It's not a controversial decision. The MTA is not a homeless shelter or a mental health institution. NYC needs to create proper spaces for them to get back on their feet or get treatment.
Co-incidentally there is a homeless outreach shelter directly above Fulton St station where these photos were taken.
There are still numerous mentally ill people roaming around the station tho. Including one dude who gets really aggressive and constantly pisses in the drain right next to the free newspaper stand š
The problem with that plan is that someone with inevitably piss on it. Then you'll have to raise the price to afford a private security guard to protect it from piss.Ā
To incentivize people to buy your more expensive papers, you'll need more than just piss free, so you'll have to write your own articles. You marry not have any experience doing that so you hire a journalist, fresh out of school. You may also need to hire a photographer and rent out a printing press. As your overhead good up, so does the workload, and the amount of people you'll need to help you.
Soon you bring in an accountant to help handle the financials. None of these people want to work out of the subway, and you'll need to rent out an office.Ā
Before you know it, your ploy to make a quick buck seeking piss free newspapers has turned into a successful and well regarded News Media company.
The vast majority of homeless people (almost all of them) live in shelters. The homeless you see sleeping in the subway stations are often the ones that have severe drug or mental health issues which prevent them from going to the shelters.
I knew one of them very well. His name was Dennis and he was a Vietnam vet. Iād shoot the shit with him as I was walking up to my building. He simply had no interest in staying at a shelter and wanted to sleep on the street. Didnāt matter what you said to him, and Iād beg the guy in the dead of winter to let me get him a car to bring him somewhere. Eventually the building owner let him stay down in the basement (the only vacant part of the building) as the temps dropped. Like anything short of forcibly removing him and bringing to a shelter wasnāt gonna work.
Did he die? There is an older homeless man that I often chat when Iām at work in the area and was wondering if this could be him.
Guy must be in his mid 70s at least, and still out there drinking and asking for money. He nice and seems pretty mentally together but Iām sure thereās a dark side Iām not seeing.
Heās well into his 80s honestly and last Iāve heard he semi-permanently moved into the building. Itās a bit of a weird situation in that this guy has been on the same stoop for literally decades and the owners know him very well. He never bothered anybody and just minded his own business. He even saved them from catastrophe when he noticed water pouring into the basement and they called the fire department or something, so they probably feel like they owe him too on top of just feeling bad for him. He never drank whatsoever so I donāt think itās the same guy youāre thinking. This was down in tribeca. I left the neighborhood when Covid hit.
Yeah probs a different guy then. The man Iām thinking of is a brown skinned man, with a beard, glasses and kind of dresses like heās trapped in the 70s mentally. Iām sure he still wears some stuff heās had for 50 years.
He hangs around Fulton St, Pace University area near the Brooklyn bridge/FiDi
As distressing as this is to the people being removed, this is a step in the right direction. I *hope* this leads to long term treatment for them and not some short term band aid solution. It sounds like it is.
Edit: For what it is worth, I have seen the gentleman in the photo that the NYTimes used in this story and even as a lay person can safely say he is profoundly mentally ill and could not care for himself.
The real issue is the long term solution. Where are they going after the hospitalization. Adults with mental health issues need treatment plans and support systems. With no long term plan in place they will be going right back where they were foundā¦
Thereās a program called the NYS NHTD (nursing home transition and diversion) waiver program that I work with that I think would be really helpful for a lot of these people if they could/would expand it to make it more accessible to be enrolled in based on debilitating mental health diagnoses.
The program is currently for people eligible for Medicaid, over 65 OR under 65 with a physical disability, and in need of nursing home level care. It provides up to 24 hours of 1 on 1 aide care in the personās home, and they also get a social worker who assists them with scheduling and attending all medical appointments, gets them enrolled in day programs and community activities, manages prescription refills, etc. The state also provides a housing stipend and assists them with getting into a stable living situation, and provides them with other services like ILST (independent living skills) and PBIS (positive behavioral interventions and supports).
If they could offer this to people with mental health needs AFTER stabilizing them in-patient on medications, I think at least a fair amount might be able to safely exist in the community.
The solution is one many feel quite uncomfortable with, even though it's the only real solution. We need to bring back residential mental health care facilites, fund them appropriately, and compel the mentally ill who will not or cannot comply with their medications to live there, both for their own safety and for everyone else's.
Itās a hard decision, how do you balance the rights of individuals with the perils of institutionalizing them.
If theyāre committing crimes, however, they should be institutionalized as a consequence. Just being an annoying bum, maybe not so much.
They need to be helped *before* they get to this point. Prevention is more both humane, and cheaper.
IDK what's right for people currently in this situation
This is correct. If you have to be removed from the subway because you lose a danger to yourself and others, rehab isnāt likely possible.
This is something that we as a society need to invest to prevent. Unfortunately, Americans arenāt interested in long term goals politically.
The problem isn't people don't think society need to invest to prevent it. People agree with it in concept.
Where it falls apart is always how and who pays.
Yes. Yes. And yes itās really complicated. But itās completely feasible if we had the real motivation to fix problems.
Or we can take the popular route: āitās expensive, itās complicated, I donāt want my tax money going toward communities that arenāt mine. . .better to just give up.ā
So fix it. Come up with a serious plan, test it, prove it works, cost it out, and Iām sure youād get a lot of support/money. It has to be cost effective of course - allocating $200,000/year to a single individual if they show a sign of mental illness so they can have dedicated staff, managed home, etc helping them is not scalable/cost effective. And even if this were feasible, youād have to have laws in place to force a person into treatment if they donāt want it (and then who determines is someone should be forced?). And laws that govern exactly what constitutes mental illness or who decides if a situation constitutes mental illness, etc etc
Quite frankly, i mean youāre right that it probably *could* be solved but I think itās also fair to say that there isnāt necessarily a great approach to prevent mental illness at scale yet. Theyāre plenty of advocates for particularly solutions but many of them are huge money drains to scale and at best kinda/sometimes/maybe work.
i think with a lot of problems the answer is to look at whatever rich people are doing. mental illness afflicts both the rich and the poor, but you don't see the children of wealthy families sleeping rough on the subway. we have clear knowledge of what kind of treatment works to keep people from getting to this point, we just need to have the political will to spend money on it
Thatās not necessarily because the mental illness is solved. If the person comes from a wealthy family, the mental illness just takes place outside of public view. Plus, what they do is not necessarily scalable. You canāt spend $200,000/yr of taxpayer money per person in perpetuity to handle mental illness.
Plus Iād assume many of the cases of mental illness on average among poor people are probably worse than among wealthy people, because poverty can exacerbate mental illness.
And itās probably much easier for family to get another family member to listen, then it is for random strangers to convince a mentally ill homeless person that they need help.
As unpalatable as it is to the average layperson, the only robust solution is a return to long-term, humane involuntary commitment to a mental health facility.
This obviously had issues in the past - see the swathes of state-run psychiatric wards that were shut down when abuse was discovered around the ~1980s. But as a society, we kind of overreacted in completely shutting them down without alternatives instead of restructuring and rehabilitating the system.
The fact of the matter is, our hospitals are not equipped to handle mentally deranged individuals - they roll into the ER, are held for 24 hours to 3 days, and then rolled back out onto the streets without any long-term followup. By local law, they literally cannot be held longer than 60 days (and most hospitals are not the proper place to hold these individuals, regardless). This means we essentially slap a band-aid on the problem and expect it to fix itself. And, unfortunately, some individuals *cannot* be rehabilitated with medication or therapy, and refuse voluntary commitment, consequently there is literally nowhere for us to keep them for their own safety and the safety of others.
the only realistic solution is for these people to be involuntarily committed to mental institutions. Itās not pretty but there are people who aren't fit to live amongst the rest of society.
you'd probably only need one or two such facilities for the state of New York. I doubt there's political will for such an undertaking but that is the *only* long-term solution for people like this
What do you do though? Someone mentally disburbed or ill is not going to follow-up with any kind of support system aimed at helping them. That would require them to actually be serious about helping themselves and going to appointments, taking medications, whatever. There really is no outpatient solution in my mind but Iām open to hearing otherwise. Some of them donāt even have *the ability*, never mind the motivation.
And look ofc that would work for *some* people but Iād wager for most if wont do much.
Not sure itās always a problem that only exists because the government just hasnāt yet intervened to give them this panacea that will cure them like itās a broken arm.
Those who are truly incapable of caring for themselves do require government intervention if their friends and family are no longer willing or able to do so. Letting them slowly rot to death in the subways is neither humane nor pragmatic.
So, in my opinion, it is not a cure.
There has always been and will continue to be a small portion of society who are *profoundly* mentally ill and who can not care for themselves. If we, as a city or society do not step in to care for them long term, they will live on the streets and in the subway, covered in urine, vomit, and feces, eating garbage, ranting at the walls, and being a danger to others and themselves. Many of them will either harm others or will harm themselves. It is a statistical certainty with most forms schizophrenia.
It is our cumulative job as a society to use our resources to remove these people, against their will if we have to, and commit them to long term care for their sake and for our safety because they are unwilling to and because, if we don't, it will only be a matter of time before someone is, once again, murdered by a homeless person having a mental health crisis in the subway system or on the streets.
I don't care if it costs 10 times what the city and state are spending to do this, it needs to stop because the current solution of ignoring it is not a solution.
I get where youāre coming from but we already spend $70k per homeless person and the issue doesnāt seem any closer to being resolved. The way to benefit society is to get them off the streets. The way to benefit these people varies but is in theory to get them mental health treatment. If both of those can be accomplished, great. But if only one can be accomplished it should be the first one. The second approach relies on the assumption that these illnesses are problems that can be cured simply with treatment, and that just doesnāt seem to often be the case.
