Editorial

How many homeless people must die before Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo take meaningful action to get them out of the subways? Is there even a number? Two vagrants were discovered dead on trains within a 12-hour period over the weekend, yet on Monday de Blasio insisted his approach to dealing with the homelessriddled subway system is “working” and he won’t shift direction.

“We’re going to apply that strategy more, and more intensely,” he vowed.

Trouble is, those two corpses just add to the already vast in-plain-view evidence that his “strategy” is a colossal failure. And more of the same just means more chaos on the trains: more filth, more stench, more disease. And more death.

Here’s the key problem: De Blasio sends workers to try to persuade these people to leave the subway and seek services in hospitals or shelters. But many of the homeless — who are often mentally ill or substance abusers, and so in no condition to make rational choices for themselves — refuse.

Meanwhile, their decision to not merely remain aboard but to convert cars into their own private shelters — sleeping on benches, hoarding their life’s belongings, using the trains as toilets — isn’t just a danger to them; it makes the system repugnant and perilous for everyone else.

Yet de Blasio has never had any desire to second-guess their decisions and force them off the trains or streets. Indeed, he tapped as his homeless czar a lawyer, Steven Banks, who spent most of his adult life fighting to create legal rights for the homeless to make horrific choices at the public’s expense. It’s morally deranged.

In other words: De Blasio, Banks & Co. insist they can’t do more — but that’s because of the limits they’ve chosen to impose on the police and social-service workers.

Cuomo hasn’t been much better. Yes, Gov. Fix-It personally helped clean a subway car this weekend. But he has also eliminated hospital beds for the mentally ill. And neither he nor any other key leader has pushed for laws that could make it easier for cops and social-service workers to

require these people to get help.

The gov has also ordered the MTA to shut the whole subway system down each night in the name of cleaning cars — a move that’s also plainly intended to ensure the homeless have to move on. But those shutdowns make commutes tougher for hours, and will likely impede the city’s recovery. Too bad Cuomo is no longer willing to rely on tough love instead.

We’ve warned that letting the homeless commandeer trains creates a public-health disaster. That’ll only get worse as the bodies pile up. It’ll also steer others not just from the subway — but from the city itself. If de Blasio and Cuomo can’t regain control of the subway, the city may never recover.