Mayor Eric Adams took a moment to brag Wednesday — that New York City isn’t as bad as Los Angeles.
“This is another city in America,” Hizzoner proclaimed to a room full of reporters Wednesday afternoon, holding up a picture of a packed homeless encampment in LA’s infamous Skid Row neighborhood.
“This is what I saw when I drove around the city January 1st, 2022. This is an example of another city in America.”
Adams flashed the tragic scene while touting the Big Apple’s year-end crime stats, which show overall crime across Gotham dropped slightly in 2023 — down 0.3% — compared to the year prior.
“This is when you threw up your hands. Fires burning on the street, children out here. There are no toilets!
“Go look at other cities and look at what we inherited when I put in place our homeless encampment task force. You don’t see this in New York,” he boasted.
“And there are those who say I’m harsh because I don’t allow this to exist. That’s what I’m fighting against. Do you want this in front of your house? You want your children to see this? Is this what you want your children to see? Not while I’m mayor. It’s not going to happen.”
Crime rates in the Big Apple are, however, up more than 31% overall compared to 2019, according to the NYPD data.
Adams did not explicitly say where the homeless encampment was in the press conference but The Post tracked down the image and found it was taken on the streets of Skid Row in February 2023.
It shows a 56-year-old man heating a doughnut over a fire he ignited on the sidewalk of the downtown LA neighborhood famous for its vagrancy.
Adams’ rant came after a reporter asked NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell a question about New York City’s rising grand larceny auto rates, which sky-rocketed 191% compared to before the COVID pandemic.
Chell had just wrapped up talking about homelessness, claiming that the mayor’s task force cleaned up over 5,300 encampments over 2023.
“Now I don’t see a lot of them anymore and I’m sure you don’t. We have had a 30% reduction in calls from the public about encampments so it’s working — quality of life,” Chell said.
Homelessness has been one of Adams’ major touchstones since taking office — and an issue that has exploded as migrants continue to pour into the city, overwhelming the shelter systems and streets.
More than 161,000 asylum seekers have made their way through the Big Apple since the start of the crisis in spring 2022.
Hizzoner has repeatedly called to dismantle a decades-old requirement to provide housing to anyone who requests it, arguing that the so-called “right to shelter” rules were not intended to force the city to provide housing for the migrants.
The Adams administration has taken the issue — a legal requirement stemming from a series of rulings dating back to the 1980s — to court, though it has been unclear what specific relief the city has sought from the court.
