Zohran Mamdani’s decision to end the city’s controversial homeless encampment sweeps will cause a “quality of life nightmare” for New Yorkers, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams and other critics railed Friday.

The democratic socialist mayor-elect faced a wave of blowback about the upcoming policy change that one expert called “dangerous naïveté at best” – as others warned it would herald the return of the blights across public spaces and be a “green light for chaos.”

 “Leaving people to suffer in the cold isn’t just neglectful – it’s a disgrace,” Adams said in a social media video.

Tackling the makeshift camps crowding city streets in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic became a key initiative of Adams’ City Hall when he took office four years ago.

Members of the NYPD, Department of Sanitation and the Department of Homeless Services have cleaned out 18,320 individual makeshift shelters since March 2022 when Adams began his push to tackle the public blemishes, City Hall officials said.

By comparison, between 2016 and 2021 under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, just under 10,000 were targeted.

Another roughly 180 locations remain active and are pending operations, according to City Hall officials.

“Showing compassion for those sleeping on the streets is not a sweep, it is humane,” Adams said. “Ending this action will create a quality of life nightmare.”

Mamdani told reporters Thursday he planned to nix the operations dismantling encampments around the city, noting the policy hasn’t led to enough people being placed into permanent housing.

“If you are not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing that they so desperately need, then you cannot deem anything you’re doing to be a success,” Mamdani said, taking a shot at the Adams initiative. 

The far-left Queens assemblyman claimed his admin would instead focus on connecting homeless people with housing — but however offered up no details on how to fix the issue, which has plagued numerous mayors.

Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, labeled Mamdani’s plan “dangerous naïveté at best and an even more dangerous rigid ideology at worst.”

Homeless people living in encampments usually resist being brought to shelters or hospitals, so the city needs “the leverage of removal to coerce them” into doing so, she argued.

“It is highly unrealistic to think we’re going to fix this problem by building everyone a house to their satisfaction, especially as many are homeless because of addiction or mental illness, not because of a lack of housing,” Gelinas told The Post Friday.

Outgoing Queens Councilman Bob Holden, a moderate Democrat, called scrapping the encampment sweeps the “same soft-on-disorder ideology that has turned public safety into a political experiment.”

“Mamdani’s promise … is a green light for chaos in our parks, sidewalks, and public spaces, and a direct attack on basic quality of life for everyday New Yorkers,” he told The Post.

Staten Island Republican Councilman David Carr, argued that the sweeps helped cut down on the rampant homeless encampments New Yorkers saw four years ago.

“If the incoming administration stops using this effective tool, then we are going to see the return of tent cities in a matter of months,” he warned.

Ex-NYPD Chief of Department John Chell similarly railed against Mamdani’s planned policy shift, also predicting it will lead to a sharp rise in shanty towns along city streets.

“Under current law, you generally cannot force individuals into shelter—and the majority refuse services,” he said on social media.

“Outreach does not automatically mean acceptance,” he said. “Ending street intervention programs before building sufficient housing, shelter, and treatment capacity is not a plan—it’s a gamble.”

Without those resources in place, “the predictable result will be a sharp rise in encampments, declining street conditions, and serious quality-of-life impacts across our neighborhoods.”

The former chief-turned-TV pundit, who recently retired from the NYPD, criticized the plan as more of the democratic socialist’s “rhetoric” that won’t translate into reality.

“We don’t have time for experiments,” he said. 

 GOP Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino also ripped the plan as a “horrible idea” that “will have the most immediate, noticeable, and devastating impact on quality of life in NYC.”

Adams has faced criticism for the sweeps and city government was even sued last year over the measure, with his opponents arguing he failed to place enough people with permanent housing.

A stinging audit from the city comptroller’s office in 2023 found about 95% of homeless people were quickly back on the streets after the camps were tossed away. 

But the Adams administration disputed that report. 

About 515 people have been placed in permanent housing since the start of the program with city officials stating it often takes multiple interactions with homeless people to convince them to sleep under a roof.

A City Hall spokesperson said critics of the sweeps were “cherry-picking numbers and sharing them out of context paint a disingenuous picture as these cleanups have actually connected more than 500 New Yorkers to safe, stable housing.”

More than 45,000 311 complaints for encampments were reported this year alone, the most annually during Adams’ term in office, according to city data.

There were 42,916 such calls to 311 in 2024, and 26, 639 in 2021 – the year before Adams assumed office, according to city figures.

Ex-deputy mayor Anne Williams-Isom, who oversaw homeless services, noted the increase in 311 calls was likely caused by Adams’ public push to target encampments on the streets.

She also made clear the objective of his plan was “never to get everybody directly into permanent housing.”

“I always thought in a city that had a right to shelter laws, the goal would be to get people connected to services when they needed it and definitely to shelter when they needed it so that they could be put on a pathway to care,” she told The Post.

While Adams’ predecessor, de Blasio, also ordered homeless encampment cleanups, Hizzoner made the policy a signature move early on, saying, “We cannot tolerate these makeshift, unsafe houses on the side of highways, in trees, in front of schools, in parks.”

The Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center filed the class action lawsuit in October 2024, claiming the cleanup policy was too broad and that the city rarely issued vouchers or gave back property confiscated during the sweeps, according to the New York Times.

The group called the sweeps “cruel” and “counterproductive” in a press release at the time.

A 24-year-old woman who lives near the address of recent 311 calls for encampments in Lower Manhattan said that while she felt bad for homeless people zeroed in on by authorities, cleaning up the streets was “appropriate” because “you don’t know who’s harmless and who’s not.” 

“They make big camps. They do drugs and go to the bathroom on the street,” said the East Village resident, who works in fashion and declined to give her name.

“They come and then the police come, they leave, and then they come back.”

— Additional reporting by Khristina Narizhnaya