SUBWAY SWEEP
MTA to target homeless who litter, sleep on trains or platforms
Straphangers see them every day: They’re hungry and they’re homeless and if you just give them a dollar … .
Or, they’re stretched out on scarce subway seats, snoozing away.
NYC Transit chief Andy Byford — who oversees buses and subways — said Monday he’s had enough, and is instructing subway station managers to work more closely with police to keep homeless people from disrupting the subways.
Managers are also being urged to work more closely with the city Department of Homeless Services and the Bowery Residents Committee to deal with the problems.
Byford doesn’t mind if homeless people need to warm themselves up by riding trains in the winter — “but being offensive, obnoxious and antisocial” is a problem, he said. “And that we are not prepared to tolerate.”
He said the agency must deal with homeless people compassionately — but added that “we equally have to make sure people are not causing offense to other customers.”
Cold weather in the past few days seems to have made the homeless situation worse, said MTA board member Susan Metzger.
She said she noticed a significant increase in the number of homeless people in the subway Sunday and Monday compared with late last week.
Metzger said the number of homeless people on the trains leads subway passengers to believe the MTA is failing to improve service. “It does impact our riders’ sense of progress that we’re making,” she said.
But Byford’s plans drew fears from some on the MTA board that the agency’s response might turn cruel.
“They are human beings. They are individuals with individual problems, and to deal with them all as one is just wrong,” said board member Charles Moerdler. “To deal with them uncaringly and recklessly in my view is a disaster.”
Byford called Moerdler’s points “very valid” — but said the agency also has to “make sure people are not causing offense to other customers or making a mess. And we would expect rapid assistance from the city and or the police to help us in that regard.”
At the 2 and 3 train stop at Chambers Street downtown, straphangers said homeless people are an issue.
Brooklyn commuter Dione Coleman said she’s been harassed by pushing subway panhandlers and people who treat subway cars and stations like toilets or bedrooms. “I think they should do better,” Coleman said of MTA officials.
Homeless people with mental health issues “are ones that make me the most nervous,” said Jennifer Hutz, 41, from Brooklyn.
But straphanger James Blake — a professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College — said he also worried that the MTA would react to the problem with a heavy hand.
“They’re not in control of their space,” he said of those with mental health issues. “You can’t police away a problem like that.”
The city’s annual homeless census last January put the number of homeless people on the subways at 1,771 — a 2.3% drop from the February 2017 count of 1,812.
The MTA works with the Bowery Residents’ Committee “to get people who are homeless the help they need and make the system work better for everyone,” Byford said.
The committee’s chief, Muzzy Rosenblatt, posted on Twitter a response to Byford. He said the committee “has assisted thousands of unsheltered individuals out of the subways to better living situations, better health and better lives, by offering a hand up, instead of a handout,” he tweeted.