#Homeless encampment in NYC getting ‘bigger’ despite de Blasio’s ‘crackdown’

An entrenched group of homeless people is making life miserable for residents and merchants in Manhattan’s East Village — despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to “do whatever it takes” to break up such encampments.

The vagrants are living under a stretch of scaffolding along Second Avenue between East Seventh and East Eighth streets, where they’ve arranged cast-off furniture and set up a tarp under which two men were sleeping Friday afternoon.

“It makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes our city dirty and noisy,” said neighborhood resident Olga, 78, who’s lived in the East Village for 33 years.

“There was one woman who was making pee-pee and caca by the bus stop. It was very dirty and disgusting. Nobody wanted to use the bus stop.”

The owner of an eatery across the street also said the situation appeared to be spiraling out of control.

“They started camping out there when the weather got warmer and recently it got bigger,” the restaurateur said.

“Some of them have mental issues. They drink a lot and fight with each other. They throw bottles.”

On Thursday, de Blasio was questioned during his daily news conference about a series of other encampments across Manhattan, following a NYPD raid that broke up the “Occupy City Hall” site early Wednesday morning, about month after it was established.

“Anyone who tells us about an encampment, we’re going to have it addressed right away by Homeless Services, Sanitation, [NY]PD,” de Blasio said.

“Whatever it takes.”

One homeless resident of the East Village encampment, who identified herself as Solaura, 43, said she wound up there after losing a taxpayer-funded bed at the DoubleTree hotel in Chelsea.

Solaura, whose face and limbs are covered with tattoos, said she was a transsexual sex worker and was unable to abide by rules that required her to be inside by 10 p.m.

“I am a highly marginalized individual and I just don’t have the same opportunity as a lot of cisgender people as far as employment goes, so the work I do is at night or I would have no income,” she said.

Another resident, who gave his name as Macswel Hasanoeddin, said he was registered to stay at a nearby shelter but had been living at the encampment on and off for the past two or three weeks.

“In homeless shelters, people feel like it’s like a jail,” said Hasanoeddin, 52.

“There are a lot of concerns about things getting stolen so a lot of people don’t want to go. Curfew isn’t bad but there are other factors that people don’t wanna deal with, so they’d rather stay on the street.”

City Hall didn’t return a request for comment.

Additional reporting by Julia Marsh