NYC to Crack Down on Homeless People Living in Subways, Increase Mental Health Services

New York City will seek to make the subways safer by prohibiting the trains from being used as a living space by the homeless, while expanding outreach and services to mentally ill people, city and state officials announced Friday.

“It is cruel and inhumane to allow unhoused people to live on the subway, and unfair to paying passengers and transit workers who deserve a clean, orderly, and safe environment. The days of turning a blind eye to this growing problem are over,” said Mayor Eric Adams, at a press conference at the Fulton Street subway station with Gov. Kathy Hochul, and police, MTA, and health officials.” It will take time, but our work starts now.”

To combat the problem of homeless people spending hours in a subway, under a new “Subway Safety Plan” released Friday, police officers will begin requiring all passengers to leave the train and the station at the end of the line. Officers will also enforce the MTA rules of conduct, such as not allowing people to lie across multiple seats, to try to ensure a more pleasant experience for passengers.

Through February 13, transit crime has jumped more than 60% in the seven major index categories, driven by a more than doubling of robbery and grand larceny.

The plan also calls for addressing homelessness and mental illness by deploying teams of health and law-enforcement officials in high-need locations; expanding a pilot program of having mental-health professionals respond non-violent 911 mental-health calls; the Department of Homeless Services’ offering physical and behavioral health care; creating new drop-in-centers to immediately help homeless people individuals to come indoors, and placing them near major subway stations “to directly transition individuals from trains and platforms to safe spaces.”

The plan also calls on the state government to expand psychiatric bed resources and also expand Kendra’s Law, which allows a judge to mandate treatment for a mentally ill individual.

“For too long our mental health care system suffered from disinvestment, and the pandemic has only made things harder for New Yorkers with serious mental illness who are experiencing homelessness,” said Hochul. “We must work together to keep our subways — the lifeblood of New York City — safe for all riders, and to get help and services to those in need.”

In response to a Hamodia reporter’s question regarding the city in recent years having taken a lenient approach to fare evasion, Adams said he believes there is a connection between enforcing payment of fares and keeping homeless and dangerously mentally ill individuals out of the subway system.

“I think it’s a big mistake not enforcing fare evasion. We saw that during the mid-80’s’s — people didn’t pay their fare, [and] they were participating in criminal behavior,” said the mayor, a former NYPD captain. Not enforcing fare-payment “sends the wrong message,” said the mayor, “and it does not create the environment that we need. And when I meet with the DA’s, I’m going to share that with them.”

—

rborchardt@hamodia.com