Temperatures are falling and homeless New Yorkers are turning again to the subways in search of a warm and safe place to sleep.
It’s an annual wintertime migration disrupted last year after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo closed the system overnight in an attempt to push out homeless riders and scrub down trains amid the pandemic.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority restored 24-hour subway service in May — and some people sleeping on trains said their reasons for turning to mass transit are the same as before the pandemic: Homeless shelters are unsafe, and they don’t trust the outreach workers who try to send them there.
“I don’t do shelters,” said Ray Unusu, who spent several nights last week sleeping on the E train, the subway’s only line that never runs above ground and a popular sleeping spot for the unhoused.
“I went in that joint years ago,” Unusu said of the shelters. “Sometimes you have to fight in there. Now I’m just on the move.”
Unusu said he sleeps all over the city, and even bundled up on the street last winter when he was barred from the subways.
The arrangement takes a toll on subway sleepers.
“I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night,” said Shavonne May, 35, who fixed a bed for herself Thursday night at the E train’s Jamaica Center terminal. “A lot of the time, I eat out of garbage cans.”
It’s a challenge for people sleeping on trains to get or accept help — in part due to a disparate network of outreach organizations contracted to urge people on the streets and subways to take shelter, said Josh Dean, executive director of the advocacy group Human.nyc.
“There are different outreach teams on the subways than there are on the streets,” said Dean. “People get pushed out of one and into the other, and when you move people around, you make their lives miserable and you break their trust.”
MTA Chief Safety Officer Pat Warren said the agency collects “reams of information” on homelessness in transit and shares it with city officials.
“As we’ve said repeatedly, it’s imperative that the Department of Homeless Services work with the NYPD to restore late night subway end-of-line teams of social workers and officers to address this chronic condition in a humane and effective manner,” Warren said.
The city Department of Homeless Services through its annual count in January 2020 estimated 1,670 people slept in the subways on a typical winter night.
Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the department, said its services have improved since Mayor de Blasio took office in 2014 — and pointed to data that shows more than 145,000 people have been moved out of shelters and into rental assistance or rehousing programs.
“Our outreach teams have done extraordinary work, throughout the pandemic, to keep hundreds of our most vulnerable neighbors safe and in shelters,” said McGinn.
“Round-the-clock subway outreach has continued even as 24-hour service has returned, and we will keep building on that progress with more compassionate outreach in and out of the subway system, and continued expansion of transitional housing options and pathways to permanency.”
Karim Walker, 40, who now works for Dean’s organization and used to be homeless, said he often disregarded social workers when he slept on the subways.
“I viewed the shelters as an extension of the penitentiary system,” said Walker. “You would have thought the pandemic would have forced the homeless services industry to rethink how they do outreach, but they haven’t very much.”
Walker now lives in an apartment in Brooklyn. He moved into the place in December 2020, more than two years after he applied through the city’s affordable housing program.
“I got extremely lucky I was able to win one of those golden tickets,” said Walker. “Not everyone is as lucky as me.”
“Now I’m just trying to get my life back together.”
