*K is currently street homeless and was approached several times by NYPD officers at various stations

As we know, we are facing a homelessness crisis like no other, one that reflects what is happening across this nation. But the city’s ill-considered and ill-conceived Subway “Diversion” Plan does nothing to address the root causes of citywide homelessness—a lack of affordable housing. I say this from experience. In August 2019, NYPD officers picked me up while I was sleeping on Jamaica Center bound E train at Port Authority. They handcuffed me, drove me up to the Columbus Circle precinct, rummaged through my possessions, despite my explicit demands not to do so, and put me in a holding cell until outreach workers from BRC came for me, after issuing a summons for being outstretched. When BRC arrived, I was released from the holding cell, and they escorted me out of the precinct. After we left the precinct, BRC outreach workers told me I could but did not have to accompany them to 30th Street. I told them right then and there, “I’m not going with you.” The entire experience was dehumanizing, humiliating, and traumatizing.

This is not how we treat the most vulnerable and marginalized among us, nor is this a productive use of taxpayers’ money. While I cannot speak for the thousands of street homeless in NYC, I believe many would agree that this wrong-headed approach to so intractable a problem has the potential to do more harm than good. Many of us on the streets have experienced the lack of safety and cleanliness that are rampant in many city-run shelters. I am not on the street because I am ignorant of the shelters. If anything, I am all too familiar with the shelter system, having spent 2 years in NYC shelters.

In November 2019, I was again outstretched on a Queens-bound A train, when police picked me up at Chambers Street. Still very wary of my last encounter, I decided a different tactic would be necessary. I got off the train, as they asked, but refused to produce ID or give my name. No name, no summons. After three minutes of back and forth with three NYPD officers, I decided enough was enough and proceeded to collect my belongings and exit the station.  The cops did not write a summons because they had no name to issue it to.

Three weeks later in December, the police picked me up at the World Trade Center terminus on the E train, tried to write me a ticket, but because I (again) didn’t give my name or ID, were unable to do so. But as I proceeded to collect my belongings, a police officer grabbed my left wrist in full view of an outreach worker. As I tried to wrest myself free from his control, his partner asked him to let me go. They followed me out through the turnstiles, threatening me with arrest for criminal trespass if I didn’t leave.

Last April, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Martin v. Boise that street homeless cannot be punished for sleeping in public property if they have no adequate alternatives. While we may not be in that court’s jurisdiction, given the deplorable conditions that many city-run shelters are in, it is very understandable why many on the street don’t view them [the shelters] as a viable, adequate alternative. We owe it to them and to the city to find a better, safer way to help our unhoused neighbors.