Is the Times saying NIMBY
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/nyregion/occupy-city-hall-nyc-homeless.html
When it first kicked off last month, the activist encampment that billed itself as Occupy City Hall was viewed as the latest wave of the city’s George Floyd protests — an innovative political space that, under summer skies, attracted peaceful crowds to speeches and teach-ins focused on a narrow goal: cutting $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s budget.
In the past week, however, the number of protesters has dropped off sharply and those who have
remained have taken on a new responsibility: caring for dozens of homeless people who were drawn to the compound for its free food, open-air camping and communal sensibility.
It has not been easy.
Brawls have erupted. Passers-by and journalists have been harassed. Local residents — even those who say they support the camp’s politics — have complained that it has turned into a disorderly shantytown where violence has occurred. Several medics who had been there from the start announced this week that they were leaving, citing “a lack of safety” in a statement.
The camp, just feet from City Hall, presents a thorny political problem for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been criticized by the demonstrators
The Police Department referred all questions to the mayor’s office.
Over the weekend, a resident of 49 Chambers Street, a condominium complex across from the camp, said in an email that some people from the camp had tried to break into the building and had threatened to burn it down.
“We’ve spoken to the N.Y.P.D., and the response was that the mayor’s office ordered them to stand down and not interfere with crimes being committed on this specific block,” the resident said. “This leaves our building — the only residential building out of multiple government buildings on the block — defenseless.”