A grotesque homeless encampment continues to expand on Manhattan’s West Side and now covers 12 city blocks with theft, drugs and prostitution flourishing in broad daylight, The Post has learned.
Dozens of tents and makeshift shelters now extend from 34th Street to 46th Street along 11th Avenue, a worrisome eyesore for local workers and residents as well as tourists lining up to visit the popular Intrepid Museum — with City Hall turning a blind eye and NYPD cops zipping by and doing nothing.
“We cant get rid of them,” one city parks enforcement officer said Sunday. “These ones here are stealing everything. They stole our key for the hose. They stole our ladder. They take what they can. And there are escorts in there too. Prostitutes. I see them, they’re right there.
“Definitely getting worse,” she said. “People stopped parking here. People are scared to park here.”
Industrious vagrants lounge on stolen couches, display pricey electronics and other goods — including Broadway theater lights and high-end telescopes — and even peddle drugs to sex workers who also ply their trade inside the shantytown or filthy public bathrooms, locals said.
At one tent sex workers regularly stopped by throughout the day for customers or drugs — or both.
“This is crazy,” said one supervisor at the nearby Jacob Javits Center. “The cops and the sanitation guys and the outreach guys, they clean up one spot and after that day, the next day they’re over here. Then they’re over there. They’re kind of just spreading around.
“The scariest parts are on 36th and 37th right now,” he said. “It’s just heroin addicts.”
“It stinks,” a Javits maintenance worker added. “They were setting up in the park at 3 this morning and it’s just too much. It’s getting bad again, very bad.
“We kicked them out, now they’re over here,” he said. “One thing is for sure though, there are more today than there were last month, that’s for sure.”
The Post blew the whistle on the lawless encampment in a report on Friday,
One vagrant went so far as to call Mayor Zohran Mamdani “awesome” for allowing the unsanitary encampment to thrive and halting police raids that once cleared out the unsightly settlements.
On Sunday, regular NYPD patrols drove by the scene but never stopped, while officials at City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But New Yorkers have noticed — a review of city records show that 311 calls complaining about vagrants in the area spiked to 48 this year, up from 40 in 2025.
The records show that 28 of the 48 calls so far this year were for a homeless person needing assistance, while 20 were over the West Side encampment. Thirty calls came just last month, and eight this month.
Of the 40 calls to 311 from the neighborhood last year, 36 were for assistance and just four were over the unsightly encampment.
Big Apple civic and business leaders also griped that it’s not a good look.
“Most people would agree that leaving people on the street indefinitely isn’t compassion, it’s neglect,” said Steve Fulp, CEO for the nonprofit Partnership for the City of New York. “We’ve seen in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that letting encampments grow unchecked fails the homeless and erodes quality of life for everyone else.
“The right approach for the city pairs real services with the timely actual removal of encampments that pose safety risks,” Fulp said. “We aren’t seeing that here and these encampments can grow quickly if a balanced policy isn’t pursued which is the concern here.”
Cristyne Nicholas, chair of the New York State Tourism Advisory Council, who was appointed to the post by Gov. Kathy Hochul, said the troublesome shantytown “doesn’t put New York tourism in a positive light.
“The Intrepid Museum is one of New York’s greatest tourist attractions, drawing millions of visitors each year,” she said. “Tourists are forced to walk around squalor and stench. I hope the mayor focuses on this, as he’s promoted tourism during the World Cup. He understands tourism.
“Maybe there’s a disconnect here” added Christopher, the former head of the city’s tourism agency. “We want visitors to feel safe and welcome.”
Additional reporting by Nicole Rosenthal
Read the full article here