Looks like it’s back to the future in Tompkins Square Park.
As The Post reported Friday, the East Village green space has become an encampment for a surging vagrant population.
For longtime New Yorkers, that sparks unhappy memories of the late ’80s and early ’90s, when some 200 mentally ill homeless, drug dealers and rowdy anarchists set up a full shanty town in the same spot, menacing locals and denying them use of the park.
Early efforts to take back the park met with rioting, rock-throwing and arson. Backing the squatters were political activists who argued that enforcing the law was immoral.
Eventually, the city rousted the squatters and remade what had become a field of dirt into today’s more pleasant space.
Yet the squalor to which Tompkins Square Park had descended was a stark symbol of a city that had become menacing and unlivable. That began to change markedly only in the Giuliani years.
And now, slowly but very surely, those days seem to be returning.
In a series of reports last week, The Post detailed the increasingly aggressive homeless population growing in places like the Upper West Side, Washington Square Park and commuter terminals.
Mayor de Blasio on Thursday admitted the situation is “a real concern.” To his credit, he did not side with the self-proclaimed “advocates” who say it’s all about a lack of housing. Rather, he said, “A lot of our street homeless have very serious mental- health issues and substance-abuse issues.”
Indeed, Health Department figures released last month show one in 20 New Yorkers are mentally ill — and 40 percent of them are going untreated.
The mayor promises a “very bold plan” coming from First Lady Chirlane McCray will “treat this situation very differently.”
That’s fine, but the situation needs to be treated not just differently but effectively — before we see more grim reminders of a New York we all hoped was gone for good.