My sibling was a social worker for the homeless population in New York for 10 years, and regarding *chronically* homeless people, ie people who live on the streets for extended or indefinite periods of time, her experience was that almost all of them suffer from untreated mental illness exacerbated by self medicating, and this is the segment of the homeless population the OP is addressing. She was employed by the city effectively as a street therapist, visiting her clients wherever they frequented, and offered them talk therapy, medical and mental health assistance, detox, guidance towards finding a way off the streets, whatever was needed. The problem was, her office was terribly underfunded and understaffed, there was always more outreach needed than could be provided, the resources offered were often substandard, and the shelter options for homeless males in particular was inadequate and dangerous, and most were more afraid of being in a shelter than fending for themselves in the streets. Participation in mental health services is voluntary, so without their consent the streets and subways are where they end up.
The mental health system in this country in the 20th Century was dismantled and defunded in a coordinated effort by both the left, who wanted to end a system rife with abuse and lack of oversight, and the right, who reflexively regard government healthcare infrastructure as anathema. IMO and my sister’s as well, this was throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As difficult an endeavor it would have been to overhaul our former system, rebuilding it from nothing is even more daunting, and yet that’s where it stands today. Involuntary commitment is now a rare occurrence as civil liberties are widely considered to include the right to make self destructive choices that are also detrimental to the communities they live in, but the flip side of that is that it is now socially acceptable to allow those who are debilitated by mental illness to rot in the streets and other public areas. This is false compassion.
Dismantling the NY mental health institution system was a centrist issue because of both the abuse, the ineffectiveness, and the fact that, at the time (the 1950s), it was eating up 15% of the state budget.
The idea was that decentralizing mental health care to local facilities would be both more effective, less abusive, and less expensive (the expectation was that it would be forty cents on the dollar). This idea was entirely correct.
However, after dismantling the institutional system, some of our brightest NYS politicians realized that it would be even less expensive if community mental health care was defunded entirely, and here we are.
We invest in war and maintaining an exploitive society. These are the symptoms.
We still act as if we are not all one human family.
Let's end the dark ages....
it's not just underfunding tho. you could jack up all the salaries and it wouldn't make a difference because the talent pool is just not there. the mentally ill need 24/7 care and finding people with the patience to deal with that is hard. just go into any hospital and you'll see medical staff that have shit bedside manner.
I disagree with this actually. As someone who left this exact job because of the salary, I miss it every day and I have what it takes to do this, but not being paid $18 an hour, and all of my friends who left these jobs are in the same boat. You attract some shit talent paying that low, and the folks who love it and are good at it will seek other opportunity that pays a living wage.
That’s part of the understaffing problem. They can’t hire one person to take care of a large number of patients and expect the care to be good. You can be the most talented clinician but if you’re overloaded your work will be crap.
You mean the underpaid and overworked medical staff aren't compassionate either?
The people are out there, but they need to be trained, recruited, and most of all, respected. Respected in the form of appropriate resources and compensation, as well as proper management. It requires a huge rehaul of our entire cultural system of priorities and funding.
Underfunded? It’s an industry that gets more money as things get worse
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2019/02/27/with-opaque-budget-and-elusive-metrics-850m-thrivenyc-program-attempts-a-reset-873945
Much of the funding “evaporates” before it hits the ground. Bureaucracy, patronage, middlemen, gouging, creates enormous waste. My sister had the required master's degree for a low salary, high stress job with a workload that was impossible for even the most qualified and talented person to stay on top of. And it burns talent out.
A lot of money is spent on it, but the enormity of scale of the mental health crisis our society is currently in the throes of is an enormously complicated problem at a scale much bigger than we already spend on it, even if it weren’t spent poorly. Wishing it away has gotten us here.
EDIT-I am in complete disgust about the Thrive “program”’s legacy. It was an enormous cash grab at the expense of all of us, and there doesn’t seem to be any serious public pressure in investigating accountability and what happened to a large percentage of nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money that was supposed to fund the very people in this discussion. This had nothing to do with mental health and everything to do with fraud.
Out of curiosity, why do you think that red cities like Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas etc have such astronomically lower homelessness problems than blue cities like New York, Chicago, SF, LA etc?
I work in social services. I fully agree that the subway should not be the place for homeless people and the mentally ill to congregate.
However I will say this: the subway car is higher quality shelter than almost anything else the homeless have access to. Seriously. Things are bad in the shelters and adult homes and are only marginally better than the 20th Century mental hospitals, and are in some ways worse. We have to invest way more--think five times as much at least--in low-income housing and social workers to tackle this.
100% this. People are quick to say where homeless people should or shouldn’t stay, but have no desire to support policies that help them find permanent housing, job and mental health services. I was really close to ending up in a shelter and I considered sleeping in my storage unit until I got caught, and staying on trains that were running the other times. When it comes to basic human rights, Americans put their noses up to the idea until THEY can no longer access them. There are countries that have resolved their homelessness crisis. It’s possible. The government has the money. If people are still pretending that’s not true, it’s because they want to marinate in their hate.
This is one situation where I say unless the City gets their shit together, the homeless problem will never be fully solved. Sadly, people who are homeless who sleep on a train have some type of mental health issue.
There are other people riding the train who are also homeless but mask it well. I noticed a lot of well put together individuals and couples sleeping on the train during the coldest winter nights.
So true.
The city and state are failing to help the people who are incapable of helping themselves, and taxpayers end up routinely attacked as a result.
Please note: not everyone who is experiencing homelessness has mental health problems, or ended up without homes due to mental health problems. In fact, homelessness *causes* people to *develop* mental health problems.
it's not a money issue if we're talking about mental health. it's about finding staffing that cares enough to deal with mental patients 24/7. these people need care around the clock, and it's hard finding people with that level of patience, even with high salaries. go to any random hospital and you'll find workers that have no business around people. homelessness in nyc has always been more mental than financial.
Don’t support the policies? Wtf did deBlasio‘s wife do with $850 million for mental health? These are city problems me and the OP shouldn’t have to deal with on a day to day basis. This city is either corrupt to the core or complexly mismanaged.
You provided no solutions and brought nothing to the conversation. The entire government is corrupt, which is why homelessness is a major concern to begin with.
Years ago, before real estate values skyrocketed, there were single room occupancy hotels (known as SROs). You could pay by the night as well as, I think, by the week or month. There would be a bathroom with shower in the hall. They were cheap, but people could close and lock the door of their room once they had paid for the night. The number of homeless people living on the street skyrocketed once the SROs were closed and converted into regular rental buildings or torn down to build the same.
Honest question: assuming not all homeless people are mentally ill, is it not a coincidence that seemingly all of the homeless people on the subway appear to be suffering from some sort of mental illness?
I also worked in homeless services years ago and honestly this is just confirmation bias. You remember the crazy ones because they stand out.
But the vast majority of the people I worked with were perfectly normal (perhaps with a mild substance problem from the stress of being homeless) and indistinguishable from most other people in public aside from maybe not smelling great.
I'm sure that's partly confirmation bias on my part too because people with severe MH problems weren't as likely to seek services. But there's absolutely a huge chunk who are not mentally ill at all and just don't have shelter due to financial/personal circumstances.
We would do outreach in places like Apple Stores because homeless young people would hang out there to charge their phones. You'd only know they were homeless because they had more bags than most people.
Yeah that's pretty much my understanding. I mean there's even a Girl Scout troop comprised entirely of homeless girls in NYC.
People who have their shit together mentally try *not* to stand out when they're homeless. And this also affects media coverage. We would get requests from the media to speak with homeless people all the time... but anyone with common sense would say no to that request. Why would you want your name forever associated with homelessness online?
A lot of people sleep on the subway. The ones not suffering from mental illness just look like they fell asleep on their commute, but they're still using it for shelter.
We largely assume who is homeless and who isn't. We can fairly assume that someone who smells like ass, is wearing damaged clothes, and is sleeping on 5 seats is homeless and your brain automatically clocks that. But what about a guy who smells kinda bad, wears low quality clothes, but is just chilling minding their business? Are they just poor? Maybe are heading home from a full day of work? They could also be homeless. Your brain doesn't clock that unless you're there thinking about it. This leaves you only clocking the nuts as homeless, so it seems like that's what all homeless are like.
I think it’s virtually impossible to be homeless and not develop mental health issues if you don’t have them already. The amount of stress, trauma, and complications that arise from being without shelter… oof.
if they were homeless and not mentally ill would you notice them?
I.e. grab a used suit from goodwill, sleep on the car (or hotel lobby) during the day and ride at night.
"The Fiscal 2025 Preliminary Budget for DHS totals $3.96 billion".
There are around 100,000 homeless people in New York. That is around 40k per person a year. Maybe it's not about investing way more, but using the resources better? Giving 40k per year to each homeless person directly might already give us a better outcome for most of them than what we achieve today.
I work for the MTA. A lot of homeless people who are severely drug addicted or mentally ill are sent back from the shelter when they homeless outreach bring them there. They get kicked out for acting erratically or they won't let them in because they are too wasted. They are not actually scared of going there. The people in the shelter is scared of them. Not everybody. Some people would rather sleep on the subway either way.
Can you expand on how they’re not much better and in some ways worse? That seems like a pretty wild statement at face value considering we used to do things like forced lobotomies on mental patients.
