Kudos to @BrianLehrer for asking the right questions on NYC subway closures and clearing of people experiencing homelessness. Worth a listen. A 🧵 with some highlights (1/)
He saw through Mayor's spin: "So only 10% of the homeless people they [NYPD] encountered on night 1 had extended interactions [w/outreach teams] & only 5%, half of that, agreed to go to a shelter. The Mayor called that a success. One could argue that isn’t a lot of success…” (2/
He played a clip of a woman who had been kicked off the subway: "I’d rather sit outside than go to a shelter." A WNYC reporter who was on the ground (interviewed at end of segment) noted "what I witnessed was dozens and dozens of people crouched on the street." (3/)
The reporter from the ground noted subway cleaning is happening but “the main effort is getting all of the homeless people out…and moving them along.” “The number of social workers was greatly dwarfed by the number of NYPD officers.” (4/)
By the way, as this thread from @humandotnyc shows, when people are dropped at doorstep of the 30th Street intake/assessment shelter, it's unclear how much "success" happens. (5/)
I agree with interim president of NYC transit @FeinbergSarah: “Isn’t the solution that we have to fix the fact that we have a large population in the City with no place to go and they are incredibly vulnerable?” (6/)
She continues, “I have said repeatedly that we have to solve the policy problem; we have to solve the fact that we have a whole population of people who don’t have a place to go and who don’t want to be in the shelter system because they view it as unsafe…” (7/)
When @BrianLehrer asks her about whether the City using hotel rooms as an alternative would be preferable she says "absolutely." While hotels won't work for everybody, they could certainly work for many people as a safer option to the subways or congregate shelters. (8/)
Bottom line: this is a tragedy. It's a tragedy that we had 2,000+ people sleeping on subways to begin with, because that is what they viewed as their best option. Certainly subways are not a good place to live. (9/)
It's also a tragedy that now people are being kicked out (to unseasonably cold May weather) of the subways, with inadequate options offered to them & in many train stations not even any social services presence. It astounds me that this is how NYC has chosen to treat humans (10/)
I've said before and will say again, I'm thankful to the outreach teams out there helping. And getting several hundred to go to shelter is indeed a new and (hopefully) important step (we still need data on how many stayed any period of time) for some people. (11/)
But, with 171 shelters across the DHS system reporting *known* COVID-19 cases, I'm saddened to think that anyone would consider that taking people to these congregate shelters--where adequate social distancing is hard if not impossible--is a real "win." (12/)
This thread is too long so I'll just end by saying that #COVID19 is showing us more than ever that housing is health care -- and that adequate health is impossible without housing (not shelters, housing). (end)
