Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Thursday he’ll finally do something about the embarrassing homeless encampment that’s marred Manhattan’s West Side — but doesn’t have a clue when.
Mamdani told reporters Thursday that he has “noticed” the blocks long blight between the Intrepid Museum and the Jacob Javits Center, but refused to give a timeline and said he had no idea when his own mandated seven-day waiting period to act kicks in.
“This site has been noticed and it will be cleared,” the mayor said. “As with any site once we notice there is seven days until the point of clearing each of those seven days is characterized by outreach from city workers looking to connect those who are present with services whether it be services at a shelter, medical services, or supportive services beyond that.”
Under his own mandate, the NYPD had to cede enforcement of unsightly encampments to city outreach and homeless services workers, who have one week to offer vagrants services and a place to bed down before the makeshift shelters and tents can be taken down.
The Post asked Mamdani on Thursday when that seven-day period ends.
“We can get back to you,” he said. “I don’t know which is the seventh day.”
The encampment has proven to be a black eye for City Hall, turning the area into skid row.
The encampment is made up of blocks of ratty makeshift shelters and worn-out tents, including some where drugs and sex are peddled while tapping into city utility poles to steal electricity.
On Thursday, most of the vagrants remained, with some packing up their possessions, taking down tents and moving on — until nightfall when many are likely to return.
Most of the sketchy sidewalk squatters refused to comment.
The sidewalk remains littered with carts, boxes, delivery bags and assorted trash. Two people emerged from one shelter on 47th and West Side Highway, and three from another at 50th Street and 11th Avenue.
One camp sits across from the Javits Center, with a tent, a structure covered with a tarp and belongings strewn about, including a fridge, a massage table and a vacuum.
There are three encampments at 44th Street between 11th and 12th avenues, and two on 36th Street between Hudson Boulevard and 11th Street, where a mask-wearing man tended to a collection of items, including shelves, canned foods and a car hub cap.
A woman at one of those sites was washing clothes at a fire hydrant on Thursday.
City Hall sources said the mayor was “freaking out” over the mess and “scrambling” to death with it, but that process seems to be taking as long as it did for him to address the problem in the first place.
Under the Mamdani’s hands-off policy on the homeless crisis, the NYPD has to back off until the city declares the start of a seven-day waiting period to let outreach workers do their thing — and only then are cops allowed to take down the encampments.
Sources said that call didn’t come until Tuesday, five days after The Post first reported on the mess.
City workers showed up for the first time on Wednesday, but did little other than clean up some trash.
One of the illegal sidewalk campers told The Post Wednesday that most of the folks shacking up in the encampment just want to be left alone — and picked the lightly traveled stretch to stay out of sight.
“This is actually a place where we get away from the spotlight where everybody is looking at us all the time….like being in the shadows,” the 42-year-old vagrant said.
“That’s all this place is for,” he said.
“Where we don’t have people watching and like just staring at us.”
The West Side stretch is largely a commercial and industrial area, bordered by the Jacob Javits Center on 34th Street and the Intrepid Museum on 46th Street.
In recent days, encampments have been spotted further north.
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