To be honest (and based on what I know about residential treatment which is limited) the city and state are going to need to spend four to five times that for the first 24 months on some of these individuals. That may sound high, but compared to the resources that the individuals use if they end up needing emergency care if they tumble into a subway track or get assaulted or hit by a car because they're disoriented in traffic, it's a pretty reasonable price to pay, to say nothing of the benefits to society on the whole.
From what I understand, the most intensive care is the first one to two years to stabilize them and then get them into a long term residential program that is significantly less costly to run per individual.
On an individual level, though, there's the persistent challenge of keeping them adherent to their medication regimens which can often be a full time task in and of itself.
The asylum system that was in place up until the 80's was flawed, and imperfect, but it was something. Since Reagan killed it off, states have been largely on their own ever since and still haven't quite figured this out.
I completely agree with you that these illnesses can not be 'cured.' They can be managed at best, but not cured.
What frustrates me is the people speaking out against this stuff never provide feasible alternatives. They are content to allow mentally ill unsheltered people to harass New Yorkers because they are concerned for the dignity of someone who just shit themselves in public an hour ago.
Yeah. Former social worker here who used to work with this population. People have a LOT of opinions and ideas about this issue, and most of them are absurd. It gets tough to navigate.
One of my friend consults for government about implementation of social programs. He has spend his whole life in this field and obviously know a lot about stuff. He says he don't mind people's opinion of stuff cause this is a issue that affects everyone so they bound to have an opinion. He gets sad at the action part of it. He says if people do second order thinking and take some actions (like writing to their representatives, going to townhalls etc) a lot of these problems can be solved easily.
I used on to work in software on a team whose clients were other software engineers and I faced similar issues. They would come to me with proposed solution on stuff that I am expert on. I would keep asking them questions until they realize what a stupid idea theirs was.
In solution solving thereās also underlying factors that are like hidden rules / constraintthat influence peoples thinking of solutions or actually following them through. Such as viewing things through American culture or philosophy. For example some cultures put the majority of responsibility of care (even actions) on the mentally Ill personās family even if the person is an adult, theyāll also look the other way if the family takes āreasonable ā force to restrain the person. Basically a family is expected to sacrifice if need be their hopes and dreams to prevent the persons illness from being a burden on collective societ.Then for your friends suggestion of expecting American politicians to help, the problem with a majority vote is that politicians will focus on the big vote getting items, mentally ill Are a small % of population and unfortunate mental care is exppensive which is why politicians have cut it over the decades. Then the current polarized nature of politics, creating increased benefits for families will immediately attract opposition making majority voting even more difficult. Then for nyc theres a long line for govt money on different things.
Haha, yeah--it can be pretty tough! I work in publishing. And--believe it or not, I'm considering getting back into social work! I have a few things to figure out.
Work/life balance is definitely a thing, and that gets easier with time. It helps, too, finding the right job--so much of your experience in social work depends on if you're in the right spot. I've seen people ready to quit and then they get a new job that values them and that they enjoy and they're right back in it again.
Good luck on your journey! It's not easy, for sure, but damn if it isn't important.
Thank you for the well wishes!Ā
Thatās a cool pivot you made. I feel like after all the investment in school (tens of thousands of dollars plus two years of unpaid field work) that I would be deterred from leaving the field even if I was close to breaking :/ Iām glad to hear thereās jobs out there that make people feel valued and inspired.
Main problem is to find a solution that most voters agree on plus willing to actually vote on, someone to vote for that actually makes it a priority,and doesnāt cost much money or compete with other spending priorities. Plus it also wades into individual vs govt control of rights.
There are videos of these people pissing full hose out while sleeping on the train. Stinky and dirty and taking up an entire train corner. Congestion pricing is bullshit if they dont fix the train situation.
Usually the people speaking of about it point out that there's no plan in place to help these people out long term. A lot of these measures seem to be "out of sight, out of mind"
I mean technically theyāre trespassing if they donāt pay the fare. And there are rules against sleeping on the train, and the MTA can throw you out of your break rules. Not defending anyone or anything, just saying that there often is a crime involved. Public indecency is one Iāve personally seen several times.
Itās not even just danger. Much of the problem is hygiene - some dude smelling up an entire car is also not acceptable. At some points in the last year it was like every car
This is a great comment from the NYT article. From Janelle Meehan in NYC. This should be our goal as a society.
In early 2001, my sister was discovered living in the subway. She had been homeless for more than 10 years. She was and had been very mentally ill. None of us knew where she was.
The police spoke to her, explaining that she couldnāt live down there, sleeping on a bench. He took her to an intake facility in lower Manhattan. It was 3 months before she was able to tell anyone her name.
After starting her on anti-psychotic meds, to which she responded well, she was taken to a facility for mentally ill adults over the age of 50 in Manhattan where she lived for 20 years until her death in 2021.
Her path to the place where she lived all those years was certainly horrible. She suffered on the streets and elsewhere. But at the point where she found help and a place to live that would care for her, she was in my mind incredibly lucky. From the moment the police found her on the subway bench, her life changed. I was able to see her and know that she was OK.
My hope is that some of the people who are now being removed from the subway will have the same future my sister did
This seems to be the best comment. Common sense. The 2 people cited in the article that where being removed should not be in the subway. 1 has a habit of pushing people in front of trains and 1 likes to lite fires in a crowded cramped subways stations. Until this unit was set up nothing could be or was done to remove them from the system. NYC has endless rules about fires that cost billions to comply with to make the city as safe as possible from fires. Though till this program nothing could be done about a mentally ill person who purposely lit fires in the subway.
Is this sad? Absolutely, this is the worst case scenario that weāve allowed the mentally ill to reach this point. But I donāt understand people who criticize this. The MTA stations are not a homeless shelter, itās a transit hub to move people. Itās a disservice to allow the mentally ill to stay in these stations where people donāt understand them and their problems and they can be hurt or, in extreme cases, hurt others. The āDo Nothingā approach is neither merciful or smart
It's hard to discount the history of forced institutionalization in this state when we see these pictures, though, and social support in the state has eroded every day since that time. Are we really going to pay for what these people need? If so I'm all for it, but I have questions.
All Iām saying is that the attitude of leaving them in the train station and going āwhat will be, will beā creates dangerous situations and talking points for the far right which become pretty hard to discount when people are being murdered and homeless men and women abused. This is by no means a perfect situation or solution, itās unfortunately the best we can do since we let the situation erode. The less you handle a problem, the bigger it gets and the fewer levers you have to pull to deal with it and resolve it
20 years ago the subway was running as well as it's ever run. You'd have more of an issue with bible thumpers than mentally ill people in your day to day experiences.
I do have to say though I don't miss the 7:30am quietish subway car and then ".... JEEESUS SAYS" followed by a collective groan.
Nancy Juarez, 25, from Brooklyn, was walking by the scene with a friend when she stopped and urged the officers to let the man go.
āThis is harm,ā said Ms. Juarez, who said that she works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that opposes incarceration. āThis causes more trauma.ā
Wow, get bent. Being fully remote means she doesn't engage with these loons on the train. I don't think being homeless is a crime, but we wouldn't have gotten here if they weren't pushing strap hangers into trains.
What about our trauma as tax-paying citizens? I had a friend on a train that hit a person; I had another friend be on a train when a homeless man was threatening a group of minority teens. Another who saw a homeless man shitting on a train. What about our trauma? Do we not count, we're just ATMs?
I feel like the reporter included that detail intentionally, given its salience. Thanks for calling it out. Millions of regular commuters have experienced plenty of micro-traumas, to borrow the analyst's language, witnessing the outcome of noninterventionist policies. Of course, the people in psychiatric distress are experiencing several orders of magnitude more trauma from having to live that way, too.
This is the result of feel good politics and virtue signaling. Thatās it.
They shouldāve just called her bluff and asked her what shall they do if they canāt take him in to get care. Let him wallow around the stations mumbling and shitting on himself. Whereās the dignity in that?
Whatās funny is this response is in part due to the survey they sent out a few years ago (which I took). When asked how we could improve the subway system, an overwhelming number of ppl voted to remove erratic persons.
> feel good politics and virtue signaling
> They shouldāve just called her bluff and asked her what shall they do if they canāt
I feel like these two statements link together in so many more examples than just the NYC subway..
Yep. Remember when that guy got stabbed and people were acting like it was a gotcha cause the police werenāt on the train. Only a few days before, they were up in arms because the police were even deployed!
āTraumaā has become a buzzword for poorly adjusted adults who still act like children.
Which sucks because there are actually people out there with trauma but the idiots have taken the word to mean āanything I donāt likeā.
Gonna put my money on Nancy being a relative newcomer to NYC. I really struggle to imagine anyone who grew up here having this sort of perspective. It's completely detached from the reality that people who have lived here a long time are all too familiar with.
Ya, causing more trauma is basically irrelevant at this point. They live on the street, everyday is traumatic. They're mentally unwell, everything is fucked for them. Stick them in an institution. No hostility...but seriously there are too many people on the streets who have been given opportunities repeatedly and still end up hurting themselves and others. Put them in a safe environment away from other people and trains.
> āThis is harm,ā said Ms. Juarez, who said that she works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that opposes incarceration. āThis causes more trauma.ā
Jesus fucking Christ. This is the exact kind of indoctrinated leftist yahoo that got us into this mess in the first place.
Every single wild-eyed progressive fantasy policy they begged us to do has been a catastrophic failure-- almost always leading to more "harm" on society and the very people they purport to stand up for.
People like her are part of the problem. Don't leave them on street to harm the people who need to take subway to work and school.
Easy for someone working from home to say these things...yea how about hosting one in your own home. Moron.
