The MTA once again found itself in the throes of a debate about how it deals with homeless people sleeping or resting on the subway system. On Friday, someone the MTA described as a “junior” employee responded to a tweet asking why the seats were removed from the 23rd Street F / M subway station. The employee, who carried the initials JP, wrote to the passenger at question that banks were removed to “prevent homeless people from sleeping on them”.
The tweet was soon deleted and the MTA declined to say why the banks were removed.
A screenshot of the Twitter Exchange, which has since been deleted, shows the New York City Transit explaining that the banks were removed because homeless people slept on them.
Twitter
In a statement, MTA spokesman Abbey Collins wrote that the tweet was posted by mistake, adding: “The subway is not a substitute for a shelter and homeless New Yorkers deserve much better care. We have been working with the city on this important issue and we request more dedicated medical and mental health resources, which are urgently needed to resolve the homeless crisis that was exacerbated by the pandemic ”.
Still, she declined to say how many banks were removed from the system in the past year, or whether the banks were removed to prevent homeless people from using them, as the tweet said.
Although the MTA blames the city for not doing more to resolve the ongoing housing crisis, in which homeless and recent New Yorkers sought refuge in the subway system, it also did not hide its own efforts to prevent people from passing through. night or excessive time on the system as well. Removing the seats from the 23rd Street station may be just the most recent example.
Last February, the MTA removed the backs of the subway seats. When Governor Cuomo started an expensive and cosmetic update to the seasons in the summer of 2016, it included the installation of “sloping bars” and dividers on the benches, movements that were widely seen as forms of hostile architecture designed to prevent homeless people from moving. lie down.
Last May, Cuomo ordered the first shutdown of the night metro service. The MTA says the night closes are for disinfecting trains (which experts say is no longer a major transmission route for COVID-19) and not removing the homeless, although that is what happens between 1 am and 5 am.
“Governor Cuomo cannot resolve the housing crisis by transferring the homeless and closing the subway to pay passengers overnight,” said Danny Pearlstine, Director of Policy and Communications at the Riders Alliance, to Gothamist / WNYC. “[It] doesn’t solve the housing crisis, removing banks doesn’t. “
Joe Rappaport, the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID), noticed that the banks were removed from his local station in Borough Hall just over a year ago, so he wrote a letter to the MTA.
“And their response was, ‘We received complaints from people that there was a homeless person using the bank and walking around and therefore we removed it,'” Rappaport told Gothamist / WNYC. “It was also a bank that I used frequently and saw other people, mostly elderly people, using.”
Rappaport is a plaintiff in three lawsuits against the MTA for failure to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the New York City Human Rights Act on accessible stations.
“In the end, what happens is that people who may need a bench to sit down because they have a disability or are just tired at the end of the day, lose,” said Rappaport.