Homeless people seeking shelter on the subways say they’re unfairly targeted by law enforcement and MTA officials, and are suing for relief.
“Homelessness is not a problem, it is a responsibility, and the MTA shares in this responsibility,” said Barry Simon, a homeless man who is a party to the suit.
“When we stop seeing, or confusing, a responsibility for a problem, we will better be able to get it right,” Simon said in a statement.
The suit targets Metropolitan Transportation Authority rules that ban large wheeled carts on trains, lingering in a station for longer than an hour, and staying aboard out-of-service subway cars.
The rules were instituted as part of the MTA’s response to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In September, the MTA made the rules permanent — effectively banning homeless people from the trains, says the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court by Picture the Homeless, Inc. and Urban Justice Center, advocates for the homeless.
The new subway rules also disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic New Yorkers as well as people living with disabilities, the suit charges.
In the suit, homeless advocates call the MTA’s “anti-homeless” rules “hasty and capricious.”
They complain that the regulations target a small fraction of the city’s population “as opposed to millions of other riders who make up the overwhelming majority of transit users.”
The lawsuit asks for a court ruling that voids the new rules and blocks the MTA from adopting any similar measures in the future.
Sarah Feinberg, the interim president of NYC Transit — the MTA organization that operates the subways — called the city’s homelessness crisis “devastating” in a TV interview Friday, but said it’s not the MTA’s problem to solve.
“No one should be coming into the subway system because that’s their only option to, you know, escape the elements or you know, sit down on a bench for an hour or two or take a nap,” Feinberg said on FOX-5.
“We have to do better than that as a city. But in terms of the subway system, we’re moving essential workers all the time and so we cannot be the shelter of last resort.”
The rules were proposed in the spring when the pandemic first hit the Empire State, and essential workers were among the only New Yorkers riding the trains.
The MTA reasoned they were meant to “safeguard public health and safety and help essential workers maintain social distancing,” say court docs.
In May, the subways were ordered closed to the public overnight, denying homeless people the ability to spend nights sleeping in stations and trains instead of crowded city shelters.
In September, the rules were permanently adopted even though the strictest pandemic quarantine rules had been eased and more people were riding trains again, the suit charges.
The timing meant the MTA’s initial reasons “no longer applied,” the lawsuit says, and thus served no purpose other than to virtually ban homeless people from using the subway.
In a statement to the Daily News, agency spokesperson Abbey Collins maintained the MTA brought in the measures to protect the public.
“We are reviewing the lawsuit that we first learned of in the press,” said Collins.
“We will vigorously defend the regulations in court that were put in place to protect the health and safety of customers and employees in the midst of a global pandemic — period.”
