The Homeless Will Soon Be Forced Out Of The Subway Overnight. Where Will They Go?

When New York City’s nightly subway shutdown begins on Wednesday, Ann Marie Finley doesn’t know where she’ll sleep. One of the city’s estimated 3,600 street homeless, Finley said that she hadn’t heard about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that service would soon be discontinued between 1:00 and 5:00 a.m.

“They’re victimizing people that are poor,” Finley told Gothamist early Saturday morning, speaking about the police officers who forced her to leave the World Trade Center terminal station. “I have used the subway to keep warm.”

As subway ridership has plunged due to COVID-19, people sleeping on trains has become more visible, and increasing efforts to relocate street homeless individuals off the subway have followed. After a political clash between the MTA and mayor over how to address the problem, and an editorial from the New York City Transit Authority’s interim president vowing to prevent people from sheltering on the subway, Cuomo announced last Thursday that the MTA would start shuttering each night to disinfect trains.

The mayor and governor have described the historic closure as a move that protects essential workers and public health while also enabling more homeless individuals to receive assistance. Advocates for those sleeping on the streets, though, worry that the shutdowns will force more people to sleep outside, further jeopardizing the health of vulnerable New Yorkers who have consciously chosen to seek shelter in trains.

“It seems like, from the messaging, this is a very deliberate effort to force vulnerable New Yorkers out of the transit system,” Jacquelyn Simone, a policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless, told Gothamist. “Right now, the city is essentially just telling people, ‘You can’t be here; you have to leave the train,’ and not offering them a viable alternative.”

In addition to ongoing outreach efforts to find shelter for those sleeping outside, the city Department of Social Services (DSS) has taken a range of efforts to protect against infection in city facilities. Shelter staff have increased social distancing and limited gatherings inside facilities and isolated symptomatic individuals. DSS announced last week it would move 1,000 people from congregate shelters to hotel rooms each week and is expanding capacities for testing and tracing to decrease COVID-19 cases, aligning with citywide efforts.

At a news conference this morning, Steven Banks, the agency’s commissioner, said that about 7,000 people–3,500 of whom had already been moved before the pandemic—have been placed in hotel settings and that 200 more beds in safe haven facilities, which offer fewer restrictions than traditional shelters, were being made available.

“At DSS, we’re using every tool at our disposal to fight this virus and protect our clients, implementing aggressive strategies to connect anyone who needs it to care or isolation and keep all New Yorkers who we serve out of harm’s way,” Arianna Fishman, a spokesperson with DSS, said in a statement. When asked by Gothamist, DSS did not indicate how many COVID-19 tests had been conducted in total.

Advocates say the city isn’t acting quickly enough to protect those staying in shelters, which house about 57,000 people each night. Single adult congregate sites, which comprise about 100 of the city’s 450 shelter locations, generally have 8 to 12 beds per room.

Even before COVID-19 struck New York, many homeless individuals bristled at the loss of autonomy that comes with entering the shelter system. Others have had traumatic experiences that make them unwilling to enter a communal living space. Now, private homeless service providers worry that the shelters actually pose a health threat and are more dangerous than the subway.

As of May 3rd, DSS is tracking 699 COVID-19 cases among sheltered individuals and 38 among individuals who were unsheltered, while 65 deaths have been linked to the coronavirus.

“People [are] coughing all over the place,” Bret Hartford, Director of Outreach at New York City Relief, said about shelters. “People don’t feel safe. People keep on asking how to get into the hotel rooms that are popping up, because the shelters are a festering place."

While advocates challenge governmental policies on homeless assistance and ask why the city hasn’t paid for more hotel rooms, some of those who will be affected by the subway closures remain unaware that trains and stations will be shuttered. (After Gothamist swiped into the World Trade Center station around 1:00 a.m. on Saturday to speak with riders being removed from trains, the police said that the station was closed and threatened a Gothamist reporter if they did not leave.)

“All customers will be informed of new schedule changes through digital messages on 7000+ screens throughout the MTA network, announcements made on train and station speakers, social media posts, and through news organizations,” MTA spokesperson Tim Minton told Gothamist.

Last Thursday, Josh Dean, the executive director of Human.nyc, an organization that works to end street homelessness, spoke to individuals who had been sleeping on trains and were escorted from stations. Dean said that the riders he spoke with were not yet aware of the nightly shutdowns.

While at the 96th Street Q stop on Thursday, Dean recorded police officers removing a man wearing one shoe and sending him outside, despite rain and wind. In a video, officers can be heard hitting subway seats and a pole. When asked, the NYPD did not say how many officers deployed had received training on homeless outreach, but told Gothamist, “We will provide as many officers as we can for these terminal stations.”

Such methods of handling homeless outreach have worried advocates, emphasizing their belief that the city is treating a homelessness as a criminal problem instead of a housing issue. And Simone said the quantity of personnel providing outreach mattered less than the resources and facilities the city can offer.

“You can have dozens of police officers and dozens of outreach workers telling people to get off the train, but if they’re not offering someone a safe, private space to go instead of the trains, the problem will not be solved.” Simone told Gothamist