Encouragement is in order for Mayor Adams as he steps up to the homelessness crisis. He aims to require those with “severe and untreated mental illness” to get treatment. These are the people languishing on our sidewalks and subway benches — sometimes menacing New Yorkers — and contributing to a sense of public disorder. There are competing views on this topic. Yet Hizzoner is showing courage on this front and deserves support.

Mr. Adams’ observation that these New Yorkers “are in urgent need of treatment” even as their illness prevents them “from realizing they need intervention” suggests a return to the wisdom of Mayor Giuliani’s approach. He explained that, in some cases, it’s necessary to “suggest and then, if necessary, exert pressure” on a homeless person suffering from profound mental illness in order “to get appropriate help” to people unable to care for themselves.

Yet Mayor DeBlasio reversed course on Mayor Giuliani’s policy and returned to enabling homelessness. The New York Post calls it “the signature policy failure of the de Blasio administration.” The Democrats now embrace the canard that there is a civil right to live on the streets, as President Obama sought to forbid efforts to clear city streets and parks of vagrant camps. It was, his Justice department averred, the “Criminalization of Homelessness.” 

Contrary to the left’s nonchalance, it is doing the homeless no favors to allow them to live on the streets. As Mr. Giuliani observes, mental illness is often to blame, noting “about 40 percent of homeless have been, according to some studies, described as paranoid schizophrenics.” USA Today finds many are “gripped by schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression.” Homelessness only aggravates these conditions.

Hence the logic of Mr. Adams’ proposal. “If severe mental illness is causing someone to be unsheltered and a danger to themselves,” he says, “we have a moral obligation to help them get the treatment and care they need.” Yet Mr. Adams had hardly finished announcing his shift in policy on homelessness — noting its association with crime — than the usual suspects on the far left chimed in to oppose his plan.

An ex-chief of the New York Civil Liberties Union and an “advocate” for the homeless, Norman Siegel, reckons Mr. Adams’ plan “lacked legal authority.” He asks what makes anyone think that just because “someone smells” or hasn’t “had a shower for weeks” and is “mumbling,” they’re “a danger to themselves or others.” Mr. Siegel is astonished that “they’re going to have the cops, of all people, make those decisions?”

Recall, too, that Mr. Siegel was an active foe of Mayor Koch’s efforts to get the mentally ill homeless New Yorkers the treatment they needed, even before Mr. Giuliani’s efforts on that front. Mr. Siegel even led the charge, in a test case, against hospitalizing a homeless woman. That serves to remind that this is a bipartisan issue, and that Mr. DeBlasio was betraying a liberal New York consensus as much as advancing his own left-wing agenda.

Another “advocacy” group, the Center for Independence of the Disabled, reckons that “involuntary hospitalization” violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. The NYCLU’s Donna Lieberman grouses that Mr. Adams “is playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers,” accusing him of “sweeping deep-seated problems out of public view.” Another critic of involuntary treatment fears “coercion is itself traumatic.”

Putting aside the civil-rights theatrics about requiring treatment for the mentally ill, are there sufficient resources — such as beds in psychiatric hospitals — to ensure the success of Mr. Adams’ program? The ex-NYPD chief, William Bratton, says “maybe a thousand disturbed people” are committing crimes “in a state of millions.” Yet Governor Cuomo, he says, cut “the number of beds so a judge could put” a disturbed “person into custodial care.”

Mr. Bratton laments: “Politicians refuse to expand that” — a reminder that the solutions to homelessness aren’t cheap. As for Mr. Adams’ effort, it comes at a time when other cities are grappling with the same problem. It’s a national story in which the mayor could emerge as a leading figure if he sticks with his plan and it proves a success. In that event, his oft-mocked ambitions for higher office might not prove to be so unrealistic after all.

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Update: this editorial has been expanded from the bulldog.