Report Shows MTA Homeless Outreach In New York Subway Is A Bust

Officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are not aware of the number of homeless people who sleep on the New York subway every night. A report by the Inspector General has revealed the agency is not capable of addressing the problem.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo initiated a task force to make plans to reduce the number of people who used the subway for shelter. However, the lack of data from the MTA hindered the operations of the task force.

Complaints concerning vagrants in the system increased after the agency revamped the $5 million annual effort to get the homeless out of the subways and into the shelters. Train delays owing to the homeless also continued, according to Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny.

The report indicated the program cost over 2.5 million dollars in overtime. However, 10-person teams of MTA law enforcement and social workers only managed to get three transients out of the system per station each night.

The transit leaders rely on the city’s HOPE survey that counts homeless people across the city one night a year and the tallies taken by the subway workers on the subway lines to estimate the numbers that sleep in the MTA facilities.

According to the New York Daily News, the report should list the expectations for the city and nonprofit partners participating in outreach. To place the benchmarks in place, the transit leaders must first know the scale of the problem.

The Bowery Residents Committee workers are supposed to convince six of every 100 homeless people they come across to accept assistance, though the MTA does not have a meaningful way of making sure the benchmark has been met.

The limitations in outreach have become a more significant issue as the coronavirus pandemic caused ridership in the subways to drop by more than 90 percent in the spring. It has forced the homeless to be more noticeable in the empty train stations.

Gov. Cuomo directed the MTA to close from May 6 each night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. to disinfect the train car and clear out the vagrants. The officials have praised the shutdown saying the subway has never been cleaner. However, the MTA has released little data to show the way the homeless outreach is going.