New York Homeless Accuse De Blasio Administration of Going Overboard In City Clean Up
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Video footage shows sanitation men decked head to toe in Hazmat suits, dragging sheets, blankets, and more to the dumpster.
As CBS2's Meg Baker reported, the New York Civil Liberties Union said the video shows city workers removing the belongings of homeless sleeping on the sidewalk in East Harlem in October.
"We want the city to treat homelessness as the tragedy that it is," Donna Lieberman, of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told 1010 WINS' Al Jones.
Parks said he was kicked awake by the NYPD and lost his Social Security card, birth certificate, and medicine in the clean up.
"Taking all my belongings, all my property, taking everything I had and putting it in a dumpster, crunched up," Floyd Parks, 61, said.
CBS2 asked city officials what they thought of the tape.
"It is illegal for individuals to trespass and sleep on school grounds and we will not tolerate it for security and safety reasons," the mayor's office responded, "We will review our protocols concerning the seizure and disposition of personal property to ensure that it can be reclaimed by its rightful owners."
The city said it has more than fifty boots on the ground homeless advocates working each day in Manhattan, but many of the homeless refuse services for one reason or another.
"The shelter system that's going on right now, I'd rather stay on the street," Parks said.
Homeless people told CBS2's Baker that they shared that sentiment.
"In the single shelters, male and female, the conditions are really bad. People are afraid, people would rather take their chances on the street or riding the trains, but now Mayor de Blasio is cracking down on anyone sleeping on the trains," Allister Williamss aid.
"I cannot lay and close my eyes. If I forget to lock up my stuff everything is gone. I feel safer on the streets," Parks added.
Charmel Lucas lost her home to Superstorm Sandy. She has bounced around shelters and found little assistance besides a rook over her head.
"I haven't seen no job referrals, no MetroCards, haven't seen apartment listings," she said.
At one shelter, her fiance Allister Williams, came back to their room to find his business shoes missing and was unable to dress properly for a job interviewed.
One option surfaced by CBS2 in an exclusive video, was expansion of daily drop in centers where people can get food and services, but don't sleep there. It's a path to getting off the streets.
The number of drop-ins were cut in half under Mayor Bloomberg.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he's accomplished a lot of his progressive agenda in his first two years, but admits getting the homeless off the streets is more complicated, and he's gotten pushback in his attempt to clear homeless encampments, WCBS 880's Marla Diamond reported.
"And we're not going to tolerate it for them, let alone for the communities around and what a horrible message is sent to surrounding communities about quality of life," de Blasio said. "It was tolerated in the past --I don't tolerate it."
De Blasio said they are working on improving the problem, but it will take time.
"It will take time for that whole superstructure to be built up," de Blasio said. "It a problem that's been years in the making, it will take years to get out of."
The three homeless New Yorkers involved in the Oct. 2 incident have filed paperwork to sue, saying police wrongly tossed a birth certificate, Social Security cards and priceless family photos into a dump truck.
"They grabbed my clothes and threw it all in the garbage truck,'' Jesus Morales, 42, said in Spanish on Monday at a news conference, attended by about a dozen homeless New Yorkers, to announce notice of the claim. Morales said he's been homeless nearly 16 years.
"I can't even afford a room,'' he said. "We are many, and we don't have money to live here.''
The three involved in the lawsuit compared Mayor Bill de Blasio to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
"Anyone who tries to compare me to Giuliani really has an uphill climb. I could not be more different," Giuliani said.
