A man, who identified as “Rick,” took to Twitter to give his personal account of his experience at the 30th Street Men’s Shelter in Manhattan. Through the organization HumanNYC, Rick detailed how he was transported from the subways by the city and dropped off there.
“I came from the 7 train. In Queens,” said Rick to HumanNYC. He also said that once he was dropped off, there was no other help. So what was he going to do?
“I’m gonna sleep outside…again,” said Rick. “…there’s no help.” According to HumanNYC, he left the area within minutes.
In a multi-pronged effort to address homeless New York and the COVID-19 pandemic, a battle wages over its success. According to advocacy organizations, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s tactics have failed.
But for City Hall and the MTA, everything is fine. Everything is under control.
While HumanNYC officials couldn’t be reached for comment, their social media––along with the social media of other activist organizations––have painted a different picture to the one de Blasio has presented to the media and the public.
Last week, the MTA debuted its “Essential Plan Night Service” that closes the subways between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.––forcing those traveling overnight to rely strictly on the bus for transportation. The goal of the initiative is to give cleaners time to take care of the subway each day while still giving riders a means of travel.
It also pushes homeless people out into the streets. Something that doesn’t sit well with Coalition for the Homeless Policy Director Giselle Routheir.
“If you want to help homeless New Yorkers move off the subways and the streets, you need to offer them somewhere safe to go,” said Routheir. “During this pandemic, many homeless New Yorkers are rightfully afraid of crowded congregating shelters, where COVID-19 continued to spread. More policing won’t stop homeless individuals from taking refuge in the subways because it doesn’t address what people actually need: safe, private space so they can take the advice of health officials to maintain social distance.”
According to City Hall officials, Department of Social Services (DSS) and Department of Human Services (DHS) workers have gone around the city, including the subways, and have engaged with homeless New Yorkers and either helped them go into a shelter or a hospital, if necessary.
According to the MTA, the collaborative effort by the city and their agency is necessary to keep subways clean and people safe as they can from COVD-19 exposure and that closing overnight and having everyone exit the trains and stations – no matter their personal situation – helps them disinfect the entire active subway fleet at least every 24 hours. Anyone who pays their fare and follows the Transit Rules of Conduct is welcome in the system,” the spokesperson told the AmNews.
The MTA also directed the AmNews to a statement from MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick J. Foye about the aggressive tactics used to keep subways clean to advance their Essential Plan Night Service initiative.
“The safety of our customers and employees is always our highest priority,” stated Foye. “Overnight closure of the subway will allow us to take our cleaning operation to a never-before-seen level. We will more aggressively and efficiently disinfect our full fleet of rolling stock every single day. Touch points at stations will be cleaned twice daily. We’ve never undertaken so challenging a task, and as Governor Cuomo has said, it’s going to take a herculean effort.”
The mayor hopes that his current policies will remedy the homeless situation. According to administrative officials, all the appropriate measures are in place to keep the city’s homeless safe in shelters and they’ve also handled the COVID-19 cases they have encountered in shelters as well. DSS praised the city’s efforts and said that their “proactive” strategies have contributed to its success.
“…through these strategies, we have also proactively relocated and continue to proactively relocate thousands of individuals from targeted shelters to commercial hotel settings out of an abundance of caution, including seniors and single adults from larger congregate locations, who are not sick at this time,” said the department spokesperson. In a letter from DSS, sent to the AmNews, it was revealed that there were 908 total positive cases that they were tracking (as of May 10). This includes 760 cases in homeless shelters, 44 cases among the “unsheltered” and 104 agency referrals. Out of the 908 total cases, 74 resulted in deaths. The department also stated that there were 755 total discharges from isolation, which is up from the 740 they reported in the previous day’s summary. This includes positive cases where conditions have abated or been resolved and those who showed mild symptoms.
DSS officials have also said, with 1,000 New Yorkers relocated this past week, that they can “confidently” report that 8,000 homeless people (more than a third of all the city’s single adult homeless population) are now residing in shelters or commercial hotel settings while maintaining social distancing.
But some organizations have questioned those numbers. Joseph Noonan of VOCAL-NY told the AmNews that the mayor’s numbers are a farce and his statements to the public are lies. “The mayor is so consistent about lying to New Yorkers about what’s going on in the shelters that New Yorkers pay for, that it’s not surprising that he did this in a moment of crisis,” said Noonan.
The mayor told the media that on the night of May 9, the city engaged with 261 homeless people resulting in 139 of them accepting help, 116 going into a shelter and 23 going to hospitals. “That’s a ludicrous number,” said Noonan. “We know the vast majority of people who slept on the subway did not interact with DHS workers that night.”
When others pushed back against the numbers, de Blasio left it to his underlings to address them. During a Tuesday, May 12, media briefing, the mayor said he was surprised by a reporter’s question about advocacy organizations’ skepticism of the numbers, but left the job of responding to DHS Commissioner Steven Banks.
“We made a change by redirecting the buses directly to special shelters and not the Bellevue intake center,” said Banks on Tuesday. “That change was made on Friday night, I thought it was an important evaluation of challenges that we had and that where we’re making changes as we go along…when we get a few days further we think we’ll be able to have a broader look at the individuals who have accepted services and actually remained in shelter and the individuals that need more services in order to remain in shelter.”
While Banks touted de Blasio’s approach to the homeless issue, medical professionals questioned his efforts as early as April and the criticisms remain the same.
In a letter from the Health and Housing Consortium, addressed to de Blasio and New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo, medical professionals articulated to elected officials their issues with the current tactics. “Many of us have expressed our concerns publicly and privately, and are appreciative that several of these concerns have been addressed,” read the letter. “We remain troubled, however, at the slow and still inadequate response to protect homeless New Yorkers.” The letter called for the city to implement a plethora of measures including streamlining the process for discharging homeless patients from hospitals, proactively protecting people who are homeless and who do not yet have COVID-19 and an end to street sweeps if they don’t result in putting people in individual housing units.
More than 500 medical professionals signed off on the letter.
There’s a belief held among many of the city’s homeless that the streets are preferable to a shelter due to its conditions. COVID-19 has exacerbated the belief among this camp and Noonan said that belief makes the mayor’s number unbelievable.
“These are the people who tend to be the least trusting,” said Noofnan. “The mayor has come up with a ludicrous and harmful plan and has misled the public about how it’s going. Kicking people out of the subway doesn’t count as ‘engaging.’”