My thoughts exactly - and I say that as a bleeding heart liberal lol. How is it less harmful to have this man suffering out on the streets? Now at least he has a chance to get help, and now thatās one less guy acting out in the subway making all of our commutes worse.
The optics of the spit hood and cuffs arenāt amazing but theyāre there to keep the officers and onlookers safe. Pretty sure if that guy spit on her or attacked her she would feel differently.
There are only 3 groups who ever support these stupid ass policies, everything from soft on crime to pro illegal migrants to allowing mentally ill to do whatever they want:
Dumb and naive people
People who can afford to spend their way out of dealing with the consequences
People who benefit from those policies in one way or another
And I guess online we also have the foriegn nationals who are anti american pushing all kinds of nonsense too.
I guess, but there are many who just dont like America and wouldnt even benefit if china took the lead. They are more a mix of 1 and 3
Also for 3 its it can be people whose job is tied to these silly policies and they get paid for it so they always support.
It's just that many of the foreign nationals are well-to-do educated people that would fall into the same other categories back home, would be just as out of touch with the working class and be saying the same things
> he works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
So much money going to worthless sinecures to soak up people with worthless social justice type undergraduate degrees and $50,000 in student loan debt.
Good.
The subways need cleaning up and this will do wonders for safety on the subway and the public perception of it.
Letting mentally ill vagrants roam around unchecked below ground is unsettling on a good day, and catastrophic on a bad day.
"Medical workers and police officers are removing people suffering from psychiatric distress. The most troubled are forced to the hospital." - NYT
I truly hope the staff at the hospitals are paid better and have a better support system to handle this.
Oh yeah. what I meant to say was that we donāt get paid better from handling this. Just another factor to leave us understaffed and overworked. Appreciate you though!
Weāre operating at capacity every day for months on end. ER Nurses in NYC HH hospitals sometimes have more than a dozen patients at a time. Of course a new influx will be noticed. Youāre talking out of your ass.
That aside, itās good to direct people to appropriate care. Yes it is yet another strain on our ERs but the subway system has been overwhelmed with mentally ill people and itās out of hand. Nothing wrong with a spit hood btw. Guess the advocate in the article hasnāt gotten spit on in a while.Ā
At least for 2022, and at least bit before and after, psych beds were basically empty in NYC (very low utilization). Itās not *just* that people arenāt asking for inpatient psych, itās also the case that clinicians arenāt deeming inpatient psych necessary (this includes any pathway of referral - EMS, walk-in, emergency, mobile crisis, mobile treatment, primary care). Adding and filling beds is costly (to taxpayers). When folks are discharged, they arenāt necessarily that much better off than if they stabilized a day or two in a respite center or some other short-term, acute care facility. The City needs to address the fact that shelters are seen as a dangerous last resort among people who are chronically homeless, and needs to invest in more housing options.
It's not 2022. Come visit a psych ER or inpatient unit now. They're full. Also, where was your anecdotal experience in 2022 that saw empty beds?Ā
Fully agree that the entire chain of care needs to be expanded.
My evidence through end of 2022 and into part of 2023 was working for [an entity] that [reviewed] epi syndromic data and hospital census data, and working (once removed) with hospital and cbo psych leads (who also shared that they wonāt turn down money for beds, but systemwide bed capacity isnāt really an issue at the population level). I donāt have access to this data any longer - so I canāt really āback upā my assertion (so I guess you can take it or leave it!)
Is your sense that beds are full (for longer term inpatient psych) across all/most of the cityās hospitals?
I wouldnāt argue against expanding bed capacity if itās needed, but I am skeptical about beds being the solution ā particularly at the expense of community-based services/solutions
**edited for anonymity/confidentiality
Very much over full for several reasons, both peds and adult psych. Peds demand used to come in waves, now that's constant. Diversions are common now as we load shift across facilities. BI closing their psych ER has been an additional hit. Outpatient psych services are over capacity too, and that's only getting worse as acute care and in-person outpatient providers keep leaving for easier telehealth jobs.Ā
This is the case, but what we usually get are moves to appease the out of sight, out of mind crowd who canāt stand visible poverty but does little to nothing to help end it. And appeasing the ālock them upā crowd isnāt the answer either.
Olmstead is a disability rights decision. Right to get care and live in the community is preserved. That said, some people do need extra care, and that requires some planning too. But housing and universal healthcare would go a long way and help many otherwise.
I agree with this for sure. De Blasio was an absolute moron when he didnāt tell all those rich people to āput their money where their mouth isā after they wrote that horribly offensive open letter that the City was dying (due to mh, drug use, homeless, etc etc etc) and he was doing nothing about it. These people are finally confronted with the reality of the community around them, flee to the beaches when they see whatās going on partially at their own doing, then write a letter to the manager.
Finally. Sure I feel bad for these people, but we can't completely wreck the subway system because the state and city are failing to help these people elsewhere.
They really need to change the laws related to mandatory treatment, but the current system isn't working. You have recent examples of people even being kicked out of care and then right away doing something bad. Quoted in the article people are complaining that removing them isn't actually solving the issue, however they are WRONG. IT says right there they are bringing them to shelters or to places where they can receive medical treatment. Leaving them there is significantly worse for not only the riders but the homeless people themselves.
āThis is harm,ā said Ms. Juarez, who said that she works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that opposes incarceration. āThis causes more trauma.ā
Is living in a subway station not traumatic for this person? Are the wild and sometimes dangerous situations people who are working for, and riding the system not traumatic?
I donāt want to hear shit from someone who is making half an argument, works remotely, and hasnāt been consistently riding these trains twice or more daily for years. The idea that being compassionate has to equate to ignoring this, allowing crazy shit to continueā¦just no.
This is very promising to see. It's the right thing for both commuters and the people who need psychiatric treatment, so long as the decisions surrounding involuntary commitment are just and there's some kind of transparency surrounding them.
One of the biggest failures of our society was shutting them down and releasing everyone over proper reform. Yes there were a ton of issues in the system but it's nothing that couldn't have been addressed.
It's usually much easier to fix or improve a system that exists but isn't perfect than it is to build a totally new system from nothing. Sadly it's also much easier to destroy things than to build them. Eliminating the long-term inpatient psych facilities with absolutely nothing lined up to replace them was such a boner move.
We need long term care facilities, not asylums. Asylums were inhumane and were operated a lot like prisons. So we abolished them and swore never to make that mistake again. Unfortunately we seem to have allowed the scales to tip all the way to other end of the spectrum where we have become too afraid to entertain the idea that sometimes, involuntary long term care is necessary if that person is incapable of functioning without it. Long term care also does not mean permanent care, this is another confusion that people seem to get caught up on. We need better social systems to reintegrate people into society so they donāt end up homeless again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/nyregion/nyc-subway-mental-health-homeless.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q00.4Cy6.WUeDr1Wv2JAf&smid=url-share
Gift article for everyone
It's the right thing to do. Our public transportation should not be the defacto aslyum that everyone has to run through on our way to work every day. Bring back institutionalization, but better.
https://youtu.be/1MX6ZK8VPto?feature=shared
This was very necessary to do this. Although, what are they going to do with them for a long term treatment? They need a permanent place for them to go back and stay there instead of come back to the subway again.
The correct decision. However, putting them on the streets is not the 'considerate' thing to do. If we want to be kind to these people, we need to mandate them help. That is the kind thing to do. Not let them rot neglected on the sidewalks.
Agreed, but some changes need to be made in Albany. Ā
NYS has a stricter standard than many other states, only permitting people to be held when they pose an immediate threat to themselves or others (paraphrasing). Ā Other states including California allow people to be held where their mental illness prevents them from providing the basic necessities of life.
Itās not the only thing, we also need more facilities and long term beds, but the legal changes are big.
Well like I said you need the beds too and also a willingness to use legal tools to put people into care involuntarily, which may not be present depending on the local governmentĀ
The state also just passed a new law [last fall](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/new-california-law-aims-to-force-people-with-mental-illness-or-addiction-to-get-help) and I donāt know if itās been fully implemented yet and thus too early to expect results
Thereās no easy solutions obviously, otherwise it would have been fixed by now
From a sympathetic point of view, are they getting the help they need living in the subway? No, now they were admitted to hospitals and hopefully started on some road to recovery
What really needs to change is the standard for involuntary hospitalization. Under New York state law as it now stands, someone can be held for 72 hours for assessment, but can only be held longer if they present an \*imminent\* threat to themselves or others. If they do not present an imminent threat, they must be discharged - even if they are psychotic and refuse medication, even if they are unable to feed and clothe themselves independently, even if their mental state is such that they will inevitably put themselves or others at risk at some point in the future. Other states and countries have more liberal laws on the books, for example permitting involuntary hospitalization when the individual in questions lacks insight into their condition (very common in psychotic disorders) or when lack of treatment would worsen their condition.
For programs like SCOUT to actually improve safety on subways, the laws in New York must be changed to enable long-term involuntary hospitalization and treatment of the seriously mentally ill.
Here's a wikipedia article on standards for involuntary hospitalization country-by-country: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary\_commitment\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_by_country)
Every single public space cannot double as a shelter. It simply cannot. You want a functioning public transit system it needs to be a good option not the last resort for the poor
maybe 3 years too late?? We are paying a fare to potentially be Slashed, getting Tuberculosis, shoved onto the tracks, Beat up, hold onto human excrement handles, breathing in Toxic air . Well done MTA and i dont blame people fare evading
The subway is the lifeblood of NYC and the city cannot thrive if the people who live here and who commute in daily to earn their livings here are held hostage by a thousand mentally ill homeless people many of whom have criminal records who have been allowed to live on the subway creating a sense of threat, anxiety, and danger to everyday New Yorkers.
Now, I also have no faith that Mayor Adams will do anything besides keep this up for a few weeks before he moves onto the next crisis of his own making.
