Mamdani finally sees sense on homeless encampments — pray this becomes a TREND

Letting homeless camps fester is toxic to city neighborhoods and unsafe for the “campers,” so let’s all cheer Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to back off his ban on “encampment sweeps.”

And more power to him if he can indeed have his sweeps result in “better outcomes” than the last mayor’s.

We’re skeptical of that: Mamdani certainly hasn’t rethought the larger assumptions of New York City’s homeless-industrial complex; he tapped a core architect of that system, Steven Banks, to run the city’s Law Department.

And his sketch of what’ll be different looks thin: “Whereas previously, a homeless New Yorker might have only two points of interaction with city government, the first day they’re served a notice, and the seventh day when that notice comes to an end, our administration will meet those homeless New Yorkers every single day.”

How the city’s to pull that off — when Mamdani’s (not at all fully funded) preliminary budget plan would add just 60 outreach workers to the Department of Homeless Services’ 2,000-strong staff — is far from obvious.

But at least the mayor has retreated from his ban.

We’d like to think that The Post’s regular hectoring in both columns and editorials had something to do with it, but we were simply expressing the horror that most New Yorkers felt — including eminently progressive Queens Beep Donovan Richards.

For the record: We still believe the feds should investigate how the decisions got made before Mamdani’s reversal, and it’s important to realize that leaving people on the street even led to the deaths of some homeless who already had the permanent shelter that the mayor considers part of the “better outcomes” he means to deliver.

Yet the bottom line remains the same: The mayor has put true compassion and simple common sense ahead of ideology, greatly disappointing the professional “advocate” class.

If he does this more often (cross your fingers!), it’ll be a wonderful trend.