The severe winter weather sweeping across the Northeast pushed New York’s homeless death toll to nineteen on Thursday. New York City mayoral candidate and long time New Yorker, Curtis Sliwa, attributes the crisis to the city’s status as a “sanctuary” jurisdiction for illegal aliens — and says he’s “never seen it worse.”
The massive influx of illegals during former President Joe Biden’s term — a fair number of whom were transported to sanctuary cities — put a strain on the already limited resources available to house the city’s homeless population, and Sliwa argued that has brought the crisis to a breaking point.
“I’m watching emotionally disturbed persons and homeless people exhibit Darwinian traits. Survival of the fittest,” Sliwa said. He described encountering a homeless man with no shoes who was missing half of his foot. The man told Sliwa that both his shoes, including the one specially made for his disability, had been stolen by the “stronger” homeless. Sliwa told the Daily Wire he and his nonprofit the Guardian Angels have encountered many grim scenarios while attempting to help the homeless through the winter spell.
Sliwa said the crisis did not begin with the election of New York’s democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but with the previous administration under Democrat Eric Adams. “A lot of this is the result of Eric Adams’ failures as mayor, in which he housed a lot of the migrants, at the expense of our own homeless,” he said. “They spent $7 billion housing migrants that we didn’t even know in hotels, motels, giving them lodging, food, clothing. Okay. But we weren’t doing likewise with our own homeless and more importantly, the emotionally disturbed who should have been brought to mental health care hospitals because they clearly are a danger to themselves and everyone else.”
In fiscal years 2024 and 2025, New York city spent $6.77 billion on funding for people seeking asylum in the United States. Financial support ranged from housing in shelters and New York hotels, prepaid debit cards to families in hotel-based, non-congregate shelters for food, legal and medical services, and relocation assistance.
Sliwa says it’s New York’s homeless who end up paying the price. “Now we’re beginning to pay the price that our own homeless, who are out on their own for many months, many years as a result of the priority being the migrants.”
However, Sliwa did not entirely excuse Mamdani. “I don’t see any of the homeless outreach workers that the mayor keeps talking about,” he said.
Mamdani’s critics however argue the newly appointed mayor’s end to end encampment sweeps has contributed to the rising death toll. Brian Stettin, a senior adviser in the Adams’ administration, told the New York Post, “When a person is in imminent danger, there is no debate. Whatever ideological divides we should not have any impact on these policies during a ‘Code Blue.’”
Sliwa added that his organization’s hands are tied. “We’re just citizens,” he said, noting the Guardian Angels cannot carry out involuntary removals to bring people indoors. “That has to be done by the city, the police department, and other agencies—but they’re just not doing that.”
