Not even “touristy” NoMad can escape the zombie drug scourge.
Sara Lo, 41, a senior marketing manager who lives on East 27th Street, said the “rampant and open drug use” in her nabe between Broadway & 6th Avenue is so “out of control” that the problem has literally arrived on her front doorstep.
“I came home the other night and there were a few [drug users] on my stoop,” she told The Post. “Twice I had to ask the people who were shooting up to move so I could get into my apartment.”
“They’re taking syringes out and shooting up; smoking from glass pipes, all out in the open,” she added. “They’re not even trying to hide it.”
The blatant drug use has spread fear throughout the building.
When Lo arrived home on a recent Sunday from a three-week trip, she noticed management had installed signs on all the floors and in the lobby warning people, “Do not buzz anyone in!” and urging residents to “install deadbolt locks on your door, guards on the windows.”
“I wondered, am I safe?” said Lo, who has lived in the building since 2017.
Another tenant returned home on Sept. 16 to find four people on the building’s stoop “smoking meth out of crack pipes.”
“There’s a lot of heroin, a lot of people smoking stuff, and it causes a lot of mental stress [for residents and passers-by].” said the 29-year-old tenant, who requested anonymity.
Anthony Chung, 31, manager of Cowboy World Corp, a consumer electronics wholesale distributor three doors down from Lo’s apartment building, said the “terrible” situation has been bad for business.
“When I come here to open up the store, every day, there are needles out here. I can’t have my customers come to see that…It brings my business down,” he said.
“It’s gotten worse” in the past few months, swelling from “two to three people shooting up and causing a ruckus” to around 15, Chung said. “Every day, from morning till afternoon, they’re doing drugs and passing out, causing a mess. They’re using the toilet in the street, taking a dump.”
“Police do nothing about it,” Lo vented on the next door app, adding, “What else can be done?”
Chung said he’s called the cops, but “they say they can’t do nothing. They ask them [homeless junkies] to leave and if they don’t leave they don’t do nothing.”
Ron Curtis, 50, a security guard for a different building on the block, has witnessed the drug use and said last month, he saw an unhinged man with a gun.
“He was going up and down the block and threatening people, ‘If you go call the police on my people again, I’m shooting y’all,'” Curtis said.
Nearby Capitol Plaza Park has been a magnet for homeless people and drug addicts, the frustrated residents said.
Major crimes in the neighborhood’s 13th precinct are up 19 percent from two years ago, NYPD data show.
“It was meant for people to have lunch and work in. It is exclusively for people who use drugs,” the 29-year-old said. “We live in such a nice area, it’s super touristy. I can’t believe it happens on my street.”
“I don’t feel safe,” added Lo. “You never know, if they’re shooting up and they have a bad reaction, they could come for me.”