Nowhere is New York’s growing disorder more evident than in the transit system, where commuters routinely confront illegal vendors, “showtime” dancers who promise not to get violent if you pay them and homeless people with their possessions sprawled across multiple seats.
As winter grips the city in its frozen claws, the presence of the homeless has intensified, as any regular subway rider will attest. There are an estimated 2,200 people sleeping in the trains, up substantially from last year. After years of ignoring the problem — and in response to Gov. Cuomo’s promise to hire 500 new MTA cops to deal with disorder underground — Mayor de Blasio has ordered the NYPD to address the issue.
The new Subway Diversion Program assigns cops to target homeless hot spots such as the E train — a favorite among subway sleepers, as it is the only line that never emerges from the tunnels — and terminal stations to try to get these unfortunates the help they need. The program tickets people breaking MTA rules, including taking up multiple seats, but rescinds the citation if the violator, typically known to the officers as a serial offender, goes to an intake center to get an evaluation for services.
The program is a stopgap measure rushed into action at the last possible moment to forestall a total meltdown in the transit system. Add routine farebeating and rising crime, and transit homelessness could crater paying ridership.
But at least the program recognizes the problem and is aiming to do something about it. It’s a carrot-and-stick measure that seeks to get the most stubbornly intractable homeless people — who often have serious mental illness — into the city’s lavishly funded social-service system.
But New York’s elected officials are appalled by any outreach effort that has the hint of pressure. At a City Council oversight hearing last week, Donovan Richards, the chairman of the Public Safety Committee and a leading candidate to become the next Queens borough president, asked, “What homeless person wants help from someone with a gun and handcuffs?”
Referring archly to the fact that the police carry guns is a popular new trope among critics of public-safety policy, as though the threat of extrajudicial death lurks behind the mere presence of every cop. New York’s Finest have millions of interactions a year, and very, very few them involve the use of guns or any force for that matter.
Councilman Steve Levin, chairman of the General Welfare Committee, followed up by criticizing Subway Diversion as a “coercive and dangerously devised policy to move this population from public space and out of sight.” Levin and Richards thus cast as a dystopian scheme an effort to help the city’s most obviously miserable people — as if the NYPD were out to stage “The Handmaid’s Tale” or “A Clockwork Orange” underground. The two men sound more like stoned freshmen than legislators.
Similarly, Councilman Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams co-wrote a letter of condemnation claiming the Diversion program “flies in the face of legislation we passed to combat discriminatory policing.” The program, they say, encourages the “criminalization” and “harassment” of the homeless and encourages cops to lawlessly “profile and target” homeless people.
It isn’t against the law to be homeless. But it is against the law to sleep on the subway, take up multiple seats or refuse to obey a cop’s lawful request. No homeless people are being profiled and harassed for their status; they are being ticketed for a specific violation — and encouraged to get help.
The progressive officials understand all this. Their real demand is more funding to expand the city’s ballooning, multibillion-dollar social-services industry. But spending on homeless services alone has more than doubled under de Blasio, to $2 billion a year. The problem has gotten worse; money isn’t really the issue.
Meanwhile, a dead homeless man covered in bedbugs was found on an uptown D train recently; no one was sure how long he’d been there. So far, no comment from Lander, Williams, Levin or Richards, who in the name of compassion think it’s fine for mentally ill homeless people to live and die on trains.
Seth Barron is associate editor of City Journal.
Twitter: SethBarronNYC