are unjust, immoral, and inhumane. When you separate people from their belongings and makeshift homes on the streets, and failing to provide them with a better option, you are only shuffling people around and traumatizing them further. We unequivocally condemn these sweeps, and we call on you to provide housing to homeless New Yorkers.

If you want to help homeless New Yorkers, you have to listen to them. We’ve heard from unsheltered folks who tell us that congregate shelters are often inadequate, unsafe, and traumatic. You know as well as we do that you cannot wish away poverty, and that efforts to reduce unsheltered homelessness will fail if the only shelter options people are given are the same ones that led them to sleep on the subways or streets in the first place. Rather than simply trying to make homelessness less visible to those of us who are lucky enough to be housed, we ask you to listen to the homeless New Yorkers who tell us that what they need to get off the streets is housing.

That’s why, as faith leaders, we urge you to stop the sweeps and focus on opening safe, private, and dignified accommodations for every New Yorker living on the streets and subways–including single-room Safe Havens, stabilization beds, and most importantly permanent housing.

The data shows that people will come inside if given a placement offer that meets their needs.
Unlike congregate shelters, where people often sleep 30 to a room, single-room Safe Haven and stabilization beds offer a sense of privacy that appeals to and helps many homeless New Yorkers.  We saw the success of this approach with the temporary hotel shelters earlier in the pandemic, which offered similarly private accommodations. According to Project Renewal, which surveyed homeless individuals last year who were placed in hotels as part of the city’s COVID de-densification program, over 75% of temporary hotel shelter residents said their physical and mental health had improved, and 72% said their drug and alcohol use declined. Accidental drug overdose rates among homeless New Yorkers also declined after hotelling began.

It’s not just that private and dignified accommodations have better results — the numbers prove that homeless New Yorkers prefer them, too: only 10% of those who accepted referrals to congregate shelters during summer 2020 stayed there, compared to 35% who had stabilization beds. Another set of data from 2020 found that 75% of those offered stabilization beds stayed there, while data gathered by DHS between May 5, 2020 and April 4, 2021 found that while 30% of individuals offered transport to congregate shelters accepted placement there, 65% accepted placement at a stabilization bed, and 84% of those who accepted placement at a Safe Haven stayed there. All of the data we have makes clear that providing options that offer privacy is a successful way to encourage homeless New Yorkers to come inside. Meanwhile, just five individuals in 239 encampments have accepted placement.

Everybody deserves privacy, safety, and dignity. We urge you to recognize the worth of our unhoused neighbors, and help them to get back on their feet, not keep them on their knees. Please stop the sweeps, and start prioritizing getting folks housed.

Sincerely,