Sara D. Roosevelt Park Revisited: Out With Homeless Camps & Drug Dens, In With Chinatown Pride

Call it the little park that could.

Five months after Straus News’ October 2024 expose “Anarchy in Sara D. Roosevelt Park,” conditions at the southernmost section—from Canal and Hester streets—of the long troubled linear oasis have not only improved markedly, things have remained improved.

This distinction—that between a short-term cosmetic clean up and something more lasting—is important, and never one that can be taken for granted.

Credit for change must in part be given to Mayor Adams, a man who often complains that the press gives him little credit for his accomplishments.

Flawed and scandal laden as his Mayoralty has been, Hizzoner has a point.

Indeed, if one can get Adams’ attention, as Straus News’ Editor in Chief and frequent City Hall reporter Keith J. Kelly has often done during Hizzoner’s weekly press conferences, the Mayor is quite happy to expound on hyperlocal quality of life concerns and his administration’s efforts to fix them.

While cynics might say Adams enjoys answering such questions because they allow him to avoid addressing this or that controversy du jour, that doesn’t diminish the issues themselves. To the contrary, they might even highlight just how picayune, and divorced from street reality, some of the attacks on Hizzoner have been.

Whatever the case may be, in August 2024, Straus News asked the Mayor about the drug-filled shantytown the Manhattan Bridge Plaza had become.

Hizzoner responded, “You can’t just do it one and done,” and promised a follow up. It happened, as did the Our Town Downtown headline, “DOT & Cops Reclaim Manhattan Bridge Plaza for the People—No More a Shantytown.” To this day, surprisingly, the Manhattan Bridge remains shanty free and, while warmth of summer will likely bring new challenges, an example has been set.

Something similar is going on at nearby Sarah D. Roosevelt Park.

In late October 2024, Straus News asked the Mayor about the homeless encampments and drug dens the should-be-lovely recreation area. He said he’d look into it.

A follow up story “Sara D. Roosevelt Park Reclaimed for the People—(Mostly Anyway)” showed Adams true to his word.

Things weren’t perfect but they were vastly better and the future outlook promising.

Here’s the thing though: Hizzoner didn’t get any public credit it, except from Straus News, and the people who frequent the park.

No other press picked up or the story, nor, to our knowledge, did any local politicians trumpet the changes. While one can’t always read any motivation into such silences—the press and pols alike tend to rush from topic to topic—it’s worth noting.

Similarly—and here the Mayor is partly to blame—even his own administration doesn’t herald their quotidian achievements with any regularity, be it the Mayor’s Office itself or the agencies who play varying parts of such clean-ups: the Parks Department, Department of Homeless Services, NYPD, Sanitation Department, others.

Remember: at its recent worst, the park had been allowed to devolve into a combination homeless camp, outdoor drug den and garbage dump. These conditions stood in stark contrast to its intended function as an outdoor oasis.

For most of the day, this section of SDR Park is a place where older Chinese happily engage in a variety of salutary activities—men playing cards and chess, women doing callisthenic exercises, men and women both playing table tennis and socializing. A few among the cards players smoke tobacco cigarettes—a habit which is technically banned in city parks—but otherwise they cause no trouble.

In dozens of visits to SDR Park—and more to nearby, demographically similar Columbus and Seward Parks— this reporter has never seen an older Chinese woman smoking cigarettes, nor a Chinese man smoke marijuana.

On school days, students from Pace High School and the Middle School 131, which are adjacent the park on the Forsyth Street side, congregate here. Named for the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen (1866-1912), M.S. 131 is strongly geared to the local Chinatown community. The school has a dress code too, including the prohibition of “Clothing that contains references to drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, racism, or gang-affiliation.”

In the past, kids may have had to step over or around a passed-out junkie, while never encountering a “harm reduction” advocate donning hazardous waste gear to clean the park of the hundreds of used needles—and their attendant plastic packaging—that they so freely provide.

Sadly, the litter of illegal drug use is one aspect of SDR Park that hasn’t been entirely rectified, as the dirt embankment abutting Canal Street remains something like a cemetery for the detritus of addiction.

Parks workers already do so much, it’s difficult to blame them for a problem that won’t stop until addicts clean themselves up, or their advocates take the initiative to clean up after them.

By comparison, on a happily temperate morning in March, one is greeted at the southwest entrance to SDR Park by two post-mounted Chinese lanterns, recently installed by the Lower East Side community arts group, FABNYC. Blinking red decorative lights also adorn the black painted iron fence.

A literal sign of rejuvenation, explains their presence. It reads, in English and Chinese: “Lanterns for the Chinese New Year embody the themes of light, hope and togetherness. Illuminations: The Lantern Project carries a wish of peace and prosperity for the Chinatown Community in the year to come. Exploe the Lower East Side and Chinatown!”