The city’s subway stations with the worst ongoing vagrancy problems saw homelessness spike nearly 45 percent over the summer, the MTA’s safety chief revealed Monday.
The eight stations — all but one in Manhattan — were being used as living quarters by an average of 14.7 people in August, up from 10.2 homeless people in May, MTA chief safety officer Patrick Warren said.
The stations comprise some of the city’s busiest commuter hubs, including Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station, the Port Authority bus terminal and Lexington Avenue/59th Street, Warren said during a monthly meeting of the MTA’s Safety Committee in Manhattan.
The others are tourist landmarks Times Square and Union Square, as well as Manhattan’s Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.
All of the stations ranked in the 98th to 100th percentiles of those occupied by homeless people seeking shelter, Warren said.
At Penn Station, The Post saw about eight men milling about inside and outside on Monday afternoon.
One man was wandering around shirtless.
A commuter from Long Island who identified herself as “Nina S.,” 40, an education worker from Long Island, said, “I make sure to stand near people when I’m here.”
“I see feces, crazy people, people peeing in the corner of stairs. It’s gross,” she said.
Another commuter, Jim Colletti, 59, said, “Something has to be done for our safety and theirs.”
“People think the city is trash and won’t come in,” he added.
All of the stations ranked in the 98th percentile of those occupied by homeless people seeking shelter, Warren said.
Warren said transit officials began conducting their own counts because data from the annual tallies conducted by the city each winter is “not usable” because they’re “just a one-point-in-time count, which is interesting at the moment but we just don’t get the results until four months later.”
“This is a data-driven approach to understanding where the homeless are and how we can support them, provide outreach to that at-risk group,” he said.
“We can use our scarce resources by targeting them using information like this.”
Surveys at the MTA’s end-of-line stations, where vagrants tend to congregate overnight, showed that Stillwell Avenue and Flatbush Avenue/Brooklyn College in Brooklyn were the most populated, with an average of three people at each stop April 1 and Aug. 31.
Kathryn Wilde of the pro-business Partnership for New York City said that having homeless people living in the subway system was “a significant threat to the city’s recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic.
“New Yorkers fear catching COVID-19 or being assaulted or harassed by someone who is not wearing a mask, likely not vaccinated, and often evidences mental and physical health problems,” she said.
“The MTA has begged for police enforcement and has hired social agencies to try to relocate people, but the problem has only increased.”
Wilde added, “We all understand that there are no easy solutions, but our city is used to dealing with tough problems and this should be a top priority.”
City Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the General Welfare Committee, said the MTA’s findings showed “the need for better and more accessible resources for people living on the street.”
“While we expect to see an increase in the number of people on the street in the summer months, we need to acknowledge that right now, with the Delta variant so prevalent, people should not be in congregate shelter,”: he said.
“There are common-sense solutions: We should be investing in more Safe Haven and Stabilization beds, increasing access to mobile mental health, health and addiction services and focusing on rapid rehousing.”
Caitlin LaCroix, a co-founder of the nonprofit RxHOME advocacy group, said, “The lack of effective outreach that connects people directly to permanent homes and a failure to hold our elected leaders accountable for providing housing has exacerbated New York City’s homelessness crisis in the wake of the pandemic.”
“The city needs to fully embrace using a housing-first strategy, which would move people out of subways and shelters and into permanent homes,” she added.
Last week, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg said homelessness needed to be addressed for the city’s economy to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We cannot have the subways full of people who have no place to sleep,” Bloomberg said during an appearance at Ground Zero ahead of Saturday’s 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Gov. Kathy Hochul — who met with the billionaire ex-mayor before his remarks — also called the issue “something that is going to define New York and whether or not we’re going to have a full recovery.”
In June, internal MTA documents showed an increase in subway cars soiled with human waste, vomit and blood, leading an agency spokesman to call the situation “a reminder of the need for more mental health outreach and social service support in the city and throughout the system.”
In a prepared statement, city Department of Homeless Services spokesman Isaac McGinn said ongoing efforts by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration had led about 700 homeless people to leave the subways and move into shelters.
“We’re not sure what this survey is or how it was conducted by MTA’s transit staff but we do know that working with qualified outreach providers 24/7/365, we continue to directly engage New Yorkers living unsheltered on the streets and subway,” he said.