The MTA announced and then suspended an initiative to remove the growing number of homeless from the subway. A homeless advocacy group calls it a “substantial victory.”
The MTA and NYPD announced a joint effort to clear the homeless out of subways. The announcement came in response to an increasing amount of the homeless population seeking shelter in subways from the harsh winter.
The plan was set to begin at 3 a.m. the morning of Feb. 24, specifically focusing on the E train in order to clear out the homeless before rush hour. A representative of the MTA stated that "We are not doing this to be cruel to them. [Homelessness] is not going to get solved overnight, but we are working on it together with police officers."
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
On Feb. 21, three days before the sweep was to be enacted, the MTA announced that they were going to suspend the sweep because "it's been portrayed as something it isn't."
KatarzynaBialasiewicz/KatarzynaBialasiewicz
The MTA's statement is likely in reference to the swift and vocal protests raised by groups like Picture The Homeless. With no police presence on the subway Monday morning, many PTH representatives called the suspension a "substantial victory."
Representatives from the organization were on hand for the planned 3 a.m. rollout at both the World Trade Center E platform and the Jamaica Station E platform, just in case the MTA and NYPD reneged on their announced suspension. (The homeless favor the E train due to its relative shortness. Rush hour starts later on a train like the E as opposed a train like the N where rush hour starts earlier due to it spanning from Coney Island to Astoria in Queens).
Darlene Bryant, a representative of Picture The Homeless who was also once spent time among the homeless that ride the subways, said that the organization was distrustful of the police, citing events like the 1988 riot in Tompkins Square Park as being indicative of their untrustworthiness.
The group is also concerned about newly appointed police commissioner William Bratton. He was police commissioner for a brief period of time beginning in 1994 under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and presided over similarly controversial policing of the homeless that occupied the subway.
Bryant also accused the city of being more willing to "pay to place the homeless in a shelter rather than help them get into a real home," noting that the homeless that slept in the subway didn't go to the shelters because they are "nasty, degrading, not safe, and there's no room."