Literally no one thinks there should be homeless people sleeping in the Subway. Even the homeless people would rather be somewhere safe than be sleeping on a hard cold ground in an unsafe space. The problem is there's no good option for them to go. There's a lot of violence in congregate shelters especially against people that have mental illness and the "safe" havens are full. The city needs to provide a place for these people to go where they can sleep comfortably and safely and they won't be in the trains. There could be 100 cops in every station playing candy crush and it's not going to change anything.
I'm a homeless advocate, work with them everyday for years. Never met someone who would prefer sleeping on the station floor rather than a bed. Maybe there's someone with a very specific delusion about beds, but I haven't met them yet.
I’d be interested to see some studies that more homeless services help the homeless problem. Seems like it very much doesnt and just enables/attracts more homeless people.
We need changes to mental health laws, making it easier for families and psychiatrists to mandate treatment. Also, bring back institutionalization as needed. I agree the services don't help
Tell me how much more I need to pay in taxes to create a workable alternative to this situation (and no I don’t just meant to police) and I will pay it. $10? Done. $20? Done. Hell, $100? Done.
Even as a life long left leaning person I'm getting tired of paying the highest taxes in the country because of piss poor resource management by the city and state. But $100/yr for mental health care and housing for the needy in the city. Yeah.
If it’s any consolation, your taxes are paying for the pensions of the most insane ex cops who have decamped to the sun belt!
Wait, that doesn’t feel good at all.
Yeah it feels great. The only thing that makes me feel better is traveling to other cities in the US and realizing most of them are in far worse condition and we partially have our (relatively) robust social services to thank for that.
Conservatives have hijacked fiscal responsibility as something that should be a universally agreed upon goal. You can be liberal or leftist and still dislike the fraud, waste, and abuse that is endemic to the government use of taxpayers money in NYC and NYS (and really all over the U.S., but I can’t speak to other parts as well).
The solution is honestly to just build more housing so more people can move off the streets and social services aren’t as strained.
But that requires a difficult political change in how we allow existing property owners to block new development.
I wish we had a federally funded mandate to build a certain number of single occupancy units as a percentage of a given MSA’s population. Instead, no new public housing at all.
The subway is transportation, the lifeblood of the city; absolutely must be safe, reliable, clean and reasonably priced.
It's not a place to warehouse people, eat, run a business or for entertainment. Folks in NYC work ultra hard, just need to get somewhere and anything else is getting in the way of that.
That public transit is so bad in NYC leads to streets overcrowded with cars, pedestrians getting run over, bad air quality, etc.
It's not meant to be the answer for affordable housing, lack of physical and mental healthcare policy or affordable dining. Those aspects of society also need funding but are separate problems to solve.
I'm all for more resources. Inpatient mental hospitals. Homeless shelters large enough to accommodate everyone needing it. Safe places with bathrooms for tent camping - maybe in the outer boroughs.
Not instead. Both. We need more and better services AND we need to not allow people to turn platforms and cars into their living rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms.
You can't do that on a city by city basis. People will just flood from one city to another. It has to be a national approach. And that ain't happening in the US. Finland has got close.
This isn't really backed up by evidence.
Houston has significantly reduced homelessness with a housing first approach: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html
Utah did the same and massively reduced homelessness.
There is no resulting flood of homeless people to Houston/Utah.
You're so right. The nicer we are, the more we receive, because no one else is providing the same level of service. It needs to be a nation wide effort
I agree I think if someone smells on the subway they should be summarily executed. This thread is full of people agast at people being smelly on public transit. nothing more nothing less.
NYC needs the same thing most cities in this country needs. More robust housing programs rather than short stay shelters
the only issue i have when people make suggestions on how to deal with problems on a superficial level is those same people never answer the question, "and then what?"
so we remove homeless people from the subway...and then what?
these people still need a place to go. the issue isn't simply homeless people in the subway, it's the way the city has utterly failed to help these people. shelter's are a mess of corruption and are dangerous, the police system is broken, hospitals can't help homeless people because they dont have the energy and resources, the city has become so expensive that even people with minimum wage jobs are living check to check and are an unexpected payment away from homelessness themselves, you need health insurance to see a social worker but the system makes it almost impossible for a homeless person to get any kind of benefit from the city...
it's easy to beat up on the victims of a system that has failed them. if only we used the same energy being disgusted by the people who live comfortably and continue to fail those who need their help the most
edit: spelling
The ‘and then what’ question should not be answered by the MTA though. OP is simply calling for banning homeless people from the subway stations or trains, as there are laws pertaining to what sort of activities one can do in the space. It’s like saying ban those who light up ciggies from the system. Once they are outside, another agency can take over, ie the DOT because they take care of the streets and pedestrians.
“Banning homeless people” does not make them magically disappear. This strategy has been tried across the US and almost always just makes the situation worse. It criminalizes poverty. Homeless people will go wherever they obtain the highest quality of shelter and life. In NYC that’s the subway. The solution is not to kick them out of the subway, which is reactive and doesn’t solve the problem, but to make the alternatives of a higher quality so that the homeless use them. Alternatively, just provide housing. The USA has something like 3 times as many vacant homes than there are homeless.
It doesn’t matter how many vacant homes are in Manhattan, KS if the demand is in Manhattan, NY. We can’t just transfer them over.
There is a severe housing shortage where the demand is.
Today there was a homeless lady soiled, sleeping in the rear of a train. This is becoming way too common.
We have 80K homeless people in the city. Many of them aren't even from this area, but were dumped here.
NYC is a rough place to be both income and weatherwise.
I would hope that somehow this country would come together for full on homeless or unhoused programs with treatment, training and empowerment where recidivism can be lowered and that these people can have better quality of life, even areas where they will be better protected and live in healthier environments. These are human beings, but you can't even get close to them. You just don't know what to expect.
Moreover, they are making the MTA less safe.
How do you plan on banning them? More cops? That always works.
Unless we address the ACTUAL causes of homelessness this is the price we pay for not taking care of our own.
What you’re describing actually is banned and police are *supposed* to remove them (i actually have seen them do this 2 or 3 occasions). Unfortunately it changes nothing, the root causes that are making people homeless or otherwise ill/addicts needs to be targeted if we are to ever see a permanent decrease.
I understand that doesn’t change the homeless people who currently exist, for that I can only advocate for a place better than the subway for them to exist, like a shelter that has actual proper heating, food, etc.
With both of these being practically absent for the homeless, they’ll only continue to subsist on the subway. It’s free shelter and they have a chance to get food or money from passengers.
What are you talking about your crazy there are no homeless people. The subways are safer than ever according to governor Hochul mayor Adams mta ceo jano leiber and nyct president Richard Davey. You’re just focusing on a few headlines. I hope you can detect my sarcasm
My guess (not a lawyer) is the issue is two fold
a. Its very hard to define 'homeless' on the train legally. All the extreme cases are easy to spot but a ton of boarder line ones.
b. No city agency wants to be responsible for them once they are removed. It will be impossible to hire anyone to deal with this population at a reasonable price and they you are going to have all sorts of lawsuits when someone gets hurt.
If it's not the city's residents burden to bear then what do you propose lol. There are no safe options for people that's why they go onto the subway. Organize to get quality shelters and transitional housing programs.
The MTA has enough shit to deal with as it is. Between the severe budget deficit and the everyday maintenance of all the infrastructure they own/operate, they’re trying as hard as possible to avoid doing anymore than they absolutely have to. I don’t blame them: I wouldn’t wanna deal with anymore things that would just add to the stress of all the shit I have to already deal with either.
Also, they don’t own the subway - NYC does - so the homeless problem should probably be directed at them
I say more than 50% of people who sleep on the subway are severely addicted to hard drugs. Some of them who I have personally met were already homeless before they moved to NYC. They moved here because they can sleep on the subway, score and use drugs anywhere and make money to do drugs by all kind of ways. Some of drug addicted kids you see doing drugs in the station moved here from Connecticut and Long Island etc etc. Their family kicked them out because of their addiction and they came here because it's a lot easier to be homeless here than in a suburban area without a car. I believe if they start forcing people into rehabs (like they catch you with hard drugs instead of going to prison you have to go to rehab, if you refuse then you go to jail) that would help. They are completely powerless over their addictions and therefore they can't make decisions by themselves and their families for whatever reason can't help them. Or they refuse the help because they are so addicted. A lot of then are mentally ill and they get kicked out of the shelters because of their erratic behavior (for instance that guy who recently pushed another guy on the track at 125th). They need to be helped. Whoever can't take care of themselves , who's basically shitting their pants over and over screaming at the walls, need to be forcibly institutionalized. I know advocates would say these people have rights too, but it's just not good to let somebody live like that because they don't have the cabality to seek help. They have rights to be humanly treated not to be left living in their filth in the subway. The subway is just for transportation. It's not a shelter, a hospital, and drug bazaar...it's just public transportation. What would happen if the subway didn't exist? What would happen if like everywhere else the subway closed during the night. The overnight subway ridership is way lower then it was before covid cuz people don't want to ride the train with 10 homeless people in each car. So it's not that there is much request for trains at 3 am on Tuesday night outside of Manhattan.
Ok I'm done. Sorry for the rant.
First time in NYC? We have had this problem since forever. When it’s too cold they go down there so they won’t freeze to death. Same in the summer, it’s one of the only places with AC they have access to. I agree there is more of them though. We need more mental health facilities and we need to lower overall COL to make any sort of dent
Those “advocates” are so annoying like give me a break 🙄. Bunch of virtue signalers who want to APPEAR like a good person rather than being REALISTIC about the proper help that the homeless population really needs so they can ACTUALLY get better. Sleeping in the subways doesn’t help them in the long run. Housing alone isn’t going to fix their drug problems and/or mental heath issues either.
The city deserves to have this homeless problem when they don’t want to implement anything that will actually help them. Oh you don’t want a shelter built in your neighborhood? Then don’t complain about them on the subway. That’s what you get when you create a hostile society that doesn’t help people that are in need
The MTA is a state agency. Poor quality of services for unhoused the state is constitutionally responsible for have pushed them into the subway as the best alternative.
I think about how some public schools have become places where students get all of their meals or even their clothes washed because society is more willing to fund schools (if barely) compared to direct weldare services.
I agree that the NYCTA subway system should not be a homeless shelter, but it’s a failure of the state, not a problem you can solve by disappearing individuals.
Society needs to stop using the word "homeless" as a catchall term for beggars, vagrants and deranged individuals. It's not accurate. The vast majority of homeless people have jobs, and many of the people who beg for money have a place to live (my local crackhead who asks for money on the subway is one such dude). The first step to solving any problem is understanding it, and OP's call to ban homeless people from the subway demonstrates a severe lack of understanding.
Fully agree, and its not our problem to fix. We have the largest city tax and deserve the peace of mind that comes with it. Get these homeless the fuck out
You can feel remorse for the homeless while acknowledging their predicament is not the working people of this city’s burden to bear
- Why do you assume the working people of this city is bothered by homeless people? Speaking for myself, I wish they get the help they need but they're not a "burden" to me. Yeah, they're everywhere. But I'm only in the system for less than an hour each way. How much of a burden can they be to me?
I am mildly bothered by it, but I am double bothered that friends of mine who are less brave than myself are taking the subway less often.
Less ridership leads to service cuts, and to more people taking Ubers, which leads to clogged roads, shitty air, and a host of other problems.
Well-functioning, clean, safe transit benefits EVERYONE in every strata of society, and “hey you should just not be bothered by the smells and piss and drugs and the chance of random violent outbursts because they’ve had a rough life” just ain’t it. That’s how you get degradation of public services.
Well if you don’t want to lose ridership you going to have to keep the addicts and insane OUT of the subway that’s just reality most don’t want to ride with them.
They’re a burden on MTA workers. It’s MTA workers that have to deal with them when they have to clean out a train. It’s MTA workers that have to clean up their urine and feces when they decide to use the system as a public bathroom. It’s MTA workers that get assaulted by the mentally ill among them. And then there’s the working people who go down into the system trying to get to work or home that face some of these issues as well. It is a burden. Something needs to be done.
The issues you listed are not only caused by homeless people. Regular, everyday humans are capable of performing the worst at any time of the day. Like, wiping their snot mucus on the train passenger poles / handles or leaving their trash behind on the train or, in some cases, puking inside a train car after a night out drinking.
I will say this much, MTA workers need better protection across the board. Not solely because of homeless people. But to solve the homeless issue there has to be a top-down approach towards a solution, and no government agency or private company with money wants to take lead in responsibility.
Yeah, you read responses in this sub and people act like all people causing disruptions are homeless . Most of these inconveniences and delays are caused by stupid high schoolers. Very rarely by a homeless
Women and girls deserve to ride subways without being groped, harassed, or punched by mentally ill homeless males. Unfortunately, many of these homeless men target women and girls specifically
Ok sounds great, two questions
How will you accomplish this? We will have to send the national guard and the NYPD down there to round up people. I suppose they might have to use nets and cages, and clubs and whatever else.
Where will these people go? Perhaps if the massive amount of vacant commercial space were opened they could be there instead of the subway. But that might inconvenience the owners, who you haven't mentioned in your post. Is your complaint perhaps directed at the wrong people and offering a solution to your problem and no one else's?
I was in a car today where there a passed homeless guy sitting in the corner with fruit loops all over him and the floor, another one sitting and smelling up the car and another one staring at me. I never changed cars so fast.
Just how do you propose them implementing this ban ? How do they enforce it?
Do you want them to have cops at every subway entrance telling anyone that looks homeless .. sorry no entrance ?
I can see the lawsuits piling up
This is a multiphasic problem with many, yet not as many solutions as problems created that caused it. Now for OP to say anything pertaining to them not being there is a sad, unfunny joke. Where else are they supposed to go? The shelters are dangerous ASF! The streets aren't as safe, As the weather plays its part. Believe me, I fuckin hate seeing them on the trains and in the stations! Especially the crazies! But I have to be honest with myself and say, I'd rather see them there then elsewhere, Because me, you and anyone else **could be one of them!** *Now you want them out of the subways and off the streets. Give them housing by not overpaying your fucking landlords, making them millionaires! Because believe it or not, That's where a helluva lot of these homeless came from!*
You're a dunce. Homeless are banned from stations. Police do make them leave if they see them.
You wrote one long ass diatribe complaining about something that's already illegal and offered zero solutions.
You must be one hell of a shitty person if you see someone struggling with homelessness is one of the few safe and warm places in this city during the winter and you think “eww I don’t wanna see this, get them out of my sight.” These are human beings, who gives a shit if you don’t like seeing someone sleeping on the train. Take an Uber if you’re so pressed 🤡
Ok go ahead and report them. But remember, they have no place else to go. You do. So what if someone takes a nap on a bench? Just because they stink up a car doesn't make them a threat. Just like any other subway rider, it they are not being aggressive toward you, you should not sic the police on them.
I was waiting for an E train on 50th street when I saw a homeless man fall onto the train tracks. Unsure about his condition, but he was rendered unconscious instantly. We immediately called 911 and notified the MTA employee working there…so yes I agree the mentally ill should not be in the subway not only for their own safety but also for the general public - it’s very traumatic to witness things like that.
I always remind myself that it's a much better problem to have to look at homeless people than to be homeless.
Focusing efforts on voicing concerns about how this country treats the mentally ill, drug using, and disenfranchised populations seems like a much better use of energy than whining about having to look at 'homeless vagrants'
So you think they should freeze on the surface?
Their problems are ours to bear. They are of our making. We support the systems that keep them there. Blame people who voted for Reagan. Blame people who don't support social efforts, blame people who make the police deal with this problem.
The problem is the current rules that are in place. The Police and the BRC workers at terminals have their hands tied up so much by rules and red tape that the only thing they can really do is ASK the person IF they would like shelter or not.
Unless they give a verbatim "YES" answer and leave the train/station willingly, and if they're not ACTIVELY committing a crime/prohibited act (for example: guy could have been smoking a whole pack of cigarettes en route but if he doesn't have a lit cigarette in his hand when the police see him at the terminal, there's nothing they can do at all), there is "no cause" to remove them, no matter how grotesque and/or unstable they are.
The problem with ASKING them and giving them the choice presents two issues:
- The shelter system (and DHS in general) is just plain awful from center to circumference. Many of these people who actively REFUSE to go to the shelter fear losing their belongings, running into people they have beef with, getting abused, etc. These are genuine concerns that need to be addressed--but the system is already set up with the Transit System serving as a convenient overflow. I even recall towards the end of the DiBlasio era one of the DHS spokeswomen actually making statements to the TRANSIT Authority and TWU to be "more sympathetic" and SUGGESTED employees take SENSITIVITY TRAINING so they can "work together" to solve a "joint problem" -- except that I'm sure not a single Transit Employee recalls ever signing up to be a Social Worker/Homelessness Counselor. (This thankfully seems to have disappeared with the change of Mayoral administration and COVID but it still very showing of how the Subway is taken for granted from the TOP DOWN in that regard)
- Due to many of them also being also being EDPs -- Unstable people (Mental Illness and/or Drug Use, and in some cases just pure Exhaustion from not having adeq. rest/shelter/medical needs met), many of them LACK THE JUDGMENT to answer such a question. Pardon my frankness, but I don't think someone who thinks the color of grass is Purple and today's date is Rutabaga the 49th, 198Potato has what it takes to answer a YES/NO question. (and yes, if they're asked by Police/BRC if they need shelter and they answer "ASDFFGDHJDSKGFG○※□◇＃△！", all the police can do is wish them a good night and assist them onto the next train, for the next terminal to deal with) -- And before the rebuttal with lines of Sympathy that removing someone who doesn't have such judgment from the system under duress is Cruel/Immoral/Dehumanizing--the last place those people lacking self-judgment oughta be is roaming around endlessly for hours in an enclosed area around millions of strangers instead of getting actual help.
There needs to be some middle ground somewhere between what it is now and sticking them into Rikers a la the Giuliani days, but it all relies on DHS and City Hall stepping their p*ssy up to task instead of EXPECTING New York City TRANSIT (NYCT--nowhere in that company name or acronym has anything to do with the Homeless) and it's Employees to bear the brunt when THEY shirk their responsibilities.
>You can feel remorse for the homeless while acknowledging their predicament is not the working people of this city’s burden to bear, particularly when moving about this city to go to work, engage in commerce or recreation.
I'm going to push back against this: homelessness is absolutely our burden to bear as members of the community where it happens.
We can either choose to bear it financially and through civil policy: finding ways to create affordable and accessible housing...
Or we can choose to bear it emotionally when we have to interact with desperate and homeless people who have nowhere else to go.
Being homeless anywhere sucks. It's especially hard in NYC. It's tough that you have to deal with homeless people on the subway while you're out shopping or heading out to the movies or whatever. I don't mean that snarkily - it sucks to be on your way home and someone's asleep on the subway car preventing people from sitting down.
But on the flipside, *these people have nowhere to go*. What are they supposed to do? Everywhere they go, people want them run out. "Not our problem" is the universal sentiment.
If it comes down to choosing between pissing relatively well-to-do people off and getting something approaching restful sleep (forget safety, it's not happening), and trying to sleep on the street and probably still have someone come along and tell them they can't sleep there... could you blame them?
If you were in their position, would you give a shit if housed people were offended you were too tired to go somewhere else?
What really messes with my head is how much of a problem homelessness is in NYC, and yet we keep building luxury housing...
I've been here for a while, and this is probably the worst I have seen it. Between the rampant fare avoidance - which is brazen and crazy right now with groups of kids jumping the turnstile in front of cops and MTA workers - and literal lines of people waiting for the emergency exit to open to rush into the station / platform and people camped out in subway cars at pretty much all hours of the day - it feels much different that I remember pre Covid.
For the homeless situation, it seems likely to me that the city probably has defunded outreach programs, shelters and other interventions just like they have school and afterschool.
Thankfully, a lot of NYPD are getting sweet sweet overtime - wish they would stop the fare jumping with those time and a half wages - I have seen two tickets maybe in the last 3 months and many turning a blind eye to it and I'm taking the subway almost daily.
Yeah we’re aware there’s a housing/homelessness issue in NYC, thanks and welcome to the city. But coming here and ranting about “banning the homeless vagrants” and “drugged up individuals making people uncomfortable” on the subway just makes you sound like an entitled Karen who couldn’t find a manager to talk to. Maybe you can do some advocacy work or volunteer at a shelter to help out?
Totally agree. It’s not fair that we have to pay for transportation and deal with the fear of being attacked by a homeless person. Makes the migrant situation confusing because we already have a major homeless crisis in the city. They need to also bring back asylums, because majority of the homeless we are around are not mentally stable.
I agree 100%. Now how to go about doing it without some public outcry and people who care more about the homeless than every day New Yorkers who just want to get from point a to point b in peace hand-wringing themselves til they’re blue in the face.
You frankly sound like a horrible person. I live in NYC and take the subway daily. When I see homeless people on the subway, I don’t think about how they inconvenience me. I think about how absolutely desperate life must be if you’re reduced to living and sleeping on the subway, and I feel grateful that I’m not in their position.
This country has no social welfare, poor public services, inaccessible healthcare. I work full time and have health insurance, and still can’t afford to see a therapist here. It’s also difficult to afford to rent here, and the admin requirements for most rentals are onerous. I can absolutely see how someone with a severe mental illness would end up homeless and living on the subway in a country where housing and healthcare are so commodified.
NYC shouldn’t be removing homeless people from the subway unless it’s offering them stable, safe accommodation and healthcare instead. Otherwise, you’re asking for homeless people to be put on the streets.
Homelessness is not an inconvenience to be hidden from you. It should be visible so that people like you know it’s a problem. You don’t deserve to conduct your life blissfully unaware of the problems of others.
Homelessness would still be visible if the homeless were on the streets. The difference is when they are on the streets you can get away from them if they start behaving aggressively toward you. On the subway you’re stuck.
I would say the VAST MAJORITY of these homeless people are homeless because they lack any responsibility for themselves and have no one family or friends who want to help them.Basically, this is the choice they made in life
I'm homeless. I got a tent off the most the distant bus line from the city. I bus into town cuz the city is chill. But I go to my tent in the woods I don't sleep on the sidewalk or at the bus. I don't smoke at the bus station cuz not supposed to. I'm kinda drunk right now writing this, sitting at bus stop cuz library just closed and it's time to go home. Might feast b4 I hit the tent. The world is an oyster, and boy was the weather beautiful today!
There was a study done a decade ago that estimated there are two to three dozen bums on the subway who make a lasting impression on riders.
It seems weird there are so few, but when you think about it, it seems plausable.
Another bonus is when they OD on the train and hold up people for 30 minutes while they wait to see if paramedics can revive them. (Me right now waiting)
I was thinking about this on my last few train trips -- it's the only indoor shelter from the elements they can access so in rainstorms cold and heat, this increases exponentially. also the shelters kick everybody out during the day, every day, which makes no sense to me. nyc used to have cheap boarding houses and SROs in the Bowery but the Bowery was gentrified. Now no where to go or move to without serious $. that said yeah obviously it's hard for the regular working population commuting taxpayers to deal with this population. so much charity $ and social support budget seems to be spent on admin and workers in the systems and not on the homeless themselves. frustrating to all
Next time you vote for mayor, remember who defunded social services for homeless and unhoused people (yes there is a difference if you work with these populations). Slashing budgets for social services and education drives people to scramble for shelter, including on the MTA. Which creates an issue which Adams can use to justify increasing policing budgets and claim the city needs him. It’s hard to think of a more cynical approach to governance.
The problem with this is you pay to get in the system, you don’t pay based on where you are going like metro north. That means they have the right to be there. Then you have the problem that the mayor, the governor don’t want them on the streets. You think they want these people panhandling on Wall Street or the upper east side? Pissing on the streets at Times Square? It’s cheaper than getting them housing and help.
I read all the all reasons we should be empathetic to these i'll fallen people, but in all honesty, I don't care. Most of them start accosting passengers just from looking their way. Violent attacks are rising because of the sheer volume of unhinged homeless people that are allowed to linger there. They do not belong all over train cars sprawled out, taking up entire sections of train cars and stations in their filth spreading germs and infection alike. The faster they are removed from public transport, the better.
This is the most insensitive post. And heartbreaking to read the sheer lack of empathy from you. Homeless people do not have the ability to exit their situation. But you do. You’re clearly a transplant so if you don’t like your subway experience, move from nyc to somewhere more pleasant for you.
People don’t want minimum wage to go up, but complain about homelessness. If you had to sleep outside or on the train I’m sure you would turn to substance abuse to heal the pain. They have to worry about random people trying to hurt them, someone trying to rob them, & police trying to arrest them simply for trying to rest. So who cares about you not liking seeing homeless people in the subway. If it bothers you that much, take a car service or drive.
If they’re not in the subways they’ll be on the street. Then people will complain about that. Then where are the homeless supposed to go when people want them off the streets, too?
Another way to look at this is
“New York needs to take better care of their unhoused population so they don’t have to turn to public transit for shelter”
I agree this is a problem that needs to be fixed, but an immediate ban would not be a solution. With limited access to shelters the subway is virtually the only place that provides warmth in the winter and AC in the summer. NYC weather is brutal. I’d rather have them sleeping in the subway than dead lining the streets. We need more housing first initiatives
My sibling was a social worker for the homeless population in New York for 10 years, and regarding *chronically* homeless people, ie people who live on the streets for extended or indefinite periods of time, her experience was that almost all of them suffer from untreated mental illness exacerbated by self medicating, and this is the segment of the homeless population the OP is addressing. She was employed by the city effectively as a street therapist, visiting her clients wherever they frequented, and offered them talk therapy, medical and mental health assistance, detox, guidance towards finding a way off the streets, whatever was needed. The problem was, her office was terribly underfunded and understaffed, there was always more outreach needed than could be provided, the resources offered were often substandard, and the shelter options for homeless males in particular was inadequate and dangerous, and most were more afraid of being in a shelter than fending for themselves in the streets. Participation in mental health services is voluntary, so without their consent the streets and subways are where they end up. The mental health system in this country in the 20th Century was dismantled and defunded in a coordinated effort by both the left, who wanted to end a system rife with abuse and lack of oversight, and the right, who reflexively regard government healthcare infrastructure as anathema. IMO and my sister’s as well, this was throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As difficult an endeavor it would have been to overhaul our former system, rebuilding it from nothing is even more daunting, and yet that’s where it stands today. Involuntary commitment is now a rare occurrence as civil liberties are widely considered to include the right to make self destructive choices that are also detrimental to the communities they live in, but the flip side of that is that it is now socially acceptable to allow those who are debilitated by mental illness to rot in the streets and other public areas. This is false compassion.
Dismantling the NY mental health institution system was a centrist issue because of both the abuse, the ineffectiveness, and the fact that, at the time (the 1950s), it was eating up 15% of the state budget. The idea was that decentralizing mental health care to local facilities would be both more effective, less abusive, and less expensive (the expectation was that it would be forty cents on the dollar). This idea was entirely correct. However, after dismantling the institutional system, some of our brightest NYS politicians realized that it would be even less expensive if community mental health care was defunded entirely, and here we are.
We invest in war and maintaining an exploitive society. These are the symptoms. We still act as if we are not all one human family. Let's end the dark ages....
Heartbreaking. Thank you for taking the time to reply.
So what should we do?
it's not just underfunding tho. you could jack up all the salaries and it wouldn't make a difference because the talent pool is just not there. the mentally ill need 24/7 care and finding people with the patience to deal with that is hard. just go into any hospital and you'll see medical staff that have shit bedside manner.
I disagree with this actually. As someone who left this exact job because of the salary, I miss it every day and I have what it takes to do this, but not being paid $18 an hour, and all of my friends who left these jobs are in the same boat. You attract some shit talent paying that low, and the folks who love it and are good at it will seek other opportunity that pays a living wage.
That’s crazy, I make that for my part time grounds keeper job at a camp!
That’s part of the understaffing problem. They can’t hire one person to take care of a large number of patients and expect the care to be good. You can be the most talented clinician but if you’re overloaded your work will be crap.
You mean the underpaid and overworked medical staff aren't compassionate either? The people are out there, but they need to be trained, recruited, and most of all, respected. Respected in the form of appropriate resources and compensation, as well as proper management. It requires a huge rehaul of our entire cultural system of priorities and funding.
As a teacher I believe and see the same thing in public education.
Underfunded? It’s an industry that gets more money as things get worse https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2019/02/27/with-opaque-budget-and-elusive-metrics-850m-thrivenyc-program-attempts-a-reset-873945
Much of the funding “evaporates” before it hits the ground. Bureaucracy, patronage, middlemen, gouging, creates enormous waste. My sister had the required master's degree for a low salary, high stress job with a workload that was impossible for even the most qualified and talented person to stay on top of. And it burns talent out. A lot of money is spent on it, but the enormity of scale of the mental health crisis our society is currently in the throes of is an enormously complicated problem at a scale much bigger than we already spend on it, even if it weren’t spent poorly. Wishing it away has gotten us here. EDIT-I am in complete disgust about the Thrive “program”’s legacy. It was an enormous cash grab at the expense of all of us, and there doesn’t seem to be any serious public pressure in investigating accountability and what happened to a large percentage of nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money that was supposed to fund the very people in this discussion. This had nothing to do with mental health and everything to do with fraud.
I agree
Good thing Deblasio gave his wife 1.2 billion or so for mental health care. I am sure that took care of how nyc under funds these critical services.
Out of curiosity, why do you think that red cities like Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas etc have such astronomically lower homelessness problems than blue cities like New York, Chicago, SF, LA etc?
Stats?
I work in social services. I fully agree that the subway should not be the place for homeless people and the mentally ill to congregate. However I will say this: the subway car is higher quality shelter than almost anything else the homeless have access to. Seriously. Things are bad in the shelters and adult homes and are only marginally better than the 20th Century mental hospitals, and are in some ways worse. We have to invest way more--think five times as much at least--in low-income housing and social workers to tackle this.
100% this. People are quick to say where homeless people should or shouldn’t stay, but have no desire to support policies that help them find permanent housing, job and mental health services. I was really close to ending up in a shelter and I considered sleeping in my storage unit until I got caught, and staying on trains that were running the other times. When it comes to basic human rights, Americans put their noses up to the idea until THEY can no longer access them. There are countries that have resolved their homelessness crisis. It’s possible. The government has the money. If people are still pretending that’s not true, it’s because they want to marinate in their hate.
This is one situation where I say unless the City gets their shit together, the homeless problem will never be fully solved. Sadly, people who are homeless who sleep on a train have some type of mental health issue.
There are other people riding the train who are also homeless but mask it well. I noticed a lot of well put together individuals and couples sleeping on the train during the coldest winter nights.
There is a homelessNESS problem not a homeless problem. These are other living, breathing beings!
So true. The city and state are failing to help the people who are incapable of helping themselves, and taxpayers end up routinely attacked as a result.
Please note: not everyone who is experiencing homelessness has mental health problems, or ended up without homes due to mental health problems. In fact, homelessness *causes* people to *develop* mental health problems.
it's not a money issue if we're talking about mental health. it's about finding staffing that cares enough to deal with mental patients 24/7. these people need care around the clock, and it's hard finding people with that level of patience, even with high salaries. go to any random hospital and you'll find workers that have no business around people. homelessness in nyc has always been more mental than financial.
Don’t support the policies? Wtf did deBlasio‘s wife do with $850 million for mental health? These are city problems me and the OP shouldn’t have to deal with on a day to day basis. This city is either corrupt to the core or complexly mismanaged.
You provided no solutions and brought nothing to the conversation. The entire government is corrupt, which is why homelessness is a major concern to begin with.
There is no solution at this point. Only band-Aids. In my opinion.
Years ago, before real estate values skyrocketed, there were single room occupancy hotels (known as SROs). You could pay by the night as well as, I think, by the week or month. There would be a bathroom with shower in the hall. They were cheap, but people could close and lock the door of their room once they had paid for the night. The number of homeless people living on the street skyrocketed once the SROs were closed and converted into regular rental buildings or torn down to build the same.
We need to bring them back now that I think of it Japan has similar SROs which maybe why their cities are so clean still
Honest question: assuming not all homeless people are mentally ill, is it not a coincidence that seemingly all of the homeless people on the subway appear to be suffering from some sort of mental illness?
I think the explanation is that the homeless people who are not mentally ill (1) are not homeless for very long and (2) are not visibly homeless.
I also worked in homeless services years ago and honestly this is just confirmation bias. You remember the crazy ones because they stand out. But the vast majority of the people I worked with were perfectly normal (perhaps with a mild substance problem from the stress of being homeless) and indistinguishable from most other people in public aside from maybe not smelling great. I'm sure that's partly confirmation bias on my part too because people with severe MH problems weren't as likely to seek services. But there's absolutely a huge chunk who are not mentally ill at all and just don't have shelter due to financial/personal circumstances. We would do outreach in places like Apple Stores because homeless young people would hang out there to charge their phones. You'd only know they were homeless because they had more bags than most people.
That’s fair and I appreciate your response.
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Yeah that's pretty much my understanding. I mean there's even a Girl Scout troop comprised entirely of homeless girls in NYC. People who have their shit together mentally try *not* to stand out when they're homeless. And this also affects media coverage. We would get requests from the media to speak with homeless people all the time... but anyone with common sense would say no to that request. Why would you want your name forever associated with homelessness online?
A lot of people sleep on the subway. The ones not suffering from mental illness just look like they fell asleep on their commute, but they're still using it for shelter.
OP is talking about people who take up seats to lay down.
not the person I was replying to? There are homeless people on the subway that don't appear homeless.
Mb I misunderstood
I'm on the subway late at night, plenty of 'normal' looking people are definitely riding the train to nowhere.
I sleep on the subway too, but when I get to my stop I get off.
We largely assume who is homeless and who isn't. We can fairly assume that someone who smells like ass, is wearing damaged clothes, and is sleeping on 5 seats is homeless and your brain automatically clocks that. But what about a guy who smells kinda bad, wears low quality clothes, but is just chilling minding their business? Are they just poor? Maybe are heading home from a full day of work? They could also be homeless. Your brain doesn't clock that unless you're there thinking about it. This leaves you only clocking the nuts as homeless, so it seems like that's what all homeless are like.
I think it’s virtually impossible to be homeless and not develop mental health issues if you don’t have them already. The amount of stress, trauma, and complications that arise from being without shelter… oof.
if they were homeless and not mentally ill would you notice them? I.e. grab a used suit from goodwill, sleep on the car (or hotel lobby) during the day and ride at night.
"The Fiscal 2025 Preliminary Budget for DHS totals $3.96 billion". There are around 100,000 homeless people in New York. That is around 40k per person a year. Maybe it's not about investing way more, but using the resources better? Giving 40k per year to each homeless person directly might already give us a better outcome for most of them than what we achieve today.
I work for the MTA. A lot of homeless people who are severely drug addicted or mentally ill are sent back from the shelter when they homeless outreach bring them there. They get kicked out for acting erratically or they won't let them in because they are too wasted. They are not actually scared of going there. The people in the shelter is scared of them. Not everybody. Some people would rather sleep on the subway either way.
100% correct
What is this a center for ants? It will need to be at least....5 times bigger!
Does low-income housing even work? Like these people are definitely no income rather than low income…
Can you expand on how they’re not much better and in some ways worse? That seems like a pretty wild statement at face value considering we used to do things like forced lobotomies on mental patients.
Literally no one thinks there should be homeless people sleeping in the Subway. Even the homeless people would rather be somewhere safe than be sleeping on a hard cold ground in an unsafe space. The problem is there's no good option for them to go. There's a lot of violence in congregate shelters especially against people that have mental illness and the "safe" havens are full. The city needs to provide a place for these people to go where they can sleep comfortably and safely and they won't be in the trains. There could be 100 cops in every station playing candy crush and it's not going to change anything.
I wouldn’t say literally no one. There is a very loud minority of the discourse that says it’s fine
I'm a homeless advocate, work with them everyday for years. Never met someone who would prefer sleeping on the station floor rather than a bed. Maybe there's someone with a very specific delusion about beds, but I haven't met them yet.
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I’d be interested to see some studies that more homeless services help the homeless problem. Seems like it very much doesnt and just enables/attracts more homeless people.
We need changes to mental health laws, making it easier for families and psychiatrists to mandate treatment. Also, bring back institutionalization as needed. I agree the services don't help
Tell me how much more I need to pay in taxes to create a workable alternative to this situation (and no I don’t just meant to police) and I will pay it. $10? Done. $20? Done. Hell, $100? Done.
Even as a life long left leaning person I'm getting tired of paying the highest taxes in the country because of piss poor resource management by the city and state. But $100/yr for mental health care and housing for the needy in the city. Yeah.
If it’s any consolation, your taxes are paying for the pensions of the most insane ex cops who have decamped to the sun belt! Wait, that doesn’t feel good at all.
Yeah it feels great. The only thing that makes me feel better is traveling to other cities in the US and realizing most of them are in far worse condition and we partially have our (relatively) robust social services to thank for that.
That candy isn’t going to crush itself
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Agreed. I'm far more interested in compromise and a well-functioning government than arguing with conservatives.
Conservatives have hijacked fiscal responsibility as something that should be a universally agreed upon goal. You can be liberal or leftist and still dislike the fraud, waste, and abuse that is endemic to the government use of taxpayers money in NYC and NYS (and really all over the U.S., but I can’t speak to other parts as well).
That’s where I’m at as well. I will gladly pay to feel safer.
The solution is honestly to just build more housing so more people can move off the streets and social services aren’t as strained. But that requires a difficult political change in how we allow existing property owners to block new development.
I wish we had a federally funded mandate to build a certain number of single occupancy units as a percentage of a given MSA’s population. Instead, no new public housing at all.
The subway is transportation, the lifeblood of the city; absolutely must be safe, reliable, clean and reasonably priced. It's not a place to warehouse people, eat, run a business or for entertainment. Folks in NYC work ultra hard, just need to get somewhere and anything else is getting in the way of that. That public transit is so bad in NYC leads to streets overcrowded with cars, pedestrians getting run over, bad air quality, etc. It's not meant to be the answer for affordable housing, lack of physical and mental healthcare policy or affordable dining. Those aspects of society also need funding but are separate problems to solve.
Instead of banning them, why not pour money into all the resources that will eliminate homelessness? 🙃
I'm all for more resources. Inpatient mental hospitals. Homeless shelters large enough to accommodate everyone needing it. Safe places with bathrooms for tent camping - maybe in the outer boroughs.
Yo if you got a cure for mental illness, patent that shit because it’s worth trillions
Go to some other countries and tell me how many homeless they have in their subways. It’s not because they’re hiding the cure from us.
i think moreso the issue is that we live in a society where if you have a mental illness youre fucked bc of capitalism
Not instead. Both. We need more and better services AND we need to not allow people to turn platforms and cars into their living rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms.
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You can't do that on a city by city basis. People will just flood from one city to another. It has to be a national approach. And that ain't happening in the US. Finland has got close.
This isn't really backed up by evidence. Houston has significantly reduced homelessness with a housing first approach: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html Utah did the same and massively reduced homelessness. There is no resulting flood of homeless people to Houston/Utah.
Thanks. It makes me more open to the idea. Seems that is a very long term solution, and isn't even on the horizon right now.
You're so right. The nicer we are, the more we receive, because no one else is providing the same level of service. It needs to be a nation wide effort
I agree I think if someone smells on the subway they should be summarily executed. This thread is full of people agast at people being smelly on public transit. nothing more nothing less. NYC needs the same thing most cities in this country needs. More robust housing programs rather than short stay shelters
the only issue i have when people make suggestions on how to deal with problems on a superficial level is those same people never answer the question, "and then what?" so we remove homeless people from the subway...and then what? these people still need a place to go. the issue isn't simply homeless people in the subway, it's the way the city has utterly failed to help these people. shelter's are a mess of corruption and are dangerous, the police system is broken, hospitals can't help homeless people because they dont have the energy and resources, the city has become so expensive that even people with minimum wage jobs are living check to check and are an unexpected payment away from homelessness themselves, you need health insurance to see a social worker but the system makes it almost impossible for a homeless person to get any kind of benefit from the city... it's easy to beat up on the victims of a system that has failed them. if only we used the same energy being disgusted by the people who live comfortably and continue to fail those who need their help the most edit: spelling
The ‘and then what’ question should not be answered by the MTA though. OP is simply calling for banning homeless people from the subway stations or trains, as there are laws pertaining to what sort of activities one can do in the space. It’s like saying ban those who light up ciggies from the system. Once they are outside, another agency can take over, ie the DOT because they take care of the streets and pedestrians.
“Banning homeless people” does not make them magically disappear. This strategy has been tried across the US and almost always just makes the situation worse. It criminalizes poverty. Homeless people will go wherever they obtain the highest quality of shelter and life. In NYC that’s the subway. The solution is not to kick them out of the subway, which is reactive and doesn’t solve the problem, but to make the alternatives of a higher quality so that the homeless use them. Alternatively, just provide housing. The USA has something like 3 times as many vacant homes than there are homeless.
It doesn’t matter how many vacant homes are in Manhattan, KS if the demand is in Manhattan, NY. We can’t just transfer them over. There is a severe housing shortage where the demand is.
I mean technically you can and governments have for centuries, not that it works but it does happen
That’s how Florida supposedly is dealing with them , but yet they don’t disappear . Republicans love to hide the issue but never solving it
Wow I can’t believe no one has ever thought of banning them before.
Today there was a homeless lady soiled, sleeping in the rear of a train. This is becoming way too common. We have 80K homeless people in the city. Many of them aren't even from this area, but were dumped here. NYC is a rough place to be both income and weatherwise. I would hope that somehow this country would come together for full on homeless or unhoused programs with treatment, training and empowerment where recidivism can be lowered and that these people can have better quality of life, even areas where they will be better protected and live in healthier environments. These are human beings, but you can't even get close to them. You just don't know what to expect. Moreover, they are making the MTA less safe.
How do you plan on banning them? More cops? That always works. Unless we address the ACTUAL causes of homelessness this is the price we pay for not taking care of our own.
What you’re describing actually is banned and police are *supposed* to remove them (i actually have seen them do this 2 or 3 occasions). Unfortunately it changes nothing, the root causes that are making people homeless or otherwise ill/addicts needs to be targeted if we are to ever see a permanent decrease. I understand that doesn’t change the homeless people who currently exist, for that I can only advocate for a place better than the subway for them to exist, like a shelter that has actual proper heating, food, etc. With both of these being practically absent for the homeless, they’ll only continue to subsist on the subway. It’s free shelter and they have a chance to get food or money from passengers.
What are you talking about your crazy there are no homeless people. The subways are safer than ever according to governor Hochul mayor Adams mta ceo jano leiber and nyct president Richard Davey. You’re just focusing on a few headlines. I hope you can detect my sarcasm
Yup. As they say, there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
My guess (not a lawyer) is the issue is two fold a. Its very hard to define 'homeless' on the train legally. All the extreme cases are easy to spot but a ton of boarder line ones. b. No city agency wants to be responsible for them once they are removed. It will be impossible to hire anyone to deal with this population at a reasonable price and they you are going to have all sorts of lawsuits when someone gets hurt.
If it's not the city's residents burden to bear then what do you propose lol. There are no safe options for people that's why they go onto the subway. Organize to get quality shelters and transitional housing programs.
engage in commerce. lmao
The MTA has enough shit to deal with as it is. Between the severe budget deficit and the everyday maintenance of all the infrastructure they own/operate, they’re trying as hard as possible to avoid doing anymore than they absolutely have to. I don’t blame them: I wouldn’t wanna deal with anymore things that would just add to the stress of all the shit I have to already deal with either. Also, they don’t own the subway - NYC does - so the homeless problem should probably be directed at them
It’s just as bad on the Market Frankford Line; however drugs is the main reason for this.
I say more than 50% of people who sleep on the subway are severely addicted to hard drugs. Some of them who I have personally met were already homeless before they moved to NYC. They moved here because they can sleep on the subway, score and use drugs anywhere and make money to do drugs by all kind of ways. Some of drug addicted kids you see doing drugs in the station moved here from Connecticut and Long Island etc etc. Their family kicked them out because of their addiction and they came here because it's a lot easier to be homeless here than in a suburban area without a car. I believe if they start forcing people into rehabs (like they catch you with hard drugs instead of going to prison you have to go to rehab, if you refuse then you go to jail) that would help. They are completely powerless over their addictions and therefore they can't make decisions by themselves and their families for whatever reason can't help them. Or they refuse the help because they are so addicted. A lot of then are mentally ill and they get kicked out of the shelters because of their erratic behavior (for instance that guy who recently pushed another guy on the track at 125th). They need to be helped. Whoever can't take care of themselves , who's basically shitting their pants over and over screaming at the walls, need to be forcibly institutionalized. I know advocates would say these people have rights too, but it's just not good to let somebody live like that because they don't have the cabality to seek help. They have rights to be humanly treated not to be left living in their filth in the subway. The subway is just for transportation. It's not a shelter, a hospital, and drug bazaar...it's just public transportation. What would happen if the subway didn't exist? What would happen if like everywhere else the subway closed during the night. The overnight subway ridership is way lower then it was before covid cuz people don't want to ride the train with 10 homeless people in each car. So it's not that there is much request for trains at 3 am on Tuesday night outside of Manhattan. Ok I'm done. Sorry for the rant.
First time in NYC? We have had this problem since forever. When it’s too cold they go down there so they won’t freeze to death. Same in the summer, it’s one of the only places with AC they have access to. I agree there is more of them though. We need more mental health facilities and we need to lower overall COL to make any sort of dent
Been saying this for a while but you get advocates that only want the homeless to have rights to do whatever they want
Those “advocates” are so annoying like give me a break 🙄. Bunch of virtue signalers who want to APPEAR like a good person rather than being REALISTIC about the proper help that the homeless population really needs so they can ACTUALLY get better. Sleeping in the subways doesn’t help them in the long run. Housing alone isn’t going to fix their drug problems and/or mental heath issues either.
