A homeless couple is turning the city’s quality-of-life crisis on its head by camping out in a tiny Brooklyn park — and cleaning it up better than the de Blasio administration, neighbors said.
Chris, 57, and Tammy, 54, have been living on a traffic island in the heart of Bay Ridge since falling on hard times and drifting there from Pennsylvania.
“Every time they’re here, they’re sweeping, they’re picking up, because they want to have this clean for everybody, not just themselves,” said Maria LaTourette, 57. “They got rid of the hookers and drug dealers. They got rid of them all. They’re doing more than the city does. The city takes care of everything else except what they’re supposed to be taking care of.”
Shelay Amadou, 39, who lives across the street, said it’s the only park he feels safe in since quality-of-life offenses began surging.
“In the past two years, you see people selling drugs everywhere. My kids are scared,” he said.
“The only park we go to is this park, because Tammy and Chris kicked those people out of there.”
Chris, who grew up in the neighborhood, blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio for not creating jobs.
“I blame all this on Mayor de Blasio. He ain’t doing nothing for the homeless,” he said.
The couple eats soup-kitchen handouts, showers at a drug rehab and uses the bathrooms at a laundry, market and gas station.
But Tammy said their little traffic island is no paradise.
“Everything’s hard when you’re on a bench. You can’t really sleep. Someone could come up on you with a bat or a gun,” she said.
“There are also raccoons and squirrels and rats. There is one squirrel I call ‘Numb Nuts’ because he goes into our things.”
Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain