Add The New York Post on Google It’s like a game of homeless hide and seek.
The unsightly homeless encampment that marred Manhattan’s West Side near the Intrepid Museum for months has been repeatedly cleaned out by the city — but it stubbornly keeps popping up.
“It’s awful,” said a neighborhood worker whose company just moved to the area. “I wish that they weren’t right here. I’ve seen them clear them out a few times. They come back.
“They’re there every day, it’s a tough situation. We just moved, you know, it’s really tough,” he added. “My coworker just doesn’t wanna come to the office. They don’t feel safe. I don’t think anyone does, you know? It’s hard to feel safe.”
One family of tourists from Toronto shielded their young son while passing one of the encampments.
“You notice I kept him kind of, like, behind as the dude walked by,” one parent said. “It wasn’t the first time [seeing it], but it’s not unusual.”
The Post first blew the whistle on the filthy encampment that ran across 12 city blocks in June, with tents and crude shelters lining sidewalks used by tourists and locals, some furnished with stolen goods while makeshift brothels and drug dens operated in broad daylight.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration was slow to respond to the foul shantytown, in large part due to a City Hall policy of barring cops from acting for at least a week while outreach workers were dispatched.
The shelters were finally removed, but vagrants just set up camp nearby and later returned — and months later the pattern is still playing out, frustrating legit residents and workers.
One large shantytown on West 46th Street near an Amazon warehouse was finally cleared, workers there said Monday — but the sidewalk squatters simply moved to 45th and 47th streets and started again.
“They kept saying, ‘You have to leave, you have to leave,'” said Liam James, one of the regulars at the homeless encampment. “It was both the police and sanitation, and they offer you a place to stay after they do. But the thing is that they want to throw everything away.”
James said he was put in a temporary apartment by the city, but said he misses the streets and his friends, who he said have become like family.
“I wouldn’t mind sleeping in my apartment if I had anyone around me,” he said. “But I think that being alone going through this, it’s really difficult. You don’t have your friends or family.”
Jahsor Banks, another shantytown regular, said he doesn’t fault the city for “doing their job,” but said that, “after staying with the people for so long, it’s like you got a bond.”