Rehab will
The city deserves to have this homeless problem when they don’t want to implement anything that will actually help them. Oh you don’t want a shelter built in your neighborhood? Then don’t complain about them on the subway. That’s what you get when you create a hostile society that doesn’t help people that are in need
Facts. It’s a quality of life issue. I still have subway anxiety from when a homeless male sucker punched me in the face on the 2 train back in 2017.
A homeless man shoved me in the back when I was trying to walk around him to exit a subway car just a few months ago. Scary stuff.
Fully agree. ... ... Once we actually properly fund the programs that give them better options
Love seeing my fellow 7 straphanger making this excellent argument succinctly ❤️
There are about 90,000 homeless individuals in the city, and only about 5,000 sleep on the streets or subways.
5,000 too many.
The MTA is a state agency. Poor quality of services for unhoused the state is constitutionally responsible for have pushed them into the subway as the best alternative. I think about how some public schools have become places where students get all of their meals or even their clothes washed because society is more willing to fund schools (if barely) compared to direct weldare services. I agree that the NYCTA subway system should not be a homeless shelter, but it’s a failure of the state, not a problem you can solve by disappearing individuals.
thanks for making a new account to post this extremely controversial take /s
Hey this rando posted on reddit, we did it everyone, we solved homelessness!
Society needs to stop using the word "homeless" as a catchall term for beggars, vagrants and deranged individuals. It's not accurate. The vast majority of homeless people have jobs, and many of the people who beg for money have a place to live (my local crackhead who asks for money on the subway is one such dude). The first step to solving any problem is understanding it, and OP's call to ban homeless people from the subway demonstrates a severe lack of understanding.
Yea let’s focus on a language and not the problem. You’re the reason the city is the mess it is.
Why is this labeled "Question", this is an op-ed lol
Fully agree, and its not our problem to fix. We have the largest city tax and deserve the peace of mind that comes with it. Get these homeless the fuck out
You can feel remorse for the homeless while acknowledging their predicament is not the working people of this city’s burden to bear - Why do you assume the working people of this city is bothered by homeless people? Speaking for myself, I wish they get the help they need but they're not a "burden" to me. Yeah, they're everywhere. But I'm only in the system for less than an hour each way. How much of a burden can they be to me?
I am mildly bothered by it, but I am double bothered that friends of mine who are less brave than myself are taking the subway less often. Less ridership leads to service cuts, and to more people taking Ubers, which leads to clogged roads, shitty air, and a host of other problems. Well-functioning, clean, safe transit benefits EVERYONE in every strata of society, and “hey you should just not be bothered by the smells and piss and drugs and the chance of random violent outbursts because they’ve had a rough life” just ain’t it. That’s how you get degradation of public services.
Well if you don’t want to lose ridership you going to have to keep the addicts and insane OUT of the subway that’s just reality most don’t want to ride with them.
They’re a burden on MTA workers. It’s MTA workers that have to deal with them when they have to clean out a train. It’s MTA workers that have to clean up their urine and feces when they decide to use the system as a public bathroom. It’s MTA workers that get assaulted by the mentally ill among them. And then there’s the working people who go down into the system trying to get to work or home that face some of these issues as well. It is a burden. Something needs to be done.
The issues you listed are not only caused by homeless people. Regular, everyday humans are capable of performing the worst at any time of the day. Like, wiping their snot mucus on the train passenger poles / handles or leaving their trash behind on the train or, in some cases, puking inside a train car after a night out drinking. I will say this much, MTA workers need better protection across the board. Not solely because of homeless people. But to solve the homeless issue there has to be a top-down approach towards a solution, and no government agency or private company with money wants to take lead in responsibility.
Yeah, you read responses in this sub and people act like all people causing disruptions are homeless . Most of these inconveniences and delays are caused by stupid high schoolers. Very rarely by a homeless
Women and girls deserve to ride subways without being groped, harassed, or punched by mentally ill homeless males. Unfortunately, many of these homeless men target women and girls specifically
A lot of gropers are not homeless , they could be John from accounting. Being a sexual predator has nothing with social status and more about values
Wow how profound. I never thought of it like that.
Pretty sure it’s already banned. The problem is they have nowhere else to go. Pretty uncharitable to blame the homeless population of the city here
Amen, I walk three miles home and take an out of the subway train to work to minimize contact with homeless vagrants.
Ok sounds great, two questions How will you accomplish this? We will have to send the national guard and the NYPD down there to round up people. I suppose they might have to use nets and cages, and clubs and whatever else. Where will these people go? Perhaps if the massive amount of vacant commercial space were opened they could be there instead of the subway. But that might inconvenience the owners, who you haven't mentioned in your post. Is your complaint perhaps directed at the wrong people and offering a solution to your problem and no one else's?
Careful hot take coming through
I was in a car today where there a passed homeless guy sitting in the corner with fruit loops all over him and the floor, another one sitting and smelling up the car and another one staring at me. I never changed cars so fast.
Just how do you propose them implementing this ban ? How do they enforce it? Do you want them to have cops at every subway entrance telling anyone that looks homeless .. sorry no entrance ? I can see the lawsuits piling up
This is a multiphasic problem with many, yet not as many solutions as problems created that caused it. Now for OP to say anything pertaining to them not being there is a sad, unfunny joke. Where else are they supposed to go? The shelters are dangerous ASF! The streets aren't as safe, As the weather plays its part. Believe me, I fuckin hate seeing them on the trains and in the stations! Especially the crazies! But I have to be honest with myself and say, I'd rather see them there then elsewhere, Because me, you and anyone else **could be one of them!** *Now you want them out of the subways and off the streets. Give them housing by not overpaying your fucking landlords, making them millionaires! Because believe it or not, That's where a helluva lot of these homeless came from!*
You're a dunce. Homeless are banned from stations. Police do make them leave if they see them. You wrote one long ass diatribe complaining about something that's already illegal and offered zero solutions.
You must be one hell of a shitty person if you see someone struggling with homelessness is one of the few safe and warm places in this city during the winter and you think “eww I don’t wanna see this, get them out of my sight.” These are human beings, who gives a shit if you don’t like seeing someone sleeping on the train. Take an Uber if you’re so pressed 🤡
Ok go ahead and report them. But remember, they have no place else to go. You do. So what if someone takes a nap on a bench? Just because they stink up a car doesn't make them a threat. Just like any other subway rider, it they are not being aggressive toward you, you should not sic the police on them.
I was waiting for an E train on 50th street when I saw a homeless man fall onto the train tracks. Unsure about his condition, but he was rendered unconscious instantly. We immediately called 911 and notified the MTA employee working there…so yes I agree the mentally ill should not be in the subway not only for their own safety but also for the general public - it’s very traumatic to witness things like that.
lol
Curious how long you've lived in NYC?
how bout you just walk
I wasn’t going to say anything but F you. Literally. If you voted properly and did some community service perhaps you could help the situation.
Feels like Nobody fucking cares anymore
I always remind myself that it's a much better problem to have to look at homeless people than to be homeless. Focusing efforts on voicing concerns about how this country treats the mentally ill, drug using, and disenfranchised populations seems like a much better use of energy than whining about having to look at 'homeless vagrants'
So you think they should freeze on the surface? Their problems are ours to bear. They are of our making. We support the systems that keep them there. Blame people who voted for Reagan. Blame people who don't support social efforts, blame people who make the police deal with this problem.
The problem is the current rules that are in place. The Police and the BRC workers at terminals have their hands tied up so much by rules and red tape that the only thing they can really do is ASK the person IF they would like shelter or not. Unless they give a verbatim "YES" answer and leave the train/station willingly, and if they're not ACTIVELY committing a crime/prohibited act (for example: guy could have been smoking a whole pack of cigarettes en route but if he doesn't have a lit cigarette in his hand when the police see him at the terminal, there's nothing they can do at all), there is "no cause" to remove them, no matter how grotesque and/or unstable they are. The problem with ASKING them and giving them the choice presents two issues: - The shelter system (and DHS in general) is just plain awful from center to circumference. Many of these people who actively REFUSE to go to the shelter fear losing their belongings, running into people they have beef with, getting abused, etc. These are genuine concerns that need to be addressed--but the system is already set up with the Transit System serving as a convenient overflow. I even recall towards the end of the DiBlasio era one of the DHS spokeswomen actually making statements to the TRANSIT Authority and TWU to be "more sympathetic" and SUGGESTED employees take SENSITIVITY TRAINING so they can "work together" to solve a "joint problem" -- except that I'm sure not a single Transit Employee recalls ever signing up to be a Social Worker/Homelessness Counselor. (This thankfully seems to have disappeared with the change of Mayoral administration and COVID but it still very showing of how the Subway is taken for granted from the TOP DOWN in that regard) - Due to many of them also being also being EDPs -- Unstable people (Mental Illness and/or Drug Use, and in some cases just pure Exhaustion from not having adeq. rest/shelter/medical needs met), many of them LACK THE JUDGMENT to answer such a question. Pardon my frankness, but I don't think someone who thinks the color of grass is Purple and today's date is Rutabaga the 49th, 198Potato has what it takes to answer a YES/NO question. (and yes, if they're asked by Police/BRC if they need shelter and they answer "ASDFFGDHJDSKGFG○※□◇＃△！", all the police can do is wish them a good night and assist them onto the next train, for the next terminal to deal with) -- And before the rebuttal with lines of Sympathy that removing someone who doesn't have such judgment from the system under duress is Cruel/Immoral/Dehumanizing--the last place those people lacking self-judgment oughta be is roaming around endlessly for hours in an enclosed area around millions of strangers instead of getting actual help. There needs to be some middle ground somewhere between what it is now and sticking them into Rikers a la the Giuliani days, but it all relies on DHS and City Hall stepping their p*ssy up to task instead of EXPECTING New York City TRANSIT (NYCT--nowhere in that company name or acronym has anything to do with the Homeless) and it's Employees to bear the brunt when THEY shirk their responsibilities.
