The homeless population on New York City’s subways have nearly doubled since 2009, prompting the City and Metropolitan Transportation Authority to fund a new outreach program.
The City and MTA are putting $6 million into an outreach program in which workers will regularly seek to engage homeless people on the trains.
Non-profit Bowery Residents Committee will run the program with about 60 workers, starting in July. Workers will try to help place the homeless subway riders in shelters, seek counselling, and therapy.
“We think you’re going to see a big impact on the system," Danielle Minelli Pagnotta, assistant commissioner of the city Department of Homeless Services, told NY Daily News.
“We feel this has been the missing piece of the puzzle of addressing the homeless in the city,” Minelli Pagnotta said. “This is a population we really haven’t been able to work with.”
