McCAUGHEY: The coming clash between Trump and NYC on homelessness 

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New Yorkers are fed up with having to climb over drug-addled zombies and mumbling, mentally deranged vagrants on the streets and in the subways.

But the city’s far-left politicians insist the homeless should be catered to on their terms, including providing them with clean needles to support their addictions and medical care wherever they choose to sleep. The public’s fears and disgust be damned.

Last Thursday, President Donald Trump took sides with the public. By executive order, he announced that federal funding for housing and social services would no longer go to the “failed programs” that facilitate the use of illegal drugs and permit the mentally ill to roam the streets and subways.

“The overwhelming majority” of the homeless, the order states, “are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.”

“We want to take care of them,” Trump said in 2023, “but they have to be off our streets.” He wants civility.

He’s boldly declaring that normal, law-abiding people deserve safe neighbourhoods and transit.

Trump is discarding orthodoxies that the homelessness-industrial complex and its political allies have insisted on for decades.

Like “housing first,” a failed policy ubiquitous in the blue states that offers the homeless permanent housing without making them enroll in addiction or mental health treatment. Billions have been spent on “housing first,” yet the number of homeless is higher than ever.

Another orthodoxy: Harm reduction, in which clean needles and even supervised injection sites are provided to make drug addiction slightly less deadly. Gotham was the first city to open medical offices where addicts could shoot up under the supervision of medical personnel behind one-way mirrors in case an addict needed an overdose rescue. The perfect addition to any neighbourhood.

Trump can’t dictate whether New York follows his new policies, but the threat of withholding federal funding sets up an impending clash with city and state officials. Roughly $7 billion is at stake in funds for housing and homelessness programs.

Trump’s edict makes clear that federal funds will go to housing programs that require addicts and the mentally ill to receive treatment and that no funding will facilitate drug use.

Voters need to weigh in, making it clear they want decent neighbourhoods instead of sidewalks strewn with syringes and the mentally ill hovering on subway platforms.

Start with the stark choice for Manhattan district attorney between Republican Maud Maron and incumbent Democrat Alvin Bragg. On a recent July day, Bragg could be seen painting watercolours in Washington Square Park, totally content with the reality that his policies have allowed the park to become a dangerous drug den, with addicts shooting up while social workers pass out free syringes for “harm reduction.”

Challenging Bragg in November is Maron, who calls out harm reduction for what it is: “Orwellian doublespeak. It is harm amplification — trapping addicts in their addiction and ruining public spaces for everyone else,” she told me.

Even before Trump’s new announcement, Mayor Eric Adams had indicated his support for involuntarily hospitalizing violently mentally ill vagrants. But, in the upcoming mayoral election, Adams’ leading challenger, Zohran Mamdani, is clearly on the side of the vagrants, not the public. He insists the city should provide “outreach” and services to the unhoused wherever they choose to flop, including in teams on the subways.

Mamdani is recklessly proposing turning empty retail stores in subway stations into drop-in hubs for the unhoused.

Creating magnets for more homeless people to throng to the subways would be a gut punch for New Yorkers who must use the subways to get to their jobs.

As a three-term assemblyman, Mamdani has been pushing this proposal. All three times, he was elected unopposed in the general election, with no Republican challenger to question it. No wonder he and his foolish idea have made it into the mayoral race.

Adams succeeded in pushing Gov. Kathy Hochul to include in this year’s state budget a change in the state’s involuntary commitment law, expanding it to apply to those incapable of meeting their own basic needs, not just those who are deemed dangerous. Even more should be done, but Mamdani would take the city backwards, ceding the streets to the crazies.

The American Civil Liberties Union bashes Trump’s proposal to hospitalize the severely mentally ill. The National Alliance to End Homelessness calls it “undignified” to institutionalize the mentally ill.

But having to hold on to the subway wall for fear of getting pushed onto the tracks by a crazy person is undignified, too.

Compassion for the homeless must be balanced with the safety and orderliness that the rest of us deserve. Bragg and Mamdani overlook that. Voters, be warned.

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and founder of SAVENYC