College students, workers, advocates and politicians are skeptical about NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ subway safety plan  that was put into effect on Feb 21.

“Repeating the failed outreach-based policing strategies of the past will not end the suffering of homeless people bedding down on the subway,” said Shelly Nortz, Deputy Executive Director for Policy with the Coalition for the Homeless.

The plan consists of three specific goals to address subway violence, as transit crime has increased 86.8% from 2021, according to NYPD data.

Response teams would be sent throughout the city to meet up with homeless individuals residing in the subway, ensuring that the unsheltered will be provided with housing and care, and working with government agencies to help improve housing and mental health services.

Five outreach teams will be deployed at Penn Station, the West 42nd Street corridor, Grand Central Terminal, West 4th Street, the Fulton Street Corridor, and Jamaica Center to provide alternative shelter to people living on trains.

Teams will include medical staff and psychiatric health clinicians to refer people to mental health services. In addition, teams will be stationed at a train’s final stop to engage with unsheltered New Yorkers and place them into shelter settings such as stabilization beds.

On March 28, just a month after announcing the subway plan, the mayor implemented further measures against the homeless, by removing homeless encampments from the streets of New York.

Many New Yorkers oppose Adams’ approach to the homeless.

Nortz stated that the mayor is trying to criminalize the homeless. “It is sickening to hear Mayor Adams liken unsheltered homeless people to a cancer,” she said. “Criminalizing homelessness and mental illness is not the answer.”

She continued, “We urge great caution with respect to any regulatory or statutory expansion of involuntary commitment or outpatient treatment standards, including Kendra’s Law.”

Kendra’s law was legislation that was put into effect in 1999 after a woman named Kendra Webdale was pushed onto the tracks of an on-coming N train by a schizophrenic man named Andrew Goldstein, killing her.

The law gives judges the power to issue orders requiring people who satisfy certain requirements to receive mental treatment on a regular basis.

But “expansion of the legal criteria will not solve the problem and could result in pushing people in need further away from care,” the Coalition for the Homeless deputy director said. ”It will also not solve the problem of premature discharges or access to care when people seek it. It will not solve unsheltered homelessness.”

Another individual had a similar sentiment in regard to the plan. A 24-year-old Brooklyn College student, who referred to himself only by his first name, Vern, said, “These people need to be housed, not in jail cells. The cops are just pushing people away into these jails by these summons and these tickets.”

Brooklyn College student Alliyah Biggs wanted the mayor to put enough funding into providing services to the homeless and mentally challenged.

“They should find a plan to help the homeless people better,” the 22-year-old senior said. “Funded shelters, job recruiters for the homeless, personal care assistants, counselors for the homeless.”

One major criticism that the mayor received was the funding for social services.

It was reported that Mayor Adams’ budget plan cuts $615 million from homeless services, decreasing the Department of Homeless Services spending from $2.8 billion to $2.15 billion for the 2023 fiscal year, according to City Limits.

Brooklyn Councilman Chi Ossé commented on the budget cuts when asked by the New York Daily News.

“I’m kind of confused as to how that plan will be carried out when there have been no significant investments in … street outreach,” he said to the Daily News. “Do you believe that the preliminary budget that is proposed is adequate enough for addressing … our unsheltered neighbors that are seeking shelter on the subways?”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority conducted a survey which found 29 homeless encampments within the subway tunnels and an additional 89 encampments in the subway stations, according to the New York Post, which estimated there are over 350 people living within these spaces.

One MTA worker weighed in on the matter. “It doesn’t surprise me,” Monita Jordan, Power Distribution Maintainer with the MTA said. “We have a large homeless population (in NYC) and they find ways to make some place home. Sometimes it’s by all means necessary for them.”

She urged the mayor to take a humane approach. “You do have many crimes that are done by homeless people, but it’s not all homeless people,” she said. “Some people need mental health services and independent living services. They need to come up with some type of better services such as job placement and low-income housing for the homeless.”

In his March 25 announcement, Mayor Adams said a two-week operation would remove homeless encampments and place individuals in healthy living conditions.

