Mayor de Blasio: End The Subway
Diversion Program
“…we are unjustly criminalizing individuals who have done nothing worse than the average person in the subway all because they have no home. It isn't helping anyone. Treating the homeless in this manner is changing the morality of what it means to be a police officer, sworn to protect all citizens, especially the most vulnerable.”
- Anonymous NYPD Transit Officers
About the “Subway Diversion Program”
On June 13, 2019, Mayor de Blasio introduced the “Subway Diversion Program.” It was pitched as “a pilot initiative to support people experiencing unsheltered homelessness on the subway by offering alternative pathways off the streets into transitional and permanent housing.”
Unfortunately, it does not actually create any new pathways off the streets into transitional and permanent housing. City-contracted nonprofits, specifically BRC, conduct outreach on the subways. However, BRC was not given any additional resources through the Subway Diversion Program.
Despite pushback from advocates, the Mayor announced in December that he would expand “Subway Diversion across the entire subway system to prevent unnecessary criminal justice involvement.” Unfortunately, we have only seen the criminalization of homelessness rise as the Subway Diversion Program expands.
We received an anonymous letter from NYPD Transit Bureau officers who expressed grave concerns with the Subway Diversion Program.
“The Diversion Program that is being advertised by the Mayor as helping the homeless can be nothing further from the truth.”
- Anonymous NYPD Transit Bureau officers
What’s Really Happening:
The NYPD Transit Bureau has been tasked with targeting homeless New Yorkers on the train who are violating MTA rules, and giving them summonses. The man in this video was pulled off a train, given a summons, and taken up to the Transit District. From there, he faced two “options.”
He could leave the command with a summons.
He could agree to meet with BRC, the nonprofit contracted to provide outreach services to homeless New Yorkers on the train, and the summons will allegedly be vacated.
He was coerced into option 2.
As he was being brought upstairs to be transported from the Transit District command to BRC, he repeated, "I don't want to go." As a result, the officer arrested him for resisting, and told his partner to take him back downstairs, emphasizing that "now he ain't going to no fucking shelter."
A man was being coerced into meeting with an outreach team, and is ultimately arrested for refusing to go.
Why It Doesn’t Help:
An officer explains that he is handcuffing a homeless person and giving him a summons.
The following video was recorded by Twitter user @mount_vesuviass. In the video, you can hear the officer explain the protocol for the Subway Diversion Program.
“This is procedure where we bring him back to the command. We don’t want his hands free when we bring him back to the command. He’s going to get a summons. And we’re gonna find him shelter at the same time.”
The problem? Homeless people do not sleep on the subways because they aren’t aware of shelters. Homeless New Yorkers are aware of their right to shelter, but many opt not to sleep in the shelters, for rational and legitimate reasons, and instead sleep on the subways where they feel safer.
Rather, homeless New Yorkers are sleeping on the trains because they want and need housing, but there isn’t housing available for them. As they wait, they work through the city’s messy bureaucracy.