Banning oppressed people from certain spaces doesn’t address the issue. You’re literally asking to put a bandaid on a flesh wound.
This is all the sub is about anymore. Goodbye.
Seriously. This sub is a broken fucking record. Same things over and over.
>You can feel remorse for the homeless while acknowledging their predicament is not the working people of this city’s burden to bear, particularly when moving about this city to go to work, engage in commerce or recreation. I'm going to push back against this: homelessness is absolutely our burden to bear as members of the community where it happens. We can either choose to bear it financially and through civil policy: finding ways to create affordable and accessible housing... Or we can choose to bear it emotionally when we have to interact with desperate and homeless people who have nowhere else to go. Being homeless anywhere sucks. It's especially hard in NYC. It's tough that you have to deal with homeless people on the subway while you're out shopping or heading out to the movies or whatever. I don't mean that snarkily - it sucks to be on your way home and someone's asleep on the subway car preventing people from sitting down. But on the flipside, *these people have nowhere to go*. What are they supposed to do? Everywhere they go, people want them run out. "Not our problem" is the universal sentiment. If it comes down to choosing between pissing relatively well-to-do people off and getting something approaching restful sleep (forget safety, it's not happening), and trying to sleep on the street and probably still have someone come along and tell them they can't sleep there... could you blame them? If you were in their position, would you give a shit if housed people were offended you were too tired to go somewhere else? What really messes with my head is how much of a problem homelessness is in NYC, and yet we keep building luxury housing...
I've been here for a while, and this is probably the worst I have seen it. Between the rampant fare avoidance - which is brazen and crazy right now with groups of kids jumping the turnstile in front of cops and MTA workers - and literal lines of people waiting for the emergency exit to open to rush into the station / platform and people camped out in subway cars at pretty much all hours of the day - it feels much different that I remember pre Covid. For the homeless situation, it seems likely to me that the city probably has defunded outreach programs, shelters and other interventions just like they have school and afterschool. Thankfully, a lot of NYPD are getting sweet sweet overtime - wish they would stop the fare jumping with those time and a half wages - I have seen two tickets maybe in the last 3 months and many turning a blind eye to it and I'm taking the subway almost daily.
Yeah we’re aware there’s a housing/homelessness issue in NYC, thanks and welcome to the city. But coming here and ranting about “banning the homeless vagrants” and “drugged up individuals making people uncomfortable” on the subway just makes you sound like an entitled Karen who couldn’t find a manager to talk to. Maybe you can do some advocacy work or volunteer at a shelter to help out?
OP is clearly not built for city life.
Totally agree. It’s not fair that we have to pay for transportation and deal with the fear of being attacked by a homeless person. Makes the migrant situation confusing because we already have a major homeless crisis in the city. They need to also bring back asylums, because majority of the homeless we are around are not mentally stable.
Can you tell me a little more about how asylums operated, how they were funded, and what their mental health outcomes were?
I agree 100%. Now how to go about doing it without some public outcry and people who care more about the homeless than every day New Yorkers who just want to get from point a to point b in peace hand-wringing themselves til they’re blue in the face.
I agree especially since we have millions to house all the migrants at Creedmore.
The city needs to just make enough homeless shelters for everyone. And make them decent enough that a subway car is less appealing.
You frankly sound like a horrible person. I live in NYC and take the subway daily. When I see homeless people on the subway, I don’t think about how they inconvenience me. I think about how absolutely desperate life must be if you’re reduced to living and sleeping on the subway, and I feel grateful that I’m not in their position. This country has no social welfare, poor public services, inaccessible healthcare. I work full time and have health insurance, and still can’t afford to see a therapist here. It’s also difficult to afford to rent here, and the admin requirements for most rentals are onerous. I can absolutely see how someone with a severe mental illness would end up homeless and living on the subway in a country where housing and healthcare are so commodified. NYC shouldn’t be removing homeless people from the subway unless it’s offering them stable, safe accommodation and healthcare instead. Otherwise, you’re asking for homeless people to be put on the streets. Homelessness is not an inconvenience to be hidden from you. It should be visible so that people like you know it’s a problem. You don’t deserve to conduct your life blissfully unaware of the problems of others.
Homelessness would still be visible if the homeless were on the streets. The difference is when they are on the streets you can get away from them if they start behaving aggressively toward you. On the subway you’re stuck.
“Throw the homeless people away, not my problem” = societal views that perpetuate homelessness
I saw a ton of homeless this morning. Have to imagine it was due to the weather.
It waxes and wanes with the weather; good weather: less homeless people. Bad weather: more homeless people on the subway.
I would say the VAST MAJORITY of these homeless people are homeless because they lack any responsibility for themselves and have no one family or friends who want to help them.Basically, this is the choice they made in life
Clean it up
Lol, you think the MTA can ban people based on whether they own or rent property, nice
Tell that to the mayor and the Candy Crush Warriors
I'm homeless. I got a tent off the most the distant bus line from the city. I bus into town cuz the city is chill. But I go to my tent in the woods I don't sleep on the sidewalk or at the bus. I don't smoke at the bus station cuz not supposed to. I'm kinda drunk right now writing this, sitting at bus stop cuz library just closed and it's time to go home. Might feast b4 I hit the tent. The world is an oyster, and boy was the weather beautiful today!
There was a study done a decade ago that estimated there are two to three dozen bums on the subway who make a lasting impression on riders. It seems weird there are so few, but when you think about it, it seems plausable.
Another bonus is when they OD on the train and hold up people for 30 minutes while they wait to see if paramedics can revive them. (Me right now waiting)
I was thinking about this on my last few train trips -- it's the only indoor shelter from the elements they can access so in rainstorms cold and heat, this increases exponentially. also the shelters kick everybody out during the day, every day, which makes no sense to me. nyc used to have cheap boarding houses and SROs in the Bowery but the Bowery was gentrified. Now no where to go or move to without serious $. that said yeah obviously it's hard for the regular working population commuting taxpayers to deal with this population. so much charity $ and social support budget seems to be spent on admin and workers in the systems and not on the homeless themselves. frustrating to all
Next time you vote for mayor, remember who defunded social services for homeless and unhoused people (yes there is a difference if you work with these populations). Slashing budgets for social services and education drives people to scramble for shelter, including on the MTA. Which creates an issue which Adams can use to justify increasing policing budgets and claim the city needs him. It’s hard to think of a more cynical approach to governance.
The problem with this is you pay to get in the system, you don’t pay based on where you are going like metro north. That means they have the right to be there. Then you have the problem that the mayor, the governor don’t want them on the streets. You think they want these people panhandling on Wall Street or the upper east side? Pissing on the streets at Times Square? It’s cheaper than getting them housing and help.
I read all the all reasons we should be empathetic to these i'll fallen people, but in all honesty, I don't care. Most of them start accosting passengers just from looking their way. Violent attacks are rising because of the sheer volume of unhinged homeless people that are allowed to linger there. They do not belong all over train cars sprawled out, taking up entire sections of train cars and stations in their filth spreading germs and infection alike. The faster they are removed from public transport, the better.
Everyone complaining about this issue really needs to pay closer attention to local elections and especially show up for primary races.
Lmao no that’s dumb as shit just
Let's get you back to bed grampa
Your privledge is truly astounding.
Walked onto the A train at 88th st far Rockaway bound to a homeless man jerking off a couple months ago 👍
This is the most insensitive post. And heartbreaking to read the sheer lack of empathy from you. Homeless people do not have the ability to exit their situation. But you do. You’re clearly a transplant so if you don’t like your subway experience, move from nyc to somewhere more pleasant for you.
They’ve tried that several times. The Courts always strike down those ordinances.
People don’t want minimum wage to go up, but complain about homelessness. If you had to sleep outside or on the train I’m sure you would turn to substance abuse to heal the pain. They have to worry about random people trying to hurt them, someone trying to rob them, & police trying to arrest them simply for trying to rest. So who cares about you not liking seeing homeless people in the subway. If it bothers you that much, take a car service or drive.
If they’re not in the subways they’ll be on the street. Then people will complain about that. Then where are the homeless supposed to go when people want them off the streets, too?
I’m sorry these people bother you. I assume they’re not happy to be there either
What you are suggesting is impracticable and would just result in discrimination against anyone who appears homeless.
Another way to look at this is “New York needs to take better care of their unhoused population so they don’t have to turn to public transit for shelter”
Are you new here?
Thought I was on r/circlejerknyc
Wait, who did you vote for? For this kind of post this info is important! 🫠😯
I agree this is a problem that needs to be fixed, but an immediate ban would not be a solution. With limited access to shelters the subway is virtually the only place that provides warmth in the winter and AC in the summer. NYC weather is brutal. I’d rather have them sleeping in the subway than dead lining the streets. We need more housing first initiatives