A Subway-Homeless Non-Surprise

Did MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny surprise anyone by reporting that trying to persuade the homeless out of the subways turns out to be a “very expensive” and “minimally effective” bust?

The agency budgets $5 million a year for such work, and added $2.6 million in overtime over the past year after Gov. Cuomo went ballistic, declaring the underground homeless problem “egregious” and “the worst it’s ever been.”

But the law really didn’t let the MTA do anything except more of the same, namely sending out 10-person teams of cops and social workers — which, the IG notes, lured an average of three homeless per station per night into shelters, even as dozens stayed on trains and in stations for each who accepted services.

The nonprofit that provides those social workers, the Bowery Residents’ Committee, has been caught failing to live up to its contractual obligations, but that’s not the main problem.

After all, the real turnaround only came after the gov used the pandemic as an excuse to close the system every night — allowing cops to force the homeless out along with everyone else.

That’s tough love — at the price of inconveniencing people who need to travel between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., because New York’s leaders refuse to admit that the homeless are different, and that it’s legitimate to deny them the right to take over public spaces.

A sane government would fight for the rights of straphangers to use the subway for its intended purpose, and the right of the MTA to eject those using it as shelter.

But when it comes to the homeless, New York’s government is anything but sane.