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Now they got juice.
A shameless vagrant at the putrid homeless encampment that has sprouted up along a wide stretch of Manhattan’s West Side tapped into city utility lines for electricity on Tuesday, as the unsightly shantytown continues to flaunt City Hall.
The brazen utility theft at a makeshift red shelter at 34th Street between 11th and 12th Avenue, part of a 12-block-long encampment near the Intrepid Museum, is the latest slap in the face to Big Apple tourists and neighborhood workers and residents.
A homeless man tapped into NYC utility lines for a makeshift shelter at 34th Street between 11th and 12th Avenue on Tuesday. Lone Pine Press for NY Post
Kevin Sheehan / NY Post“Almost one month now – getting a little bigger every time I come back,” one Flixbus driver told The Post. “They put the garbage here on the sidewalk so the people have to wait in the street when I come with the bus.
“They’re asking the people waiting for the bus for money,” the driver said. “It’s no good. My boss called and complained and they do nothing.”
NYPD cops patrol the area, but are largely handcuffed to clear the camp thanks to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s order for city homeless services, not the NYPD, to deal with the homeless issue.
On Tuesday, two patrol cops ordered the utility-stealing vagrant to unplug it, while three other police officers were spotted confiscating surge protectors and extension cords from another shelter at 36th Street and Hudson Boulevard.
Neither move is expected to have a lasting effect.
Meanwhile, Mamdani has shrugged of complaints about the West Side shantytown.
“We’re focused on connecting New Yorkers to shelter and on establishing a pipieline to stable housing, not just moving New Yorkers from one place to another,” he said Monday.
“To this specific encampment that you brought up, we’re going to look into the details of that.”
However, since The Post broke the news of the illegal encampment on Friday, no city sanitation or homeless services workers have been spotted at the scene.
Meanwhile, the string of dirty tents and shelters that stretches from 34th Street to 46th Street has drawn more occupants since the weekend, including sex workers and drug addicts.
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