The Department Of Homeless Turndown Service

Perhaps you’ve noticed new encampments since the beginning of the new year:

The homeless have a new perk thanks to Mayor Zohran Mamdani: turndown service.

City sanitation workers did everything this week but put mints on the greasy pillows atop makeshift beds in a booming shantytown below a Queens overpass.

Community leaders and residents complained that hobos were taking advantage of the socialist pol’s softer new guidelines for dealing with the homeless crisis and brazenly turning the public walkway into their own sprawling flophouse.

On Tuesday, New York’s Strongest carefully tidied up the disgusting digs along the Jamaica Avenue business district near 98th Street in Woodhaven — removing rickety chairs covered in filthy laundry, shopping carts and overstuffed bins and plenty of trash.

But they left behind two air mattresses, and the squatters’ clothing, blankets and other belongings neatly folded and placed nearby.

[. . .]

Cops initially responded to the scene before sanitation workers arrived at the request of [Councilwoman Joann] Ariola, the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association and other community leaders.

But the police officers found themselves powerless to do much thanks to Mamdani ending the NYPD’s previous practice of dealing with the homeless crisis by clearing out encampments, sources said.

Under the new guidelines, officers responding to 311 and 911 calls about homeless conditions are required to document each case with body-worn cameras and offer medical services if needed. But they can’t compel anyone to leave — even if it’s bitterly cold or other harsh weather conditions exist — unless directed by a supervisor in life-threatening situations, the sources added.

It’s part of Mamdani’s larger “more humane” plan for dealing with the Big Apple’s homeless crisis by shifting to a “housing-first approach” through his planned $1 billion Department of Community Safety, which will rely on outreach teams of civilian social workers rather than cops to connect the homeless with supportive or rental housing.

[. . .]

Mamdani’s soft solutions for dealing with homelessness are having repercussions in other parts of the Big Apple with residents reporting expanding encampments — and new one’s popping up.

“I think it’s pretty cool” that Mamdani stopped homeless encampment sweeps “because I’ve lost a lot, a lot of stuff,” cheered a homeless man among the eight now living below a West 18th Street sidewalk shed in posh Chelsea.

“All of us have, and it’s good that he’s not, doesn’t want to do that anymore.”