As Homeless Take Refuge in Subway, More Officers Are Sent to Help

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prplepshn 43yo Port Orange, Florida, United States

Officials said the increase in officers is part of a multipronged effort by the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio to reach the unsheltered homeless, a population estimated at 3,900 in 2017, an increase of 40 percent from the year before.

“The trains have been an issue. We’ve added many more outreach workers and we’ve paired them with police officers to help convince homeless New Yorkers to come off the streets and into shelter,” said Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office.

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Under Mayor de Blasio, the city has increased the number of temporary shelters known as Safe Havens, doubled the number of outreach workers on the street, and tripled the number in the subway to more than 100, said Steven Banks, the city’s commissioner of social services, who was hired to stem the city’s homelessness crisis. It has also created a list of known unsheltered homeless people, which since 2016 has grown to 2,000 names.

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Partnering with the police, he said, was a tool meant to “increase the number of contacts,” with every homeless individual. “It can take five times, or 200 times” before someone responds and agrees to leave the streets, he said.

“Our clients are people who have fallen through every safety net that exists,” he said. “It takes an effort literally every day to get people off the streets.”

Muzzy Rosenblatt, the president and chief executive of the Bowery Residents’ Committee, a nonprofit organization that sends outreach workers through the subway system and major commuter rail stations, said of police officers: “They are not there to coerce. They know their mission is not to empty the cars, but to save lives.”

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Trala1978 33yo Bronson, Florida, United States