Social workers MIA
No outreach staff at Herald Sq. station
City-contracted outreach workers were nowhere to be found early Friday as cops booted two dozen homeless people from the 34th Street-Herald Square subway station amid coronavirus cleaning.
“It’s going to be 37 degrees tomorrow night. It’s going to be freezing rain,” lamented Venus Duquet, a 55-year-old homeless woman. “We’ve been staying outside in front of Macy’s. Now I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Mayor de Blasio claimed Friday that city and contracted workers had connected 520 homeless people with social services since early Wednesday, when the MTA began new nightly closures for train and station disinfecting.
That was news to Duquet and others at the Herald Square station, where outreach workers were missing in action as the vagrants were kicked out of the transit system and attempted to find shelter elsewhere.
At least four of the homeless camped out in the lobby of a nearby Bank of America branch, while three shivered under the awning of H&M, and at least six parked themselves in the pedestrian plaza in front of Macy’s. A few just wandered around aimlessly in circles.
Standing on West 34th Street across from Macy’s, Duquet told The Post that she didn’t want to go to a shelter because they are “full of drug addicts.”
“Where’s Breaking Ground? Where’s BRC [Bowery Residents Committee]? They haven’t told us anything,” said Duquet, referring to two city-funded social-service providers.
Both organizations told The Post on Friday that they were assigned to patrol end-of-line stations as part of the overnight closures.
A city spokesman added in an e-mail that outreach workers canvass Herald Square “multiple times daily/ within a 24-hour period.
“With more outreach staff deployed at once overnight this week than ever before and all of our expert providers . . . we are doing everything we can together to connect unsheltered New Yorkers to the services they may need,” said the spokesman, Isaac McGinn.
But in Jamaica, Queens, frustrated locals said the homeless who previously lived in the subways have since relocated to the surrounding neighborhood.
“In the last couple of days, I’ve seen more of them on the streets, with a ton of bags,” said a merchant on Sutphin Boulevard who declined to give her name. “There are a lot of new faces.”
“I’ve been here for years, and I’ve never seen them before. They sleep on the sidewalk in front of my business.”
A city Parks Department worker, Michael, 32, said at Rufus King Park near Jamaica Station, “Yeah, there are more people in the park. They come from the train station. I come in at 7 a.m. and they are laying on the benches or on the grass. They’ll be everywhere.”
Harry Lalman, 42, a construction worker who lives in the neighborhood, added, “I’ve never seen so many in my life
“It’s like a whole new community coming into my community but not in a good way. It’s very bad for the neighborhood.”
Friday night, interim NYC Transit president Sarah Feinberg said that due to the cold, stationary buses will be parked outside endof-line stations early Saturday to accommodate homeless people rousted from subways.
“These stationary buses will not transport individuals experiencing homelessness, but may serve as a place for individuals to escape the elements in the short term as we just Wednesday took the unprecedented step of implementing the overnight closure from 1 - 5 a.m.,” Feinberg said in a statement.
Rousted homeless persons will first be offered medical services and shelter placements, the statement said.
“We are providing these buses only during this cold snap and expect the city to continue to step up and take responsibility for providing safe shelter for those individuals experiencing homelessness. As we have stated many times, we are transportation providers, not a social services agency.”
Meanwhile, dozens of homeless men hit the housing jackpot Friday when they were allowed to settle into rooms at the $200-plus-per-night Bentley Hotel on the Upper East Side.
“This is a lot better,” Marvin Joseph, 47, told The Post as he waited with some 30 other homeless men in the lobby of the 72nd Street hotel. “No one doing drugs. No one doing K-2. Much safer.”
Their stays were arranged by the nonprofit DOE Fund.
It’s going to be freezing rain. Now I don’t know what we’re going to do.
— homeless woman Venus Duquet (left)