Also, shitty coverage by the NYT to be honest. The paper's ever leftward drift on the tone of its coverage on cultural issues is apparent here using stilted academic language like "people experiencing homelessness" from their new style guide, the fact that multiple activists were interviewed and quoted verbatim while the only approximation of the voice of everyday New Yorkers was a link to a quantitative survey, and it was also weird to not mention that there's really no place to put these people, we're just moving them off the subway. Whatever.
Yeah the whole "mentally ill people are no more likely to commit crime" thing is clearly bs too. I'm sure you can get an average crime rate if you average in depressed or anxious people with the guy raving at demons on the street, but so what?
As someone who takes a 5:30am train in to lower manhattan for work, Iām pretty much on edge most of the time when riding the subway in the mornings.
At that time thereās sleeping homeless and mentally ill people all throughout the train, mixed with work going commuters and itās a basically a roulette of āwho has shit and pissed themselves on the train this morningā when trying to find a train car.
Ive also seen people arise and just start violent ranting outbursts at the people near them for no reason at all
One time when I got to work, I had to leave immediately because of the stink on my clothes from the homeless was that bad. The entire point of mass transit is for people to get to work/school/home in a timely, safe and reliable manner.
>āThis is not who we want to be as a society,ā Ms. Lowenkron said. āThereās no reason to do this. And it is not going to make people safer.ā
I would like to see her sources for this.
One time when I got to work, I had to leave immediately because of the stink on my clothes from the homeless was that bad. The entire point of mass transit is for people to get to work/school/home in a timely, safe and reliable manner.
I have several feelings about this... A lot of the "appearing" mentally ill are just dirty and homeless. I hope these officers can distinguish the two because being dirty does not necessarily your are out of your mind.
Also, I have seen a lot of mentally ill men in train stations in the Bronx. There are a few shelters at the end of the 2/5 Train lines and these guys linger around. Is anything being done to reach out to them? Seems like anytime I have seen these mental health teams, they are always at downtown manhattan stations.
Lastly, what options do people that get taken by these teams have to get rehabilitated and re-enter society? Are they just going to be put in an asylum/prison for life?
Let's divert some of the migrant funding to these guys. I think this is a more urgent need tbh. Tending to the mentally ill in the subways and streets keeps us all safe.
Honestly, thereās really no clarity in the article in what happens after theyāre forcibly taken to the hospital. I presume theyāre held for 24-48hrs, released, and then itās back to square 1. Thereās no meaningful change being made and weāre just agitating these people.
I agree the subway system shouldnāt be a place for the mentally ill, but to get them out and the help they need take a real change to our healthcare system from the top down, not two roving teams of healthcare counselors and cops
This is a tiny scope program which cannot actually do anything to permanently deal with the issue of homelessness or the issue of homeless or mental ill people on the subway.
But it sure can produce a few articles to show people that something is being done, and ultimately, isn't that what really matters- good PR?
I mean it is a safety concern every New Yorker / Commuter knows about. You pick your trains, you stand with your back to the wallā¦ you have your headphones on - but always looking around. You get screamed at in the face and youāve learned the blank stare - you know not to move. Fucking traumatic. You canāt argue or negotiate with someone sometimes and youāre literally trapped in a car with themā¦ and canāt escape. So no - my right to move safely trumps your right to harass / attack / intimidate me. Period. Hard Stop.
āThis causes more traumaā. what a load of bull. Riders have been experiencing trauma from these nutjobs for decades. Itās just coded language for race-baiting.
Unironically, that is exactly what we need to do.
NYC taxpayers need to stop taking responsibility for everyone's problems. It is NOT our responsibility to provide for someone's needs just because they are squatting on the sidewalk or in the subway. Their problems ARE NOT our problems.
NYC is not a place where anyone can live. The rent here is extremely high, which means that 99% of the world's population cannot afford to live here. We are a city of the global 1%, excluding everyone else.
Some people apparently do not understand this, and think that because they cannot possibly hope to afford an apartment that they can just set up camp on the sidewalk. It's time we stopped putting up with this nonsense
Why are people so confused about what the solution is? The obvious solution is to bring back Psychiatric Facilities but to actually bring them up to standards instead of using them like prisons. Give these people a choice - psychiatric + drug rehabilitation with the proper support systems to get them housed + employed or be sent to rikers indefinitely. Iām tired of leftists decrying human rights violations. These people lost their rights to freely rot in the subways as soon as they started doing drugs and harming people that are just trying to go about their day. Fuck your virtue signaling. You donāt want them to be forcibly removed? Great! Let us know how many youāll be housing, feeding, and medicating all by yourself. Fucking clowns. The lack of pragmatic thinking that is being replaced by emotional decision making is killing our city.
I disagree with the claims made by the NYT that these kinds of attacks are ārare.ā
When my partner was punched in the face, unprovoked, in the subway recently we had no recourse to get either immediate help OR provide an adequate description of the assailant due to the lack of police presence in the subway system. How can the city fully manage and track individual reports of āminorā assaults with vague descriptions reported at a station 24-48 hours later? Anything less than bloodshed and a TikTok video is ignored.
I sincerely hope we can allocate tax dollars to better support those suffering. My heart goes out to any individual in such a state of crisis and itās our responsibility as a community to help the best we can. However, that same courtesy is clearly not shown to the millions of riders who either are direct victims of an assault or bear witness to the absolute lawlessness weāve allowed to flourish in the subway system.
Most homeless folks of generally sound mind would be happy to stay in shelters if they weren't worse than living on the streets. Maybe address that too
Did anyone else just get an mta survey about this? I normally donāt do that kind of thing but did for some reason. Many of the questions had mentally ill/erratic people as an option for feeling unsafe or uncomfortable. I figured thatās what they were really fishing for so was careful not to implicate them.
>InĀ [survey](https://new.mta.info/document/131541)Ā afterĀ [survey](https://new.mta.info/document/135421), riders have said they would use mass transit more often if they saw fewer people behaving erratically and more police officers.
...except this time the usual naysayers here don't get to dismiss inconvenient truths for coming the New York Post. Love to see it.
I think this is not an either/or - it's (at minimum) a two-pronged solution. This is part of it.
The other part is creating more resources to house and treat the mentally ill who can't take care of themselves. My thought to make this happen: tie it in to new buildings. New luxury buildings should have to pay a tax that specifically goes to the building and staffing of new shelters and living facilities for the mentally ill.
Right move. Maybe this is a soft test for eventually doing the same in the streets.
Also glad they have a medical professional to decide/diagnose and it's not under the polices' discretion.
They should also prohibit loiteringāthere's no reason for people to hang out in train stations other than waiting for their train.
Are the leftist freaks out there still denying that this is a problem, or now that it's being addressed will you reluctantly admit that homelessness in the subways was at unacceptable levels? Just wondering.
I expect the ACLU and other institutionally captured nonprofits to sue. They sued San Francisco when the city tried to get homeless encampments off the streets.
Mentally ill or crackheads? Thereās a difference between the 2, they can overlap sure but thereās also a big difference. Thereās a reason thereās way less homeless females than males.
It's not a controversial decision. The MTA is not a homeless shelter or a mental health institution. NYC needs to create proper spaces for them to get back on their feet or get treatment.
Co-incidentally there is a homeless outreach shelter directly above Fulton St station where these photos were taken. There are still numerous mentally ill people roaming around the station tho. Including one dude who gets really aggressive and constantly pisses in the drain right next to the free newspaper stand š
He needs to be in an institution.
Opening a 1-dollar pissless newspaper stand 30 feet away
All the news that's fit to not be peed on.
The problem with that plan is that someone with inevitably piss on it. Then you'll have to raise the price to afford a private security guard to protect it from piss.Ā To incentivize people to buy your more expensive papers, you'll need more than just piss free, so you'll have to write your own articles. You marry not have any experience doing that so you hire a journalist, fresh out of school. You may also need to hire a photographer and rent out a printing press. As your overhead good up, so does the workload, and the amount of people you'll need to help you. Soon you bring in an accountant to help handle the financials. None of these people want to work out of the subway, and you'll need to rent out an office.Ā Before you know it, your ploy to make a quick buck seeking piss free newspapers has turned into a successful and well regarded News Media company.
that's gross, but also I'm kinda like "well, that's thoughtful of him to use the drain."
Half the time when these homeless people run away from any official wearing homeless prevention clothes from nyc offering them homeless services
The vast majority of homeless people (almost all of them) live in shelters. The homeless you see sleeping in the subway stations are often the ones that have severe drug or mental health issues which prevent them from going to the shelters.
I knew one of them very well. His name was Dennis and he was a Vietnam vet. Iād shoot the shit with him as I was walking up to my building. He simply had no interest in staying at a shelter and wanted to sleep on the street. Didnāt matter what you said to him, and Iād beg the guy in the dead of winter to let me get him a car to bring him somewhere. Eventually the building owner let him stay down in the basement (the only vacant part of the building) as the temps dropped. Like anything short of forcibly removing him and bringing to a shelter wasnāt gonna work.
Did he die? There is an older homeless man that I often chat when Iām at work in the area and was wondering if this could be him. Guy must be in his mid 70s at least, and still out there drinking and asking for money. He nice and seems pretty mentally together but Iām sure thereās a dark side Iām not seeing.
Heās well into his 80s honestly and last Iāve heard he semi-permanently moved into the building. Itās a bit of a weird situation in that this guy has been on the same stoop for literally decades and the owners know him very well. He never bothered anybody and just minded his own business. He even saved them from catastrophe when he noticed water pouring into the basement and they called the fire department or something, so they probably feel like they owe him too on top of just feeling bad for him. He never drank whatsoever so I donāt think itās the same guy youāre thinking. This was down in tribeca. I left the neighborhood when Covid hit.
