Mayor Eric Adams sat on a park bench alongside homeless advocates at a “sleep out” in Manhattan’s Morningside Park Saturday night amid a city-wide homelessness crisis.
The mayor joined homeless advocate Shams DaBaron, also known as the Homeless Hero, on the bench where DaBaron had slept regularly while he was homeless.
DaBaron organized the Homeless Rights Month Sleep Out to show “solidarity with those who have to spend the night on these benches, those who have to sleep in encampments, those who have to sleep on the trains, those who are in these shelters. We are trying to make sure that that is not our reality,” he said.
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams — along with his baby daughter — and commissioner of Human Resources and Social Services Gary P. Jenkins also joined the pair on the bench.
About a dozen other advocates were in the crowd, some with lawn chairs prepared to spend the night.
“I come to this bench almost every week,” DaBaron said, who said his “biggest fear” at that point in his life was “dying on this bench.”
“We are here in real-time saying we are not going to let the decades, centuries … of failed policies to keep us in these conditions,” he continued. “We are not doing shantytowns. We are not doing encampments. We are not riding on the subways. We are not doing that.”
He said Adams inherited the problem but pledged to hold him accountable.
As the Homeless Hero praised the mayor, a woman from the crowd shouted, “we don’t want Safe Haven! We want permanent housing!”
“I cannot find housing. There is no way into these housing,” added the woman, who lives in a shelter. She was later escorted away.
Another woman, East Harlem mom Kimberly Tyre, ripped the mayor for school budget cuts.
“If our black and brown students do not get educated, where do you think they will be? They will be homeless and they will turn to guns. The cycle continues and continues and continues,” she said as the mayor sat on the bench in silence.
“The only thing I’m not afraid of is being among the people because I am the people. I’m used to all the energy that comes from all the people … all day, every day,” Adams said as he briefly noted following the criticisms from the crowd.
“I came here for one reason, to support Shams. Period. End of statement,” said the mayor to the gathered press.
Adams said earlier this month that the city’s homeless shelters are being overrun with asylum-seeking migrants with nearly 3,000 arriving in recent weeks.
The mayor pleaded with President Joe Biden to send “additional federal resources immediately” so the city can handle the overflow.
