NEW YORK — Homeless subway rider Diego Sergio de los Rios, sitting inside a train at the 242nd Street subway station in the Bronx, was actually looking forward to a visit from the New York Police Department.
Yet on day one of a new city initiative to assist the homeless across New York’s 472 subway stations, he had yet to see any evidence Monday morning of the outreach program announced last week to address the troubling and long-standing mass transit conundrum.
“None of the police officers ever approached me,” he said while fixing his socks on a seat inside a No. 1 train. “I wish one of them would ... so I could get to an agreement for them to put me in a homeless shelter.”
Bernadette Blaise, 66, regularly sleeps on trains running out to the Coney Island/Stillwell Avenue stop in Brooklyn. The homeless woman, standing outside on a chilly February morning, said she preferred riding the rails to staying in a shelter.
“Some people, for no reason, they attack you,” she said of the shelters. “I’ve tried a few, but it’s a mess.”
She had mixed feelings about the initiative.
“They should not force people,” she said of attempts to get homeless people out of the subway system and into shelters. “The one who’s willing to try, sure. The shelter I’ve been to before, I won’t go there. I feel safer on the street.”
Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the new effort to help the homeless riders last Friday, with teams of police officers, mental health workers and homeless service specialists set to engage with the dispossessed population throughout the system.
Rules of conduct will now be strictly enforced, the mayor promised, vowing the NYPD would no longer turn a blind eye to straphangers who smoke, get high or flop on trains and in subway stations.
“No more smoking, no more doing drugs, no more sleeping, no more doing barbeques on the subway system. No more just doing whatever you want,” Adams said Friday. “No. Those days are over.
Homeless woman Sherry Stenger, 27, said at the Bronx stop that she’s used to a tough approach from cops.
“The police been kicking us out of the train stations, like you can’t be in there and be warm,” she said. “They kick everybody out ... but they’re supposed to be there for us, right?”
A Daily News reporter spotted seven people sleeping on the seats inside a No. 1 train stopped at the station early Monday.
MTA subway conductor Ron Carnegie, 50, was taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the new City Hall directive.
“Give it a week,” he said inside the 34th Street station in Herald Square. “It’s gonna be hard to change this. I would like to see how (Adams) is going to do it. I understand these people need housing. But they really need more mental health assistance.”
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