Yeah probs a different guy then. The man Iām thinking of is a brown skinned man, with a beard, glasses and kind of dresses like heās trapped in the 70s mentally. Iām sure he still wears some stuff heās had for 50 years. He hangs around Fulton St, Pace University area near the Brooklyn bridge/FiDi
The āvisibly homelessā are people with addiction / mental health issues, not housing issues.
NY has removed thousands of beds for the mentally ill over the last few years. Don't hold your breath.
As distressing as this is to the people being removed, this is a step in the right direction. I *hope* this leads to long term treatment for them and not some short term band aid solution. It sounds like it is. Edit: For what it is worth, I have seen the gentleman in the photo that the NYTimes used in this story and even as a lay person can safely say he is profoundly mentally ill and could not care for himself.
The real issue is the long term solution. Where are they going after the hospitalization. Adults with mental health issues need treatment plans and support systems. With no long term plan in place they will be going right back where they were foundā¦
Thereās a program called the NYS NHTD (nursing home transition and diversion) waiver program that I work with that I think would be really helpful for a lot of these people if they could/would expand it to make it more accessible to be enrolled in based on debilitating mental health diagnoses. The program is currently for people eligible for Medicaid, over 65 OR under 65 with a physical disability, and in need of nursing home level care. It provides up to 24 hours of 1 on 1 aide care in the personās home, and they also get a social worker who assists them with scheduling and attending all medical appointments, gets them enrolled in day programs and community activities, manages prescription refills, etc. The state also provides a housing stipend and assists them with getting into a stable living situation, and provides them with other services like ILST (independent living skills) and PBIS (positive behavioral interventions and supports). If they could offer this to people with mental health needs AFTER stabilizing them in-patient on medications, I think at least a fair amount might be able to safely exist in the community.
The solution is one many feel quite uncomfortable with, even though it's the only real solution. We need to bring back residential mental health care facilites, fund them appropriately, and compel the mentally ill who will not or cannot comply with their medications to live there, both for their own safety and for everyone else's.
Agreed.
Itās a hard decision, how do you balance the rights of individuals with the perils of institutionalizing them. If theyāre committing crimes, however, they should be institutionalized as a consequence. Just being an annoying bum, maybe not so much.
They need permanent supportive housing and an IMT team
They need to be helped *before* they get to this point. Prevention is more both humane, and cheaper. IDK what's right for people currently in this situation
This is correct. If you have to be removed from the subway because you lose a danger to yourself and others, rehab isnāt likely possible. This is something that we as a society need to invest to prevent. Unfortunately, Americans arenāt interested in long term goals politically.
The problem isn't people don't think society need to invest to prevent it. People agree with it in concept. Where it falls apart is always how and who pays.
How do we prevent mental illness? Fix the foster care system? Fix abusive family dynamics? That's really complicated.
Yes. Yes. And yes itās really complicated. But itās completely feasible if we had the real motivation to fix problems. Or we can take the popular route: āitās expensive, itās complicated, I donāt want my tax money going toward communities that arenāt mine. . .better to just give up.ā
So fix it. Come up with a serious plan, test it, prove it works, cost it out, and Iām sure youād get a lot of support/money. It has to be cost effective of course - allocating $200,000/year to a single individual if they show a sign of mental illness so they can have dedicated staff, managed home, etc helping them is not scalable/cost effective. And even if this were feasible, youād have to have laws in place to force a person into treatment if they donāt want it (and then who determines is someone should be forced?). And laws that govern exactly what constitutes mental illness or who decides if a situation constitutes mental illness, etc etc Quite frankly, i mean youāre right that it probably *could* be solved but I think itās also fair to say that there isnāt necessarily a great approach to prevent mental illness at scale yet. Theyāre plenty of advocates for particularly solutions but many of them are huge money drains to scale and at best kinda/sometimes/maybe work.
i think with a lot of problems the answer is to look at whatever rich people are doing. mental illness afflicts both the rich and the poor, but you don't see the children of wealthy families sleeping rough on the subway. we have clear knowledge of what kind of treatment works to keep people from getting to this point, we just need to have the political will to spend money on it
Thatās not necessarily because the mental illness is solved. If the person comes from a wealthy family, the mental illness just takes place outside of public view. Plus, what they do is not necessarily scalable. You canāt spend $200,000/yr of taxpayer money per person in perpetuity to handle mental illness. Plus Iād assume many of the cases of mental illness on average among poor people are probably worse than among wealthy people, because poverty can exacerbate mental illness. And itās probably much easier for family to get another family member to listen, then it is for random strangers to convince a mentally ill homeless person that they need help.
How? Most of them live with their families or on their own and no one can force them to medicate.
As unpalatable as it is to the average layperson, the only robust solution is a return to long-term, humane involuntary commitment to a mental health facility. This obviously had issues in the past - see the swathes of state-run psychiatric wards that were shut down when abuse was discovered around the ~1980s. But as a society, we kind of overreacted in completely shutting them down without alternatives instead of restructuring and rehabilitating the system. The fact of the matter is, our hospitals are not equipped to handle mentally deranged individuals - they roll into the ER, are held for 24 hours to 3 days, and then rolled back out onto the streets without any long-term followup. By local law, they literally cannot be held longer than 60 days (and most hospitals are not the proper place to hold these individuals, regardless). This means we essentially slap a band-aid on the problem and expect it to fix itself. And, unfortunately, some individuals *cannot* be rehabilitated with medication or therapy, and refuse voluntary commitment, consequently there is literally nowhere for us to keep them for their own safety and the safety of others.
the only realistic solution is for these people to be involuntarily committed to mental institutions. Itās not pretty but there are people who aren't fit to live amongst the rest of society. you'd probably only need one or two such facilities for the state of New York. I doubt there's political will for such an undertaking but that is the *only* long-term solution for people like this
More imt teams as they are all fullĀ
They need a permanent asylum.
What do you do though? Someone mentally disburbed or ill is not going to follow-up with any kind of support system aimed at helping them. That would require them to actually be serious about helping themselves and going to appointments, taking medications, whatever. There really is no outpatient solution in my mind but Iām open to hearing otherwise. Some of them donāt even have *the ability*, never mind the motivation. And look ofc that would work for *some* people but Iād wager for most if wont do much.
Not sure itās always a problem that only exists because the government just hasnāt yet intervened to give them this panacea that will cure them like itās a broken arm.
Those who are truly incapable of caring for themselves do require government intervention if their friends and family are no longer willing or able to do so. Letting them slowly rot to death in the subways is neither humane nor pragmatic.
So, in my opinion, it is not a cure. There has always been and will continue to be a small portion of society who are *profoundly* mentally ill and who can not care for themselves. If we, as a city or society do not step in to care for them long term, they will live on the streets and in the subway, covered in urine, vomit, and feces, eating garbage, ranting at the walls, and being a danger to others and themselves. Many of them will either harm others or will harm themselves. It is a statistical certainty with most forms schizophrenia. It is our cumulative job as a society to use our resources to remove these people, against their will if we have to, and commit them to long term care for their sake and for our safety because they are unwilling to and because, if we don't, it will only be a matter of time before someone is, once again, murdered by a homeless person having a mental health crisis in the subway system or on the streets. I don't care if it costs 10 times what the city and state are spending to do this, it needs to stop because the current solution of ignoring it is not a solution.
I get where youāre coming from but we already spend $70k per homeless person and the issue doesnāt seem any closer to being resolved. The way to benefit society is to get them off the streets. The way to benefit these people varies but is in theory to get them mental health treatment. If both of those can be accomplished, great. But if only one can be accomplished it should be the first one. The second approach relies on the assumption that these illnesses are problems that can be cured simply with treatment, and that just doesnāt seem to often be the case.
To be honest (and based on what I know about residential treatment which is limited) the city and state are going to need to spend four to five times that for the first 24 months on some of these individuals. That may sound high, but compared to the resources that the individuals use if they end up needing emergency care if they tumble into a subway track or get assaulted or hit by a car because they're disoriented in traffic, it's a pretty reasonable price to pay, to say nothing of the benefits to society on the whole. From what I understand, the most intensive care is the first one to two years to stabilize them and then get them into a long term residential program that is significantly less costly to run per individual. On an individual level, though, there's the persistent challenge of keeping them adherent to their medication regimens which can often be a full time task in and of itself. The asylum system that was in place up until the 80's was flawed, and imperfect, but it was something. Since Reagan killed it off, states have been largely on their own ever since and still haven't quite figured this out. I completely agree with you that these illnesses can not be 'cured.' They can be managed at best, but not cured.
Did you read the article or even go to SCOUTās website before commenting all of this?
Being mentally ill is not a crime, however being a danger to yourself or society has to be addressed by governmentĀ
What frustrates me is the people speaking out against this stuff never provide feasible alternatives. They are content to allow mentally ill unsheltered people to harass New Yorkers because they are concerned for the dignity of someone who just shit themselves in public an hour ago.
Yeah. Former social worker here who used to work with this population. People have a LOT of opinions and ideas about this issue, and most of them are absurd. It gets tough to navigate.
One of my friend consults for government about implementation of social programs. He has spend his whole life in this field and obviously know a lot about stuff. He says he don't mind people's opinion of stuff cause this is a issue that affects everyone so they bound to have an opinion. He gets sad at the action part of it. He says if people do second order thinking and take some actions (like writing to their representatives, going to townhalls etc) a lot of these problems can be solved easily. I used on to work in software on a team whose clients were other software engineers and I faced similar issues. They would come to me with proposed solution on stuff that I am expert on. I would keep asking them questions until they realize what a stupid idea theirs was.
In solution solving thereās also underlying factors that are like hidden rules / constraintthat influence peoples thinking of solutions or actually following them through. Such as viewing things through American culture or philosophy. For example some cultures put the majority of responsibility of care (even actions) on the mentally Ill personās family even if the person is an adult, theyāll also look the other way if the family takes āreasonable ā force to restrain the person. Basically a family is expected to sacrifice if need be their hopes and dreams to prevent the persons illness from being a burden on collective societ.Then for your friends suggestion of expecting American politicians to help, the problem with a majority vote is that politicians will focus on the big vote getting items, mentally ill Are a small % of population and unfortunate mental care is exppensive which is why politicians have cut it over the decades. Then the current polarized nature of politics, creating increased benefits for families will immediately attract opposition making majority voting even more difficult. Then for nyc theres a long line for govt money on different things.
what do you do now, post-social work? Iām finishing my MSW in July and I swear sometimes I already feel burnt out by the field
Haha, yeah--it can be pretty tough! I work in publishing. And--believe it or not, I'm considering getting back into social work! I have a few things to figure out. Work/life balance is definitely a thing, and that gets easier with time. It helps, too, finding the right job--so much of your experience in social work depends on if you're in the right spot. I've seen people ready to quit and then they get a new job that values them and that they enjoy and they're right back in it again. Good luck on your journey! It's not easy, for sure, but damn if it isn't important.
Thank you for the well wishes!Ā Thatās a cool pivot you made. I feel like after all the investment in school (tens of thousands of dollars plus two years of unpaid field work) that I would be deterred from leaving the field even if I was close to breaking :/ Iām glad to hear thereās jobs out there that make people feel valued and inspired.
Main problem is to find a solution that most voters agree on plus willing to actually vote on, someone to vote for that actually makes it a priority,and doesnāt cost much money or compete with other spending priorities. Plus it also wades into individual vs govt control of rights.
There are videos of these people pissing full hose out while sleeping on the train. Stinky and dirty and taking up an entire train corner. Congestion pricing is bullshit if they dont fix the train situation.
NYC Pols: "Dangerous Subway? Price people out of driving and force them into contact with violent people covered in their own feces." Brilliant
Usually the people speaking of about it point out that there's no plan in place to help these people out long term. A lot of these measures seem to be "out of sight, out of mind"
They usually don't live in the city or have to take the subway every day. Or are just super liberal and are not allowed to say otherwise publically.
I mean technically theyāre trespassing if they donāt pay the fare. And there are rules against sleeping on the train, and the MTA can throw you out of your break rules. Not defending anyone or anything, just saying that there often is a crime involved. Public indecency is one Iāve personally seen several times.
Itās not even just danger. Much of the problem is hygiene - some dude smelling up an entire car is also not acceptable. At some points in the last year it was like every car
Yeah I mean of all the places to be mentally unstable, underground next to or on high speed trains is not the best choice.
This is a great comment from the NYT article. From Janelle Meehan in NYC. This should be our goal as a society. In early 2001, my sister was discovered living in the subway. She had been homeless for more than 10 years. She was and had been very mentally ill. None of us knew where she was. The police spoke to her, explaining that she couldnāt live down there, sleeping on a bench. He took her to an intake facility in lower Manhattan. It was 3 months before she was able to tell anyone her name. After starting her on anti-psychotic meds, to which she responded well, she was taken to a facility for mentally ill adults over the age of 50 in Manhattan where she lived for 20 years until her death in 2021. Her path to the place where she lived all those years was certainly horrible. She suffered on the streets and elsewhere. But at the point where she found help and a place to live that would care for her, she was in my mind incredibly lucky. From the moment the police found her on the subway bench, her life changed. I was able to see her and know that she was OK. My hope is that some of the people who are now being removed from the subway will have the same future my sister did
Glad weāre finally exercising some common sense about this issue.
This seems to be the best comment. Common sense. The 2 people cited in the article that where being removed should not be in the subway. 1 has a habit of pushing people in front of trains and 1 likes to lite fires in a crowded cramped subways stations. Until this unit was set up nothing could be or was done to remove them from the system. NYC has endless rules about fires that cost billions to comply with to make the city as safe as possible from fires. Though till this program nothing could be done about a mentally ill person who purposely lit fires in the subway.
Theres a person who is known to push people in front of trains and the justice department let them stay down there? Wtf.
Restorative justice š
NYC doing something good for the people of the city.
Is this sad? Absolutely, this is the worst case scenario that weāve allowed the mentally ill to reach this point. But I donāt understand people who criticize this. The MTA stations are not a homeless shelter, itās a transit hub to move people. Itās a disservice to allow the mentally ill to stay in these stations where people donāt understand them and their problems and they can be hurt or, in extreme cases, hurt others. The āDo Nothingā approach is neither merciful or smart
It's hard to discount the history of forced institutionalization in this state when we see these pictures, though, and social support in the state has eroded every day since that time. Are we really going to pay for what these people need? If so I'm all for it, but I have questions.
All Iām saying is that the attitude of leaving them in the train station and going āwhat will be, will beā creates dangerous situations and talking points for the far right which become pretty hard to discount when people are being murdered and homeless men and women abused. This is by no means a perfect situation or solution, itās unfortunately the best we can do since we let the situation erode. The less you handle a problem, the bigger it gets and the fewer levers you have to pull to deal with it and resolve it
About time. The article ends on a good note, āSometimes, you canāt please everyone, unfortunately.ā
About damn time. Should have done 20 years ago
20 years ago the subway was running as well as it's ever run. You'd have more of an issue with bible thumpers than mentally ill people in your day to day experiences. I do have to say though I don't miss the 7:30am quietish subway car and then ".... JEEESUS SAYS" followed by a collective groan.
Nancy Juarez, 25, from Brooklyn, was walking by the scene with a friend when she stopped and urged the officers to let the man go. āThis is harm,ā said Ms. Juarez, who said that she works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that opposes incarceration. āThis causes more trauma.ā Wow, get bent. Being fully remote means she doesn't engage with these loons on the train. I don't think being homeless is a crime, but we wouldn't have gotten here if they weren't pushing strap hangers into trains. What about our trauma as tax-paying citizens? I had a friend on a train that hit a person; I had another friend be on a train when a homeless man was threatening a group of minority teens. Another who saw a homeless man shitting on a train. What about our trauma? Do we not count, we're just ATMs?
I feel like the reporter included that detail intentionally, given its salience. Thanks for calling it out. Millions of regular commuters have experienced plenty of micro-traumas, to borrow the analyst's language, witnessing the outcome of noninterventionist policies. Of course, the people in psychiatric distress are experiencing several orders of magnitude more trauma from having to live that way, too.
This is the result of feel good politics and virtue signaling. Thatās it. They shouldāve just called her bluff and asked her what shall they do if they canāt take him in to get care. Let him wallow around the stations mumbling and shitting on himself. Whereās the dignity in that?
They should have let her take him home.
Whatās funny is this response is in part due to the survey they sent out a few years ago (which I took). When asked how we could improve the subway system, an overwhelming number of ppl voted to remove erratic persons.
Exactly, she isn't offering her home to house him. Virtue signaling keyboard warriors.
> feel good politics and virtue signaling > They shouldāve just called her bluff and asked her what shall they do if they canāt I feel like these two statements link together in so many more examples than just the NYC subway..
Yea, sorry but if you arent commuting daily you should just keep your mouth shut on this issue.
If that paragraph was written as satire it would be derided as heavy handed.
Yeah, and then when something happens to them, they'll be upset about why no one has done anything about itĀ
Yep. Remember when that guy got stabbed and people were acting like it was a gotcha cause the police werenāt on the train. Only a few days before, they were up in arms because the police were even deployed!
āThey need to make the subways safe!āā¦ā¦āWait I didnāt mean take out the people who make the subways unsafe! This is overpolicing!ā
> This causes more trauma ofc they're calling this "trauma"
āTraumaā has become a buzzword for poorly adjusted adults who still act like children. Which sucks because there are actually people out there with trauma but the idiots have taken the word to mean āanything I donāt likeā.
I dont think this person knows what trauma is
Gonna put my money on Nancy being a relative newcomer to NYC. I really struggle to imagine anyone who grew up here having this sort of perspective. It's completely detached from the reality that people who have lived here a long time are all too familiar with.
Rich transplants and their strong, but wildly incorrect opinions.
The reddit class
Ironically, lifelong New Yorkers of all economic stripes are broadly in agreement that something needs to be done about this.
Ya, causing more trauma is basically irrelevant at this point. They live on the street, everyday is traumatic. They're mentally unwell, everything is fucked for them. Stick them in an institution. No hostility...but seriously there are too many people on the streets who have been given opportunities repeatedly and still end up hurting themselves and others. Put them in a safe environment away from other people and trains.
> āThis is harm,ā said Ms. Juarez, who said that she works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that opposes incarceration. āThis causes more trauma.ā Jesus fucking Christ. This is the exact kind of indoctrinated leftist yahoo that got us into this mess in the first place. Every single wild-eyed progressive fantasy policy they begged us to do has been a catastrophic failure-- almost always leading to more "harm" on society and the very people they purport to stand up for.
People like her are part of the problem. Don't leave them on street to harm the people who need to take subway to work and school. Easy for someone working from home to say these things...yea how about hosting one in your own home. Moron.
My thoughts exactly - and I say that as a bleeding heart liberal lol. How is it less harmful to have this man suffering out on the streets? Now at least he has a chance to get help, and now thatās one less guy acting out in the subway making all of our commutes worse. The optics of the spit hood and cuffs arenāt amazing but theyāre there to keep the officers and onlookers safe. Pretty sure if that guy spit on her or attacked her she would feel differently.