“We can’t stop an individual from sleeping on the street based on law, and we’re not going to violate that law,” the mayor told The New York Times. “But you can’t build a miniature house made out of cardboard on the streets. That’s inhumane.”

Jacquelyn Simone, Policy Director for the Coalition for the Homeless, was sharply critical. “Once again, Mayor Adams is demonstrating his lack of understanding of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers,” she said. “His administration has no plan to provide safe, single rooms where they can stay inside, and is relying instead on the tired and cruel old tactic of chasing those without shelter out of Manhattan.”

She continued, “Like Giuliani, he will fail. Moving people to the outer boroughs will simply move them away from outreach workers, access to food, and the health and social services they need to survive,” she said. “If the Mayor is serious about helping homeless people, he needs to open thousands of new Safe Haven and stabilization rooms and offer them to those in need, not take away what little protection they have from the elements and other dangers on the street.”

Brooklyn Community Board 1’s Parks and Waterfront Committee met Feb. 17 to discuss the 40 Quay Street development located along the northern border of 27-acre Bushwick Inlet Park. They will meet again in April to make their recommendations, but they already had voted down redevelopment of that area in 2019 in a non-binding vote.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) proposed the sale of its mobile truck washing facility property at 40 Quay street in Greenpoint for residential development in May 2019. It would be a $39 million deal between the MTA and Gotham, the developer, if he succeeds in changing the zoning to allow residential towers on 40 Quay St.

The Monitor Point proposal, as it is called, consists of eight components; 900 units in a 40-45 story tower with 25% permanent affordable housing, including units for seniors; 100,000 square feet mixed retail/commercial space; significant public access to open space; a waterfront promenade connecting Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront; a new mobile truck facility in East Williamsburg (Varick Ave); new proposed turnkey facility for MTA’s Emergency Response Unit (ERU), and a permanent home for Greenpoint Monitor Museum.

 Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park (FBIP) – a community-based advocacy organization dedicated to the development, stewardship, and programming of the Bushwick Inlet were outraged with the Monitor Point proposal. The land is a state-owned property which the developer Gotham wants to upzone, increasing the density that is currently allowed to be built on this property.

Greenpoint and Williamsburg have the greatest density of new development in New York City with 21 thousand new housing units being developed in these two neighborhoods.

Katherine Thompson, co-chair of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, who spoke at the committee meeting, pointed out that 40 Quay Street is publicly owned land, “For the price that the MTA is getting for developing this public property in a neighborhood overwhelmed with development, the city could get a bargain on waterfront land that would be a critical addition to vital park space,” said Thompson.

The Parks and Waterfront Committee wants the MTA to withdraw from the “conditional designation” of Gotham for the redevelopment of 40 Quay Street and to work with the Greenpoint and Williamsburg community to transform this waterfront site into a sustainable public space.

Back in November, 2019, Community Board 1’s Parks and Waterfront Committee voted  32-0 against the MTA’s RFP–a “request for proposal” to sale or lease 40 Quay for residential development.  Despite the opposition of the Parks and Waterfront Committee, on October 2021, the MTA approved a proposal bid by the developer Gotham Organization called Monitor Point.

The development on 40 Quay St. poses concerns, according to Stephen Chesler, co-chair of FBIP. He is worried about the construction of such a massive structure and the increase of wastewater overflows that can have a negative impact to the ecosystem with various species that live there.

“Bushwick Inlet itself is this beautiful and unique embayment, an ecosystem with various species of waterfowl, mergansers, buffalo heads, and we have the oyster project in the process of restoring oysters, flora and fauna–native plants that are sustaining wildlife,” said Chesler.

The development is in the process of a Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP), which is a step-by-step approval process that large developments need to go through, going all the way up through the City Council and mayor. The Parks and Waterfronts Committee has a non-binding vote to be submitted within 60 days. Then, it moves to the Borough President who has 30 days to recommend a comment where they are both non-binding votes.

