On February 18, New York City ex-pig Mayor Adams announced his “subway safety” plan that is supposed to address the danger of people being attacked on the subways. In fact, this is a plan that is in line with Adams’ “Blueprint to End Gun Violence,” which, as revcom.us has written, reads more like a Blueprint of Unleashed Piggery.1
Adams’ subway plan aimed at homeless people will deploy 30 “response teams,” comprised of members from the Department of Health and Department of Homeless Services and NYPD pigs. And New York City transit cops will get more training to enforce Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) rules.
Why Are There So Many Homeless People?
The first question that has to be asked here is: WHY are there homeless people?
The huge and growing number of homeless people—in NYC and across the U.S.—shines a light on the total inability of the system of capitalism-imperialism to provide poor people with food and shelter. This system may try to offer some reforms, put some band-aids on the problem of homelessness. But the fact is, this system cannot offer any real solutions. This system has no answers that are in the interests of the people and humanity—just like it has no answers to white supremacy, the oppression of women, the situation with immigrants, climate change, etc. Because it is this system that is at the root of these problems.
Instead, this heartless system punishes people who are down and out, like the homeless. This is a system, especially in New York City, where all kinds of expensive, profitable apartments and condos are built while there’s a huge lack of low cost housing, forcing many to live on the streets.
Over the past 50 years in big cities like New York, there has been the most insane parasitic financial activity in real estate. For example, in 2021, Manhattan real estate posted its best year ever with $30 billion in sales, according to real estate reports. And the average price for an apartment in Manhattan is now $1.95 million.2 An article on the New York Engineers website, “New York Needs More Affordable Housing,” states plainly: “[D]emand for affordable housing has also increased, but there is little incentive for developers to meet this demand when they can build luxury condominiums.”3
In December 2021, there were 48,691 homeless people, including 15,227 homeless children, sleeping each night in New York City’s main municipal shelter system. And this does not count the homeless people who don’t go to the shelters but are sleeping on the street.4
The number of homeless adults in the city increased by 91 percent over the last decade.5 According to the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, there were 104,088 students identified as homeless in the city’s school system for the period 2016-2017.6
According to the Coalition for the Homeless, “Research shows that the primary cause of homelessness, particularly among families, is lack of affordable housing. Surveys of homeless families have identified the following major immediate, triggering causes of homelessness: eviction; doubled-up or severely overcrowded housing; domestic violence; job loss; and hazardous housing conditions.”
Go back and re-read this list of “triggering causes of homelessness.” An article could be written about each one with a compelling argument for why the whole way this system works, with its profit-above-all mantra—is the root cause of these things.
And let’s just put it bluntly—if the only thing wrong with this system was that year after year 100,000 children are homeless at one time or another in the richest city of the richest, most powerful imperialist country, as profits in the real estate and construction industries climb each year, and as these children and their parents are treated as sub-humans and scarred for life and now, with the “ex”-pig Adams demonizing and repressing them on top of that… that would be reason enough to overthrow it.
The Mayor’s War on the Homeless
The mayor’s new plan is portrayed as a response to the fact that in recent months, a number of people have been violently attacked in subway stations and trains, allegedly by homeless people. In fact, of the eight attacks that took place over the weekend of February 19-20, only one is believed to have been carried out by a homeless person.7
These incidents, though, have given rise to much discussion about how homeless people have nowhere to go and don’t get treatment for mental illness. But does Adams’ plan include a way to feed and house the homeless or to help homeless people who have mental illness? No. What Eric Adams’ plan does is to open a new front in a war on the homeless, to further criminalize and jail homeless people. In fact, Adams’ preliminary budget allocates less money for adult shelters beginning July 1, 2022. At a time when homelessness is skyrocketing.
At a time when the 2020 COVID-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act has ended, which means that the nearly 200,000 city eviction cases pending in Housing Court will begin to move forward. This is truly outrageous.
And what are the MTA rules that Eric Adams is ordering his “Response Team” pigs to strictly enforce? Riders cannot lie down on the seats. No littering. No drug use. No using the subway system for anything other than transportation. Sounding like a Nazi enforcer, Adams said, "No more just doing whatever you want. No. Those days are over. Swipe your MetroCard, ride the system, get off at your destination."
Clearly, these “rules” are used to target people the powers that be deem “undesirable.” This includes the homeless but also others—like people who can’t afford the fare and jump turnstiles, and Black and other oppressed youths who the NYPD harass, beat and arrest for minor “violations” or for nothing at all.
Probably expecting his plan to be criticized, Adams added a proposal, with no specifics, to provide hundreds of beds for homeless people.
Adams says his plan isn’t about arresting people. But if this is so, why does the heart of his plan rely on NYPD and New York City transit cops? 1,000 transit cops were recently added to the MTA.
As revcom.us has pointed out: Eric Adams is a Black Giuliani.
Homeless People Treated by the System as Less Than Human
There are certainly many mentally ill people who have become homeless—especially due to large numbers of mental health institutions having been closed down. There are many who suffer from various conditions, both physical and mental, and then have these ailments severely exacerbated when they become homeless. And there are also cases where people become mentally ill because of the conditions they are subjected to on the street. Being homeless is stressful, dangerous, and dehumanizing and even a relatively “together” person can get broken living on the streets.
Lori Teresa Yearwood grew up in a middle-class family, went to college and got a degree in journalism. Then a series of very bad things happened in her life, including the death of her mother, her house burning down, and being unable to pay the rent. “In a blink of an eye,” she found herself “lying inside a plastic garbage bag on a park bench, wrapping clothes around my shivering body.” She was sexually abused and assaulted. She was incarcerated after a complaint she had bathed in a public river. Due to severe trauma, she stopped talking for nearly two years.8 Today, she is again a journalist who has written about how easily this can happen to people.
Especially in the cold winter, many homeless people ride the NYC trains to keep warm, even to stay alive. But an “End of the Line” team that includes NYPD cops will now force people to leave when they reach the end of a subway line. Cops are also repeatedly conducting sweeps to viciously remove homeless people who are seeking shelter in the underground rail tunnels.
When you hear these things, think about the human beings being discussed and treated as so much garbage—each with a story as compelling as Lori Yearwood’s.