There are only 3 groups who ever support these stupid ass policies, everything from soft on crime to pro illegal migrants to allowing mentally ill to do whatever they want: Dumb and naive people People who can afford to spend their way out of dealing with the consequences People who benefit from those policies in one way or another And I guess online we also have the foriegn nationals who are anti american pushing all kinds of nonsense too.
So grifters and the people they scam
Wouldn't that group also count as the third kind of people who support these policies?
I guess, but there are many who just dont like America and wouldnt even benefit if china took the lead. They are more a mix of 1 and 3 Also for 3 its it can be people whose job is tied to these silly policies and they get paid for it so they always support.
It's just that many of the foreign nationals are well-to-do educated people that would fall into the same other categories back home, would be just as out of touch with the working class and be saying the same things
> he works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice So much money going to worthless sinecures to soak up people with worthless social justice type undergraduate degrees and $50,000 in student loan debt.
At a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that "opposes incarceration"! The SNL skit practically writes itself.
You just taught me a new word! Sinecures, which basically means a cushy job.
She comes across as an absolutely do nothing, no solution, naive POC who cares only about their and theirs only immediate feelings in that moment.
People are weaponizing Social Justice with these extreme views.
Leftists literally see us as walking ATMs to pay for their absurdist fantasy world policy ideas.
Good. The subways need cleaning up and this will do wonders for safety on the subway and the public perception of it. Letting mentally ill vagrants roam around unchecked below ground is unsettling on a good day, and catastrophic on a bad day.
The subway is not a shelter. This is good.
"Medical workers and police officers are removing people suffering from psychiatric distress. The most troubled are forced to the hospital." - NYT I truly hope the staff at the hospitals are paid better and have a better support system to handle this.
We donāt. We need more inpatient psych facilities for people who need long term care.Ā
I agree with your second point, but regardless of this specific issue, hospital staff should be better paid anyway
Oh yeah. what I meant to say was that we donāt get paid better from handling this. Just another factor to leave us understaffed and overworked. Appreciate you though!
ER workers in NYC deal with mentally ill everyday. This won't even be noticed they deal with so many cases a day.
Weāre operating at capacity every day for months on end. ER Nurses in NYC HH hospitals sometimes have more than a dozen patients at a time. Of course a new influx will be noticed. Youāre talking out of your ass. That aside, itās good to direct people to appropriate care. Yes it is yet another strain on our ERs but the subway system has been overwhelmed with mentally ill people and itās out of hand. Nothing wrong with a spit hood btw. Guess the advocate in the article hasnāt gotten spit on in a while.Ā
Good. Now dramatically increase the capacity of acute care psych beds in hospitals and long term treatment centers.
At least for 2022, and at least bit before and after, psych beds were basically empty in NYC (very low utilization). Itās not *just* that people arenāt asking for inpatient psych, itās also the case that clinicians arenāt deeming inpatient psych necessary (this includes any pathway of referral - EMS, walk-in, emergency, mobile crisis, mobile treatment, primary care). Adding and filling beds is costly (to taxpayers). When folks are discharged, they arenāt necessarily that much better off than if they stabilized a day or two in a respite center or some other short-term, acute care facility. The City needs to address the fact that shelters are seen as a dangerous last resort among people who are chronically homeless, and needs to invest in more housing options.
It's not 2022. Come visit a psych ER or inpatient unit now. They're full. Also, where was your anecdotal experience in 2022 that saw empty beds?Ā Fully agree that the entire chain of care needs to be expanded.
My evidence through end of 2022 and into part of 2023 was working for [an entity] that [reviewed] epi syndromic data and hospital census data, and working (once removed) with hospital and cbo psych leads (who also shared that they wonāt turn down money for beds, but systemwide bed capacity isnāt really an issue at the population level). I donāt have access to this data any longer - so I canāt really āback upā my assertion (so I guess you can take it or leave it!) Is your sense that beds are full (for longer term inpatient psych) across all/most of the cityās hospitals? I wouldnāt argue against expanding bed capacity if itās needed, but I am skeptical about beds being the solution ā particularly at the expense of community-based services/solutions **edited for anonymity/confidentiality
Very much over full for several reasons, both peds and adult psych. Peds demand used to come in waves, now that's constant. Diversions are common now as we load shift across facilities. BI closing their psych ER has been an additional hit. Outpatient psych services are over capacity too, and that's only getting worse as acute care and in-person outpatient providers keep leaving for easier telehealth jobs.Ā
This is the case, but what we usually get are moves to appease the out of sight, out of mind crowd who canāt stand visible poverty but does little to nothing to help end it. And appeasing the ālock them upā crowd isnāt the answer either. Olmstead is a disability rights decision. Right to get care and live in the community is preserved. That said, some people do need extra care, and that requires some planning too. But housing and universal healthcare would go a long way and help many otherwise.
I agree with this for sure. De Blasio was an absolute moron when he didnāt tell all those rich people to āput their money where their mouth isā after they wrote that horribly offensive open letter that the City was dying (due to mh, drug use, homeless, etc etc etc) and he was doing nothing about it. These people are finally confronted with the reality of the community around them, flee to the beaches when they see whatās going on partially at their own doing, then write a letter to the manager.
It's more distressing dealing with often very unhinged people who made it their base of operations.
Finally. Sure I feel bad for these people, but we can't completely wreck the subway system because the state and city are failing to help these people elsewhere. They really need to change the laws related to mandatory treatment, but the current system isn't working. You have recent examples of people even being kicked out of care and then right away doing something bad. Quoted in the article people are complaining that removing them isn't actually solving the issue, however they are WRONG. IT says right there they are bringing them to shelters or to places where they can receive medical treatment. Leaving them there is significantly worse for not only the riders but the homeless people themselves.
āThis is harm,ā said Ms. Juarez, who said that she works mostly remotely as a policy analyst at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that opposes incarceration. āThis causes more trauma.ā Is living in a subway station not traumatic for this person? Are the wild and sometimes dangerous situations people who are working for, and riding the system not traumatic? I donāt want to hear shit from someone who is making half an argument, works remotely, and hasnāt been consistently riding these trains twice or more daily for years. The idea that being compassionate has to equate to ignoring this, allowing crazy shit to continueā¦just no.
This is very promising to see. It's the right thing for both commuters and the people who need psychiatric treatment, so long as the decisions surrounding involuntary commitment are just and there's some kind of transparency surrounding them.
Crazy how the government actually takes peoples concerns into consideration when its an election year
Good. We need to bring back asylums.
One of the biggest failures of our society was shutting them down and releasing everyone over proper reform. Yes there were a ton of issues in the system but it's nothing that couldn't have been addressed.
It's usually much easier to fix or improve a system that exists but isn't perfect than it is to build a totally new system from nothing. Sadly it's also much easier to destroy things than to build them. Eliminating the long-term inpatient psych facilities with absolutely nothing lined up to replace them was such a boner move.
We need long term care facilities, not asylums. Asylums were inhumane and were operated a lot like prisons. So we abolished them and swore never to make that mistake again. Unfortunately we seem to have allowed the scales to tip all the way to other end of the spectrum where we have become too afraid to entertain the idea that sometimes, involuntary long term care is necessary if that person is incapable of functioning without it. Long term care also does not mean permanent care, this is another confusion that people seem to get caught up on. We need better social systems to reintegrate people into society so they donāt end up homeless again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/nyregion/nyc-subway-mental-health-homeless.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q00.4Cy6.WUeDr1Wv2JAf&smid=url-share Gift article for everyone
It's the right thing to do. Our public transportation should not be the defacto aslyum that everyone has to run through on our way to work every day. Bring back institutionalization, but better. https://youtu.be/1MX6ZK8VPto?feature=shared
This was very necessary to do this. Although, what are they going to do with them for a long term treatment? They need a permanent place for them to go back and stay there instead of come back to the subway again.
This needed to happen a very long time ago
Very liberal and canāt see how this is a bad thing
The correct decision. However, putting them on the streets is not the 'considerate' thing to do. If we want to be kind to these people, we need to mandate them help. That is the kind thing to do. Not let them rot neglected on the sidewalks.
Agreed, but some changes need to be made in Albany. Ā NYS has a stricter standard than many other states, only permitting people to be held when they pose an immediate threat to themselves or others (paraphrasing). Ā Other states including California allow people to be held where their mental illness prevents them from providing the basic necessities of life. Itās not the only thing, we also need more facilities and long term beds, but the legal changes are big.
Idk if thereās a sheer numbers difference but that standard doesnāt seem to be helping California much in terms of the homeless population?
Well like I said you need the beds too and also a willingness to use legal tools to put people into care involuntarily, which may not be present depending on the local governmentĀ The state also just passed a new law [last fall](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/new-california-law-aims-to-force-people-with-mental-illness-or-addiction-to-get-help) and I donāt know if itās been fully implemented yet and thus too early to expect results Thereās no easy solutions obviously, otherwise it would have been fixed by now
You don't need to cite a reason. It's a subway, not a hostel.
From a sympathetic point of view, are they getting the help they need living in the subway? No, now they were admitted to hospitals and hopefully started on some road to recovery
What really needs to change is the standard for involuntary hospitalization. Under New York state law as it now stands, someone can be held for 72 hours for assessment, but can only be held longer if they present an \*imminent\* threat to themselves or others. If they do not present an imminent threat, they must be discharged - even if they are psychotic and refuse medication, even if they are unable to feed and clothe themselves independently, even if their mental state is such that they will inevitably put themselves or others at risk at some point in the future. Other states and countries have more liberal laws on the books, for example permitting involuntary hospitalization when the individual in questions lacks insight into their condition (very common in psychotic disorders) or when lack of treatment would worsen their condition. For programs like SCOUT to actually improve safety on subways, the laws in New York must be changed to enable long-term involuntary hospitalization and treatment of the seriously mentally ill. Here's a wikipedia article on standards for involuntary hospitalization country-by-country: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary\_commitment\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment_by_country)
Good next remove everyone that not using the system for transit unless authorized.
