Donovan Richards breaks with Mamdani to call for tearing down homeless encampments
Even a top city ally of lefty Mayor Zohran Mamdani has joined the massive chorus demanding Hizzoner tear down local vagrant shanties to move the homeless to safety and prevent them from freezing to death.
“Being homeless shouldn’t be a death sentence,” said Democratic Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who readily endorsed Mamdani in last year’s election, to The Post on Sunday.
“You can’t let the people stay out there. These are people in crisis,” Richards said.
As The Post reported exclusively last week, Mamdani’s administration ordered city cops and sanitation workers to stop tearing down homeless encampments — just weeks before now 14 people have been found dead outdoors during the recent Arctic deep freeze.
At least eight of those found dead outdoors died from hypothermia, or from freezing to death.
Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, a Republican, joined Donovan in calling for Mamdani to reverse course.
“We said before that people will die. Now it looks like the policy is leading to more deaths,” Fossella told The Post.
He said the encampments are dangerous even during warmer weather because they are riddled with criminality and rampant drug use.
“Don’t be surprised if more people die,” Fossella warned.
Richards agreed that “I do think the mayor has to take the encampments down.
“But it has to be done in a humane way,” he said.
The Queens borough president said former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration was sometimes ham-handed in demolishing the encampments by trashing homeless individuals’ belongings.
But the bottom line, he said, is that people can’t be left out in the bitter cold.
It’s a vexing problem because many street homeless avoid the shelters because they don’t believe they are safe, Richards said.
“It’s a big reason they’re out in the street or in the subway. We have to fix that problem long term,” he said.
“It’s too damn cold out there. It’s bone chilling — even during the day. It’s a sad situation.”
City Hall did not immediately respond to a Post request for comment.
