It is therefore not surprising that so many would choose seemingly more difficult alternatives. During the first 12 days of the city’s encampment clearing plan — a period that saw 239 makeshift homes knocked down — only five people agreed to go to shelters, even as temperatures plummeted to frigid levels over the past week. .
Most people living in camps are adult males and it is this population that the city has had the least success in housing. In the past decade, the number of single men in the reception system has roughly doubled to more than 14,000. Part of the problem is pushing back communities that are especially averse to the idea of male shelters when the city is trying to develop it.
Another problem is an inadequate plan for those coming out of jails and prisons. The criminal justice system has evolved toward detention, but those released from custody are nearly 10 times more likely to become homeless. Two years ago, I spoke to a man who was incarcerated in a Brooklyn shelter, where he had been detained for a technical parole violation, even though he had a girlfriend (and young daughter) with an apartment in Queens who wanted him at home. His experience was so terrible that he told his probation officer that he would be leaving the shelter and that she could send him back to Rikers if she wished, as prison was the preferred option.
People often hesitate to acknowledge the connection between homelessness and prison, Lincoln Restler, a Brooklyn city councilor, told me. “They don’t want to create stereotypes or fear of homeless people,” he said. “But the state government is abandoning people coming out of prison.”
One of the encampments removed this week was located on a stretch of Meeker Avenue, below the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Mr. Restler, where images quickly surfaced of mattresses and other things being thrown into the back of garbage trucks. “If there’s a tornado, Anderson Cooper searches the rubble with someone to find a family keepsake,” Ms. Quinn noted. “That trauma of things taken from you and thrown away won’t drive you into service. It will frighten you.”
Benjamim Adam, a volunteer coordinator for North Brooklyn Essentials, a group that distributes food, clothing and other resources to people living in camps under the highway, said many who stayed there were Spanish-speaking day laborers who worked in construction. They relied on field workers for food, batteries, MetroCards, over-the-counter medicines and so on, and Mr. Adam said he believed they would rebuild.
The path forward will depend on the city’s ability to renovate or construct buildings large enough to accommodate individual rooms and bathrooms, recreation space and services for those struggling with mental health or addiction issues, where they can live until they can move to permanent housing. While Mayor Adams stressed at a news conference on Wednesday that all people deserved to live with the dignity that tents and other makeshift structures could not provide, and that supportive housing was crucial, his preliminary budget for the coming fiscal year will not increase the capital allocations to the municipal office of Preservation and Development of Housing. The city he envisions is still far in the distance.