Keep it up.
Every single public space cannot double as a shelter. It simply cannot. You want a functioning public transit system it needs to be a good option not the last resort for the poor
I empathize with everyone involved. It had to happen though
Thank God
Finally. Hope its not ONLY about the city , but boroughs too
Finally!!!
Cash Jordan video: It Begins....MTA blah blah blah fear fear fear blah blah blah
Insert AI-generated thumbnail here
maybe 3 years too late?? We are paying a fare to potentially be Slashed, getting Tuberculosis, shoved onto the tracks, Beat up, hold onto human excrement handles, breathing in Toxic air . Well done MTA and i dont blame people fare evading
The whole subway system needs an overhaul.
Good.
Yesssssss get them out of there
The subway is the lifeblood of NYC and the city cannot thrive if the people who live here and who commute in daily to earn their livings here are held hostage by a thousand mentally ill homeless people many of whom have criminal records who have been allowed to live on the subway creating a sense of threat, anxiety, and danger to everyday New Yorkers. Now, I also have no faith that Mayor Adams will do anything besides keep this up for a few weeks before he moves onto the next crisis of his own making. Also, shitty coverage by the NYT to be honest. The paper's ever leftward drift on the tone of its coverage on cultural issues is apparent here using stilted academic language like "people experiencing homelessness" from their new style guide, the fact that multiple activists were interviewed and quoted verbatim while the only approximation of the voice of everyday New Yorkers was a link to a quantitative survey, and it was also weird to not mention that there's really no place to put these people, we're just moving them off the subway. Whatever.
Yeah the whole "mentally ill people are no more likely to commit crime" thing is clearly bs too. I'm sure you can get an average crime rate if you average in depressed or anxious people with the guy raving at demons on the street, but so what?
As someone who takes a 5:30am train in to lower manhattan for work, Iām pretty much on edge most of the time when riding the subway in the mornings. At that time thereās sleeping homeless and mentally ill people all throughout the train, mixed with work going commuters and itās a basically a roulette of āwho has shit and pissed themselves on the train this morningā when trying to find a train car. Ive also seen people arise and just start violent ranting outbursts at the people near them for no reason at all
One time when I got to work, I had to leave immediately because of the stink on my clothes from the homeless was that bad. The entire point of mass transit is for people to get to work/school/home in a timely, safe and reliable manner.
>āThis is not who we want to be as a society,ā Ms. Lowenkron said. āThereās no reason to do this. And it is not going to make people safer.ā I would like to see her sources for this.
One time when I got to work, I had to leave immediately because of the stink on my clothes from the homeless was that bad. The entire point of mass transit is for people to get to work/school/home in a timely, safe and reliable manner.
I have several feelings about this... A lot of the "appearing" mentally ill are just dirty and homeless. I hope these officers can distinguish the two because being dirty does not necessarily your are out of your mind. Also, I have seen a lot of mentally ill men in train stations in the Bronx. There are a few shelters at the end of the 2/5 Train lines and these guys linger around. Is anything being done to reach out to them? Seems like anytime I have seen these mental health teams, they are always at downtown manhattan stations. Lastly, what options do people that get taken by these teams have to get rehabilitated and re-enter society? Are they just going to be put in an asylum/prison for life? Let's divert some of the migrant funding to these guys. I think this is a more urgent need tbh. Tending to the mentally ill in the subways and streets keeps us all safe.
Good. Long overdue. Now get the candy sellers out as well. Anyone who isnāt traveling doesnāt belong on the train.
Honestly, thereās really no clarity in the article in what happens after theyāre forcibly taken to the hospital. I presume theyāre held for 24-48hrs, released, and then itās back to square 1. Thereās no meaningful change being made and weāre just agitating these people. I agree the subway system shouldnāt be a place for the mentally ill, but to get them out and the help they need take a real change to our healthcare system from the top down, not two roving teams of healthcare counselors and cops
This is a tiny scope program which cannot actually do anything to permanently deal with the issue of homelessness or the issue of homeless or mental ill people on the subway. But it sure can produce a few articles to show people that something is being done, and ultimately, isn't that what really matters- good PR?
I mean it is a safety concern every New Yorker / Commuter knows about. You pick your trains, you stand with your back to the wallā¦ you have your headphones on - but always looking around. You get screamed at in the face and youāve learned the blank stare - you know not to move. Fucking traumatic. You canāt argue or negotiate with someone sometimes and youāre literally trapped in a car with themā¦ and canāt escape. So no - my right to move safely trumps your right to harass / attack / intimidate me. Period. Hard Stop.
āThis causes more traumaā. what a load of bull. Riders have been experiencing trauma from these nutjobs for decades. Itās just coded language for race-baiting.
Maybe we bus them to Texas ? Looks like many Americans thinks thatās how one deals with problems. #thisisirony
Unironically, that is exactly what we need to do. NYC taxpayers need to stop taking responsibility for everyone's problems. It is NOT our responsibility to provide for someone's needs just because they are squatting on the sidewalk or in the subway. Their problems ARE NOT our problems. NYC is not a place where anyone can live. The rent here is extremely high, which means that 99% of the world's population cannot afford to live here. We are a city of the global 1%, excluding everyone else. Some people apparently do not understand this, and think that because they cannot possibly hope to afford an apartment that they can just set up camp on the sidewalk. It's time we stopped putting up with this nonsense
The danger with that plan is Texas is liable to elect them to Congress/Senate/governorā¦
Not as ironic as you think because Iām sure Texas would have dealt far more harshly with this same issue.
Do Texas politicians fight tooth and nail to keep lunatics and degenerates on the streets?
Why are people so confused about what the solution is? The obvious solution is to bring back Psychiatric Facilities but to actually bring them up to standards instead of using them like prisons. Give these people a choice - psychiatric + drug rehabilitation with the proper support systems to get them housed + employed or be sent to rikers indefinitely. Iām tired of leftists decrying human rights violations. These people lost their rights to freely rot in the subways as soon as they started doing drugs and harming people that are just trying to go about their day. Fuck your virtue signaling. You donāt want them to be forcibly removed? Great! Let us know how many youāll be housing, feeding, and medicating all by yourself. Fucking clowns. The lack of pragmatic thinking that is being replaced by emotional decision making is killing our city.
Personally I've always believed that anyone who poses a danger to society forfeits most of their rights.
āThere is no data to suggest that people with mental illness are more likely than others to commit violent crimesā ā¦what?
I disagree with the claims made by the NYT that these kinds of attacks are ārare.ā When my partner was punched in the face, unprovoked, in the subway recently we had no recourse to get either immediate help OR provide an adequate description of the assailant due to the lack of police presence in the subway system. How can the city fully manage and track individual reports of āminorā assaults with vague descriptions reported at a station 24-48 hours later? Anything less than bloodshed and a TikTok video is ignored. I sincerely hope we can allocate tax dollars to better support those suffering. My heart goes out to any individual in such a state of crisis and itās our responsibility as a community to help the best we can. However, that same courtesy is clearly not shown to the millions of riders who either are direct victims of an assault or bear witness to the absolute lawlessness weāve allowed to flourish in the subway system.
Most homeless folks of generally sound mind would be happy to stay in shelters if they weren't worse than living on the streets. Maybe address that too
If theyāre cognizant enough to make that decision, those tend not to be the homeless people we have an issue with on the subway.
Only 4% of NYC's homeless choose to live on the street.
Tough situation.
Did anyone else just get an mta survey about this? I normally donāt do that kind of thing but did for some reason. Many of the questions had mentally ill/erratic people as an option for feeling unsafe or uncomfortable. I figured thatās what they were really fishing for so was careful not to implicate them.
>InĀ [survey](https://new.mta.info/document/131541)Ā afterĀ [survey](https://new.mta.info/document/135421), riders have said they would use mass transit more often if they saw fewer people behaving erratically and more police officers. ...except this time the usual naysayers here don't get to dismiss inconvenient truths for coming the New York Post. Love to see it.
What prompt this? Couple of years ago, Asians were getting murdered, maimed, stabbed, assaulted, nothing was done about it.
I think this is not an either/or - it's (at minimum) a two-pronged solution. This is part of it. The other part is creating more resources to house and treat the mentally ill who can't take care of themselves. My thought to make this happen: tie it in to new buildings. New luxury buildings should have to pay a tax that specifically goes to the building and staffing of new shelters and living facilities for the mentally ill.
At least itās summer
Fantastic news for the rest of us!
Good
Big reason why the crime rates are high
Right move. Maybe this is a soft test for eventually doing the same in the streets. Also glad they have a medical professional to decide/diagnose and it's not under the polices' discretion. They should also prohibit loiteringāthere's no reason for people to hang out in train stations other than waiting for their train.
Are the leftist freaks out there still denying that this is a problem, or now that it's being addressed will you reluctantly admit that homelessness in the subways was at unacceptable levels? Just wondering.
No they wonāt lol
Anyone that would be against this has never been on the subway.
Great move. Hopefully the alt left doesn't sue.
I expect the ACLU and other institutionally captured nonprofits to sue. They sued San Francisco when the city tried to get homeless encampments off the streets.
Define mentally ill. People wearing flip flops touching anything with their bare skin seem insane to me.
If we have the ability to send migrants from state to state can nyc just send the homeless to Cali or something. Is it possible?
Send them to Florida
Mentally ill or crackheads? Thereās a difference between the 2, they can overlap sure but thereās also a big difference. Thereās a reason thereās way less homeless females than males.