Cleanups of vacant lots by New York City’s sanitation department plummeted last year, leaving many New Yorkers who live in abandoned corners of the city feeling left behind as Mayor Eric Adams pushes a major initiative to clean up sidewalks by putting most trash in containers.
City sanitation crews cleaned 534 vacant lots in the fiscal year that ended in June — a jarring drop from the 1,440 cleaned the year before, according to the mayor’s annual management report released on Monday. The drop is even more visible when compared to the fiscal year that ended in June 2020, when data shows crews cleaned 3,098 vacant lots across the five boroughs.
The lack of lot cleanups came as Adams doubled down on his push to containerize residential waste. While filthy lots festered across the city, the sanitation department showed off new garbage trucks that officials said are necessary to require all residential garbage to be put out for collection in bins.
The vacant lot problem was particularly bad in Far Rockaway, where residents have filed dozens of complaints about dirty vacant lots filled with trash, construction debris or overgrown weeds and plants over the last year.
Rockaway resident Lenny Yarde, 63, said the problem has shaken his confidence in city government.
“I think the children [who] are now growing up in these communities, they don’t get to see a community thrive the way it should,” he said. “These are lots that should be cut, that should be cleaned.”
Yarde also said vacant lots where plant life grows unchecked become breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
The sharp decrease in vacant lot cleaning stems from budget cuts that have partially been restored, according to the mayor’s management report, which is essentially a report card that tracks how well city agencies are delivering services to New Yorkers.
“It’s just very disheartening,” said Elizabeth Opurum, a board member of Rockaway community groups the Garden by the Bay and the Edgemere Alliance.
“You get frustrated because you do what you can by making the complaints and putting in the requests to 311 and showing up to community meetings and expressing your concerns, but there’s a lack of follow-up and follow-through when it comes down to how the issues are being addressed,” she said. “We have to walk in the street in order to even go past some of these lots. It seems as though every block where you walk in this neighborhood, there are lots that are not being maintained.”
The sanitation department has stepped up its enforcement efforts across the city to target illegal dumping, which is a major problem at vacant lots. There are now hundreds of cameras across the city at illegal dumping hotspots, with the cameras issuing four times the number of tickets issued in 2021.
Sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman said the agency is trying to speed up its cleanup of dirty lots, like those that dot Rockaway.
“Between the partially restored Lot Cleaning Unit, the Targeted Neighborhood Taskforce, and district resources, we continue to do whatever is possible to address specific community complaints,” Goodman said in statement.
For Yarde, increased attention to the vacant lots can’t come soon enough.
“There doesn’t seem to be any tracking mechanism in terms of when these lots are inspected and how frequently they are cleaned,” he said. “Right now, there’s no accountability.”