Social workers instead of police? Fuggeddaboutit.
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The MTA’s multimillion-dollar effort to shrink the homeless population in the city’s subways has been an expensive bust, the agency’s watchdog says in a damning new report. ….
The “very expensive” and “minimally effective” program cost at least $2.6 million in overtime on top of the contact — but 10-person teams of MTA cops and social workers from contractor Bowery Residents’ Committee lured just three transients out of the system per station per night, the report said.
“On the nights OIG staff observed the program, dozens of apparently homeless individuals stayed on the trains for every 1 that accepted services,” IG staff wrote.
Despite the MTA’s “good faith” program, delays related to homeless individuals continued their upward trajectory from the first half of 2019, the IG reported. Incidents involving the homeless caused 100 delays per month in January and February.
The teams began trying to coax homeless people out of the system at end-of-line stations last summer after Gov. Cuomo declared their presence on transit “egregious” and “the worst it’s ever been.”
But the effort was primarily hamstrung by the MTA’s limited ability to force homeless people off trains and a vast web of societal failures that have increased homelessness, the IG’s office concluded. [Emphasis added]
