NEW YORK — Three months after the launch of the New York City Subway Safety Plan, more than 1,300 homeless people have accepted help and shelter, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.
According to Adams, 1,379 people accepted placement in safe haven, stabilization and shelter beds as part of the Metro Safety Plan, a 17-page program to combat the massive increase in crime on public transportation throughout the city.
The city’s multi-pronged approach includes 30 “Joint Response Teams” staffed by the Department of Health, the Department of Homeless Services, the New York City Police and community groups.
Police will also have what the city called a “clear mandate” to enforce the MTA’s rules, and will receive training on them. Among the prohibitions they are expected to enforce are lying on seats, littering, taking drugs, or “using the subway system for any purpose other than transportation.”
Another key change in the city’s plan is to require, rather than request, that people get off the train and exit the station at the end of subway lines.
“Three months into our work to make subways safer and connect New Yorkers in need to services, it is clear that our efforts are working,” said Mayor Adams in a statement. “We’ve connected more than 1,300 New Yorkers with shelter and other vital services, and our teams make hundreds of engagements every day on the subway, a monumental milestone.”
The number of people who accepted assistance is a big increase from the only 22 people who accepted help during the first week of the program, according to the city.
Outreach teams reach around 744 people in need daily through the Metro Safety Plan and end-of-line (or EOL) outreach efforts to connect them with long-term permanent housing, health care mental health and other services, depending on the city.
“All New Yorkers deserve a permanent home and today’s milestone is a first step toward that goal,” Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said in a statement.
As part of the Metro Safety Plan, the city is providing extension services at all 24 end-of-line stations every night and throughout the entire subway system every day. At some EOL stations, enhanced reach is provided overnight through joint response efforts that include multiple city departments and community providers.
Although the city describes the number of people helped through the Metro Safety Plan as a “milestone,” some of Adams’s approaches to ending homelessness in the city have been controversial, particularly his efforts to eliminate camps throughout the city.
The renewed push to engage with and offer services to homeless people camping on city streets comes amid an effort already underway to help them get out of its sprawling subway system, which has been plagued by crime and attacks in recent months. However, that is not just limited to the homeless.
That said, Adams argues that the current situation of homeless people on the streets is unsustainable and that, as a society, we have become accustomed to seeing these encampments and accepting it as a way of life, something he called “unacceptable” and “dysfunctional.” “.
“We’re going to have a city that’s much better than the dysfunctional city we’ve had for too long,” he said earlier in March while revealing more about encampments across the city.
Adams previously said that people living in these camps are being offered services, including information about “safe haven sites” with dozens of beds.
–