It then goes to the City Planning Commission, where the developer Gotham has to apply and be pre-certified with an environmental impact statement.  If the City Planning Commission votes down, the project would be dead. If they approve, it is up to the City Council to vote on it.

“After five days, the City Council votes. There’s an environmental review that outlines the environmental impact of those actions, which is associated with dealer factions,” said John Douglas, director of land use for Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

“It is a major flood zone,” said Chesler, as he showed the committee a flood map that extends itself 100 years from now. “By 2050, nuisance flooding is just going to be normal flooding on a regular basis. The idea of putting people in these large structures in the middle of that is mind boggling,” he said.

Before the committee’s 60 days are up, Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park plans to submit a recommendation which entails a defense against sea-level rise and climate emergency showing examples of Hunts Point Wetland, Living Breakwaters at New York Harbor, and Lower Manhattan’s Resilience Plan structures that have been built for defenses against sea-level rise.

In addition, the committee is recommending making the area greener to sustain what already exists at 40 Quay. “It’s going to be a continuing ongoing story. There’s going to be a big community resistance campaign. That’s going to be coming out very soon,” said Chesler.

Community Board 1’s Parks and Waterfront committee’s next meeting will be in April and they will weigh in with their recommendations, but the process is ultimately with the City Planning Commission, City Council and ultimately, the mayor.

BROOKLYN—The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), following a dismal two-year decline in ridership needs riders back into the subways. Chair and CEO Janno Lieber announced in a virtual meeting Feb. 24 that there would be no fare hike this year, thanks to Federal stimulus money, while 20 commuters spoke out for improvement of service.

No small order: the enormity of the pandemic dropped the ridership rates of the MTA by 50% through much of the pandemic. New Yorkers have avoided public transit the Omicron variant forced people to work from home and other safety conditions plagued city transit.

“By working with the city and the state, I’m convinced we can fix these conditions and welcome New Yorkers back into a system that’s safer and feels safer,” said Leiber.

Crime on subways was also a major concern proposed by residents who spoke on Thursday. They called on the board to respond to the fear felt by riders, citing the death of the late Asian-American Michele Go, 40, who was pushed into the path of an oncoming train by a homeless attacker.

Malinda Elias, a mother who spoke to the board said, “Currently I have yet to go on a bus or a subway with my 18-month-old because of safety and convenience concerns.”

Leiber said the city, state and the MTA are doing something about it. “Last Friday I stood with Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, as they unveiled a comprehensive subway safety plan that prioritizes outreach and services for homeless and others who are housing in our system and suffer from mental issues,” he said.

The MTA will also enforce a subway code of conduct in addition to services to people in need. The governor and mayor agree to bolster the code’s significance by placing a record number of police officers in underground stations.
“No more smoking, no more doing drugs, no more sleeping, no more barbecues on the subway system, and no more just doing whatever you want,” said Adams. Chief Safety Officer, Patrick Warren will oversee the commitment made to NYC riders for the MTA.

Ridership rates are expected to spike in the coming weeks of March, as Adams had urged CEOs to resettle their companies back into office spaces to help revitalize surrounding service companies.

A group of mothers attended the public forum and pushed back against a ban on open strollers on buses, scrutinizing the board at the meeting for infringing on the convenience and accessibility of certain riders.

One mother pointed out that having a child sit on a mother’s lap contradicted the rule of car seats: to have the baby strapped in. Another said it was unsafe for her to manage her energetic child with one hand while balancing a heavy stroller away from the clear path on the bus.

“Bus drivers humiliate you; they create scenes,” Danielle Avaçar said. “It’s completely unfair for parents to put up with it,”. Some who were dismayed by the difficulty of riding buses accompanied by their baby and a stroller said they stopped riding buses.

The MTA expressed no clear response to resolve this concern, however, with assistance from the governor’s and mayor’s office, riders can expect novel changes to public transportation services.

Lisa Daglian, Executive Director of Permanent Citizen Advisory to the MTA (PCAC) addressed the board, “MTA needs to use every tool in its tool kit to keep riders safe and help them feel safer, so they return. Without riders, the cliff will only become steeper, and the red ink deeper.”