Homeless New Yorkers Sue Adams Administration to Stop the Sweeps

Eric Adams NYC sued for encampment sweeps

Credit Image: © Lev Radin/ZUMA Press Wire


A group of unhoused New Yorkers has filed a lawsuit against the Adams administration, alleging that the city’s homeless sweeps violate constitutional rights by destroying personal belongings without proper notice or adherence to regulations, and calling for an end to these harmful practices.

Lawsuit Alleges Sweeps Violate Rights and Destroy Personal Property as City Escalates Crackdown

A group of six unhoused New Yorkers filed a lawsuit against the City of New York on Oct. 29, seeking to prevent city agencies from conducting homeless sweeps.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges the city consistently violates the constitutional rights of unhoused people by failing to notify them of impending sweeps. City workers also routinely destroy personal belongings like warm clothes, identification documents, medications, and bedding during the sweeps.

The lawsuit also asserts that city agencies routinely flout their own rules regarding how sweeps can be conducted. For instance, the city requires confiscated items to be stored for 90 days, and the owner must receive a voucher to claim the property. However, the lawsuit alleges the city rarely issues those vouchers, which results in people losing their personal property.

The plaintiffs are represented by the Urban Justice Center—Safety Net Project, the National Homelessness Law Center, and Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP. The lawsuit was filed at a time when local data shows that more than 4,100 New Yorkers experience unsheltered homelessness in the city, representing a more than 2% increase from last year.

“The damaging effects of the sweeps policy represent an abject failure of New York City governance and exacerbate the trend of criminalizing homelessness that has been escalating across the country,” Siya Hegde, a staff attorney for the National Homelessness Law Center, said in a statement.

Adams’ Sweeps Plan and Its Consequences

Sweeps have been critical to Mayor Eric Adams’ push to end street homelessness in New York. In 2022, Adams told the New York Times that the city was going to “rid the encampments off our street, and we’re going to place people in healthy living conditions with wraparound services.”

That plan included ramping up the number of sweeps the city conducted to roughly 500 per month in 2023, according to data included in the lawsuit. Overall, the Adams administration has conducted more than 10,000 sweeps since he took office.

However, the sweeps have not resulted in more people accessing housing or services, as Adams suggested. A 2023 audit from the city’s comptroller found that just 90 people stayed in a city shelter for more than one night following a sweep. 

Invisible People has reported extensively on the dangers of conducting homeless sweeps. Studies have shown that sweeps can significantly increase drug overdoses, decrease the mental health of people living outside, and are a waste of municipal resources. A recent study from Colorado University – Anschutz Medical Campus found that sweeps also do not improve public safety despite the repeated claims by local officials that they do.

Homeless people also routinely avoid New York shelters because they are known to be dirty and violent places, according to the lawsuit. Moreover, groups of people like homeless migrants, LGBTQ+ adults, domestic violence survivors, and runaway youths are routinely prevented from accessing shelter.

“Due to systemic barriers to accessing shelter, thousands of unhoused New Yorkers have little choice but to reside in the street with their belongings,” the lawsuit states.

Legal Challenges to Sweeps Nationwide

Homeless sweeps have also been challenged in courts nationwide to varying degrees. Advocates in San Francisco sued the city to prevent it from conducting sweeps in 2021. The following year, a judge issued a temporary injunction against the sweeps, only to throw out the injunction in 2024 after the Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Grants Pass that cities can use sweeps to remove homeless people.

Similar lawsuits have been filed in Phoenix, Arizona, and Denver, Colorado.

“Since the Supreme Court effectively criminalized homelessness this summer with the Johnson v. Grants Pass ruling, more than one hundred bills cruelly targeting homeless people have been introduced across the country,” Hegde said. “The billionaire-led campaign to arrest, fine, and displace homeless people must be met with increased funding for the proven solution to homelessness: housing paired with voluntary services.” 

The Cost of Criminalizing Homelessness

Many communities have laws that criminalize activities homeless people need to do in public to survive, including:

  • Sitting or lying down
  • Loitering or loafing
  • Eating or sharing food
  • Asking for money or panhandling
  • Sleeping in cars and outside or camping

Not only is the cost of criminalizing homelessness high, but it does nothing to solve homelessness and violates human rights. Anti-homeless legislation leads to homeless people being arrested or fined, which makes it harder to find housing and jobs and access social services. Additionally, studies have found that sweeps are counterproductive and harmful to homeless people’s health.

Contact your legislators and demand they stop supporting legislation that criminalizes homelessness, like sweeps. Instead, they should support policies that invest in Housing First, and comprehensive approaches to homelessness that combine eviction prevention, affordable housing, outreach programs, and supportive services.


Robert Davis

Robert Davis

Robert is a freelance journalist based in Colorado who covers housing, police, and local government.

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