What Other Cities Can Teach New York About Homelessness on Transit

Days earlier than New York Metropolis’s mayor unveiled a plan in February to handle the difficulty of homeless individuals sheltering on the subway, three cops in San Francisco had been hustling a homeless girl up a staircase on the Civic Middle transit station.

The officers, members of the Bay Space Speedy Transit police division, had been referred to as there by a person who stated the girl was pelting him with sunflower seeds. After arriving, they ushered her away from riders and towards a gated-off nook.

Then, as a substitute of issuing her a ticket or booting her instantly out of the transit system, they waited.

Minutes later, an outreach employee for the transit system arrived, together with a social employee. After some cajoling, the social employee handed the girl a masks and persuaded her to depart the station for a city-run heart the place she might get short-term shelter, a bathe and different providers.

The interplay — by which officers de-escalated a scenario after which deferred to educated outreach employees — affords a mannequin for the longer term that New York officers say they envision as they attempt to deal with the big numbers of unsheltered individuals within the subway system partly by boosting the position of social employees and well being professionals.

Nevertheless it additionally illustrates the challenges for transit businesses like New York’s as they search to handle a seemingly intractable disaster that sits nicely outdoors the bounds of their missions. Although the members of the BART staff appeared to have used a comparatively humane contact to steer the girl out of the transit system, they had been nonetheless restricted of their potential to information her to secure, reasonably priced housing.

As Mayor Eric Adams seems to be to speed up New York Metropolis’s continued restoration from the pandemic and deal with perceptions that it has grown unsafe, he has been significantly centered on road homelessness. His efforts have centered on clearing road encampments and the subways, then making an attempt to level those that dwell there towards metropolis shelters, though nearly all of individuals have continued to say no placement affords as a result of they view shelters as unsafe.

America’s transit techniques — public areas with lengthy working hours and enclosed areas providing extra security than the streets — have lengthy been de facto shelters for the nation’s homeless inhabitants. For a lot of that point, transit businesses have turned to the police to handle complaints by penalizing and ejecting these taking refuge on trains, subways and buses.

However as homelessness has elevated lately and conversations round inequity in policing have grown louder, transit leaders in cities all through the nation are exploring options that reduce the position of armed officers and combine social-services businesses.

“There’s a possibility for businesses to rethink their strategy to public security,” stated Chris Van Eyken, a program supervisor at TransitCenter, a analysis and advocacy group.

As a part of that course of, he added, many businesses have concluded that “when you’ve got individuals struggling in your system, you’re going to make it possible for they’ve a connection to the assets that they want.”

The urgency for brand spanking new options has deepened through the coronavirus pandemic, which has worsened homelessness and left transit techniques struggling to win again riders who fled.

By the top of March, public transit ridership nationwide had solely reached an estimated 65 % of prepandemic ranges, in accordance with the American Public Transportation Affiliation, a lobbying group.

Advocates for homeless individuals and transit consultants say the decline has laid naked a disaster that was extra simply ignored when trains had been packed and stations crowded. It has additionally, they stated, contributed to some riders feeling extra unsafe.

“There’s so many fewer riders that individuals really feel weak,” Mr. Van Eyken stated. “As a result of they really feel like they’re by themselves.”

Many transit businesses, together with BART, Los Angeles’s Metro, the Metropolitan Atlanta Speedy Transit Authority and the Philadelphia space’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, have accelerated efforts to construct homeless outreach groups.

Philadelphia transit officers have additionally began offering providers inside their system, together with a drop-in heart housed in considered one of its busiest practice stations.

In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority stated weekday subway ridership had rebounded to about 58 % of what it was in 2019. Buyer surveys performed by the transit company discovered that many respondents cited security and cleanliness as causes for staying away.

Mr. Adams’s plan deploys cops and mental-health employees underground to take away individuals who shelter on the subway. He has stated the main target is on connecting individuals to housing, well being providers and counseling, not on aggressive policing.

Many advocates are skeptical, arguing that Mr. Adams’s plan depends closely on police intervention and enforcement of the subway’s code of conduct, which has guidelines concentrating on homeless individuals.

The mayor has directed 1,000 officers to extra actively patrol the subway on daily basis, whereas promising so as to add dozens of social employees to the 200 already engaged in subway outreach.

Within the first month that his plan was in impact, cops made 719 arrests, issued 6,828 summonses — the overwhelming majority for fare evasion — and ejected 1,981 individuals from the transit system, although it isn’t clear what number of of them had been homeless.

