Woman camping on West Side Highway says shelter system is ‘full’
She’s not a cheerful camper.
A middle-aged Jap European girl who stated she couldn’t get a spot within the metropolis’s packed and horrid shelter system pitched a tent on the median of the West Aspect Freeway close to twelfth Avenue and West forty first Road.
“Shelter’s no good for me and full,” she advised The Put up.
The outdoorswoman then yelled on the reporter in damaged English and threatened to name the police.
“I’m getting the Supreme Court docket!” she threatened.
Twitter is already having a subject day with the freeway encampment.
“Can’t beat these Hudson River views,” read one tweet. “Nonetheless beats Staten Island,” read another.
Others see it as a significantly unhealthy omen.
“You tolerate one and also you’ll get a whole lot. This has gotta be taken down instantly,” one particular person commented.
Residents say tents and vagrancy alongside the freeway began firstly of the pandemic and have surged this previous summer time — and the town does nothing about it.
“I name it Whac-A-Mole since you see these tents go up, they get cleared out after which they arrive proper again once more,” stated Jason Anderson, who posted a snap of the latest highway denizen on Twitter. “It highlights a scarcity of imposing legal guidelines and the city dysfunction that comes from it. It’s certainly one of many highway blocks that stop the town from returning to regular and feeling like 2019 once more.”
Katie Hamill stated Hell’s Kitchen has turn into such an epicenter of medicine, vagrancy and psychological sickness that this “girl might be there as a result of she feels safer sandwiched in between six lanes of automobiles than on the road the place she could be attacked by unhoused and mentally in poor health males.”
The city camper has loads of neighbors on the pier and in close by Riverside Park South.
On Friday, The Put up noticed one homeless man returning to his makeshift abode of painter’s tarps held along with packing tape. One other man reclined on a pleather desk chair. A 3rd stood alongside the riverside walkway, hunched over his buying cart for practically an hour.
The town Division of Homeless Providers recognized roughly 3,400 unsheltered individuals on Jan. 27, nevertheless advocacy teams just like the Coalition for the Homeless consider that to be a big undercount.
