Prospective NYU Students Egged on Campus Tour amid City's Homeless Crisis

Amy FurrApril 3, 2022

Prospective New York University students witnessed firsthand the city’s homeless crisis during a tour of the school’s Greenwich Village campus.

“The student-led tour groups are being routinely harassed by begging vagrants — and even assaulted. One group was pelted with eggs Monday afternoon standing outside the Goddard Hall dorm on Washington Square East,” the New York Post reported on Saturday.

A guide who spoke with the Post said visitors were not happy with the situation.

“You can see them visibly disgusted and say ‘I don’t want to apply here, I don’t want to apply here because I feel unsafe,’” the guide explained.

Meanwhile, New York City officials planned to remove shelters set up by the homeless, the Associated Press (AP) reported on March 26:

Mayor Eric Adams disclosed the initiative in an interview with The New York Times on Friday, but provided few details. It comes a month after he announced a push to remove homeless people from the city’s sprawling subway system in response to assaults and other aggressive behavior.

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An increasing number of cities across the country including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., have been removing encampments and taking other steps to address homelessness that would have been unheard of years ago.

Last week, Adams highlighted the bad conditions at homeless encampments crews had discovered while clearing the camps. One photo showed a pile of needles amongst other debris, Pix 11 reported:

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“Five-hundred hypodermic needles, 500. Living like this,” he told listeners.

Per the Post article, guides lead groups around campus but veered away from Washington Square Park.

“The park has been a nexus of drug dealing, out of control parties, unsanctioned boxing matches and violence in the last year. A teen was stabbed in the head in the park at 2:30 a.m. March 18 after he refused to hand over his pot,” the report stated.

A university spokesman said guides were given walkie-talkies, de-escalation training, and toured with a buddy to handle people who might cause disruptions.