In that very same interval, outreach groups spoke with about 650 individuals a day, on common, and positioned barely greater than 300 in shelter beds over the complete month, metropolis officers stated.

Officers have declined to say what number of of those that had been newly referred to shelters stay there, and the mayor has emphasised that his efforts will take time.

However the preliminary numbers appeared to bolster a chief criticism amongst advocates for homeless individuals throughout the nation: that no matter their strategy, transit techniques can’t deal with homelessness with out offering higher choices than crowded group shelters that present little privateness and may be unsafe.

“You want to have the ability to transfer individuals into housing and higher shelters,” stated Jennifer Friedenbach, the chief director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco. “If that stuff doesn’t exist, then you definitely’re mainly sort of managing the difficulty. And that’s what I believe a lot of the transportation techniques are left with.”

Different cities have moved extra rapidly than New York to shift their efforts away from cops, and their experiences provide classes in regards to the potential limitations of Mr. Adams’s plan.

Within the San Francisco space, BART, which earlier than the pandemic served greater than 400,000 riders a day, is hoping to rezone land it owns to construct housing. Its board has dedicated to creating 35 % of these new housing models reasonably priced, and Daniel Cooperman, who oversees the system’s response to homelessness, stated he hopes transit leaders can work with the counties they serve on housing coverage.

Within the quick time period, the system has created a “progressive policing bureau” that features 20 disaster intervention specialists with social work backgrounds. The specialists work with officers to answer incidents involving homeless individuals or these battling psychological sickness or substance abuse.

About 50 % of calls to BART’s police division contain homeless people, Mr. Cooperman stated. Prior to now, uniformed officers could be despatched to clear them out of the system, however they weren’t connecting them to providers. Inevitably, individuals would return.

“It’s not helpful to maintain shuttling individuals forwards and backwards,” Mr. Cooperman stated.

Jessica Brusky, 30, who has been homeless since dropping her job 4 years in the past, stated she has had principally easy experiences with officers on BART trains who’ve woken her up whereas she slept, however solely to test to verify she was responsive and knew the place she was going.

Nonetheless, there have been occasions when some officers have kicked her off the practice after waking her.

Ms. Friedenbach stated she discovered BART’s shift towards a diminished police response encouraging. However she hoped it will transfer extra towards treating “unhoused individuals as clients in want of help, somewhat than individuals creating issues for ‘precise’ clients.”

In Philadelphia, Suburban Station sits in the course of SEPTA’s community of subways and commuter trains and has lengthy been a gathering place for “lots of of weak individuals” day by day, stated the transit company’s police chief, Thomas J. Nestel III.

Prior to now, SEPTA cops would sometimes enter the station and chase homeless individuals out. Individuals would return, and the cycle would repeat, Chief Nestel stated.

In 2018, SEPTA — which earlier than the pandemic averaged about one million journeys per day throughout buses, subways, trolleys and regional rail — turned over an 11,000-square-foot house in a concourse under the station to Venture HOME, a nonprofit that helps homeless individuals.

The group transformed the house to a drop-in heart that gives short-term shelter, medical providers, entry to restrooms and laundry and assist discovering housing.

Sister Mary Scullion, Venture HOME’s govt director, stated that the middle served as many as 200 individuals a day.

SEPTA’s management is contemplating increasing this system to different transit hubs. Chief Nestel can also be working to rent extra outreach employees — SEPTA at present has about 20, in contrast with a police pressure of about 260 officers.

Sister Scullion stated she applauded SEPTA’s strategy, however famous that the transit police didn’t all the time have outreach employees with them.

“Do dangerous issues occur? Yep, they do, periodically,” she stated.

Employees additionally nonetheless battle to search out acceptable shelter for a lot of who want it. And fewer than 50 % of these contacted by outreach employees agree to just accept providers, Chief Nestel stated.

With out modifications to the shelter system or extra housing, he added, “we don’t have a solution for the larger group but.”

These options are in equally quick provide in New York, which not like most different cities is required by a court docket order to supply emergency shelter to each homeless particular person.

New York’s sprawling subway has a further hurdle: 24-hour service on just about each line and 472 stations, making it troublesome for outreach groups to cowl the complete system.

Officers acknowledge that the system’s measurement poses a problem and that options tried elsewhere might not work as nicely in New York. However with the mayor’s plan in its early phases, they promise riders will quickly see outcomes.

“It’s going to take a short time,” Janno Lieber, the M.T.A.’s chairman and chief govt, stated at a latest information convention. “However I’m very optimistic, partly due to the extreme dedication that the mayor has made.”