Mayor orders New York’s homeless camps dismantled ‘within two weeks’

The homeless debate in New York has in recent weeks centred on the New York city subway, where officials said they had discovered 29 camps in subway tunnels. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New York mayor Eric Adams has ordered that every homeless encampment in the city should be taken down within two weeks, arguing that the situation is not only dangerous to those living there but to the city itself.

“We’re going to rid the encampments off our street and we’re going to place people in healthy living conditions with wraparound services,” Adams said Friday, though he provided few details on exactly how that extra provision would be provided for them.