New York homeless crisis on the brink of collapsing

New York has begun this week, with hundreds of volunteers, the titanic task of counting the homeless in its streets. The figures from this census will determine the federal funds allocated to this community.

Last year’s count estimates that 3,439 homeless people reside in the city. The number had dropped to 2,376 in 2021, when the pandemic prompted authorities to offer a temporary hotel accommodation program to disinfect the subway. With 472 stations and hundreds of miles of track, the New York subway has become the focus of the homelessness crisis in the Big Apple.

The problem threatens to reach a breaking point with the arrival of thousands of immigrants who saturate the spaces destined for the homeless. For months, New York and other Democratic cities have received buses full of migrants from Republican states as a measure of pressure on the federal government to address the border crisis.

The death of Michelle Go, a woman pushed onto the subway tracks by a homeless man in January 2022, has reignited concerns about the safety of commuters. In response, Mayor Eric Adams launched an aggressive plan for what he called a “cleanup” of the tunnels and stations. In 2021, the New York subway reached a peak in the number of violent incidents with eight murders in twelve months.

In November 2022, Adams announced a controversial plan whereby homeless people with severe mental disorders could be committed against their will to psychiatric facilities. The measure has been criticized for its lack of long-term vision for detainees under this rule.

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