The MTA has once again found itself at the crossroads of a debate over what happens to homeless people who sleep or rest in the subway system. On Friday, someone who described the MTA as a ‘junior’ employee responded to a tweet asking why benches had been removed from the 23rd Street F / M subway station. The employee, who used the initials JP, wrote to the commuter concerned that the benches had been removed to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them.
The tweet was quickly removed and the MTA declined to say why the banks were removed.
A snapshot of the Twitter exchange, which has since been removed, shows New York City Transit explaining that benches were removed because homeless people slept on them.
Twitter
In a statement, MTA spokeswoman Abbey Collins wrote that the tweet was being posted incorrectly, adding: “The subway is not a substitute for a shelter and homeless New Yorkers deserve much better care. We have worked with the City on this important issue and called for more dedicated mental health and medical resources that are urgently needed to resolve the homeless crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. ”
Yet she declined to say how many banks have been systematically removed in the past year, and whether the banks have been removed to allow homeless people to use them, as the tweet said.
While the MTA blames the city for not doing more to address the ongoing housing crisis, in which both recent and chronic homeless New Yorkers have sought refuge in the subway system, it also does not have its own attempts to thwart people around the night or excess time in the system. The removal of the banks at the 23rd street station may just be the latest example.
Last February, the MTA removed the back of the metro banks. When Governor Cuomo embarked on an expensive, cosmetic upgrade of stations in the summer of 2016, it included the installation of ‘armrests’ and dividers on benches, movements widely regarded as forms of hostile architecture intended to leave the homeless lie.
Last May, Cuomo ordered that the metro service be shut down overnight. The MTA says the overnight closures are about disinfecting trains (which, according to experts, are no longer an excellent transmission route for COVID-19) and not removing homeless people, although this happens between 01:00 and 05:00.
“Governor Cuomo cannot solve the housing crisis by moving homeless people and closing the subway overnight for paying riders,” Danny Pearlstine, director of policy and communications at the Riders Alliance, told Gothamist / WNYC. ‘[It] does not solve the housing crisis, nor does the removal of banks solve it. ”
Joe Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID), noted that banks were removed from his local station in Borough Hall a little over a year ago, so he sent a letter to written the MTA.
“And their response was, ‘We got complaints from people that there was a homeless person using the bank and hanging out there, so we removed it,'” Rappaport told Gothamist / WNYC. “It was also a bench I used regularly, and I saw other people use it, mostly older people.”
Rappaport is a plaintiff in three lawsuits against the MTA for failing to comply with the Americans With Disability Act and the New York City Human Rights Law on accessible stations.
“Ultimately, it happens that people who may need a bench to sit on because they are disabled or if they are just tired at the end of the day lose,” Rappaport said.