Hochul Expands Subway Homeless Removals as Mamdani Eyes Police-Free Outreach in NYC

New York’s latest tussle over homeless policy highlights how American cities, torn between compassion and order, struggle to reconcile care for the vulnerable with the realities of urban transit.

Anyone riding the Lexington Avenue Line after midnight has a passable chance of sharing a carriage with a restless soul seeking shelter from the biting January wind. Since at least the 1980s, New York’s subway has been a de facto refuge for the city’s homeless: a parallel world of weary sleep, police bootsteps, and public unease. The city’s enduring challenge—how to govern this subterranean liminality—has again moved to the political fore.

Governor Kathy Hochul’s “State of the State” speech on January 14th cast a fresh spotlight on the dispute. Her headline prescription: an expansion of the SCOUT programme, which teams behavioural health nurses with police officers to patrol platforms and escort homeless New Yorkers—sometimes by force—into hospital if they are judged a danger to themselves or others. The plan marks a jump from 10 to 15 SCOUT teams, a not inconsiderable 50% surge.

Newly minted Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who shares the governor’s gusto for progressive childcare and social provision, has thus far balked at her muscular approach to homelessness under the city streets. Mamdani’s team prefers “transit ambassadors”—civilian helpers tending emergencies, doling out transit advice, and providing gentle assistance. Police, in his schema, step aside. He has resisted “sweeps” of subway encampments, signalling a distinct pivot in tone and policy.

The mayor’s ambiguity reflects a fundamental awkwardness. On one hand, subway crime in the past year drifted to historic lows, eroding the narrative tying visible homelessness to rampant disorder. On the other, perennial commuter complaints about safety and cleanliness make inertia politically risky; New Yorkers expect their $2.90 fare to buy a measure of order, not a movable encampment. Savvy politicians know that press releases do not scrub platforms, nor can sympathy alone mollify an impatient electorate.

The future of PATH, a separate outreach programme launched by former Mayor Eric Adams—and still staffed by its founder, Brian Stettin—hangs in the balance. PATH, like SCOUT, has leaned heavily on involuntary removals and hospitalisation. Stettin, whose ardour for this “assertive” tactic is well documented, now lobbies Mamdani to keep his legacy alive. “It is my fervent hope,” he wrote recently, that the city won’t slide “back to the days of involuntary removal only as a ‘last resort.’” As of mid-January, Mamdani’s intent remains publicly unannounced.

How does this all play out underground? Gotham’s outreach teams, as observed in the field, wield authority and medical training in equal measure: an uneasy blend of Florence Nightingale and Officer Krupke, alternately offering care and calling for restraints. One ride-along documented a man removed in handcuffs with a “spit hood”—procedure or indignity, depending on one’s lens. Critics suggest such spectacles deter ridership, punish poverty, and portend further marginalisation. Proponents insist this is necessary intervention for the most visible—and vulnerable—of the city’s 60,000 unhoused.

The immediate implication for New Yorkers, of course, is measured in their daily passage through a transit network carrying some four million souls each weekday. Striking the correct balance—safety for the many, dignity for the few—is not merely a question of sentiment. It is, as ever, one of dollars and priorities. SCOUT’s expansion will necessitate new state funds, more police overtime, and an elastic supply of psychiatric beds already in chronic shortfall.

Business groups and union representatives are, predictably, split. Transport Workers Union Local 100 publicly welcomed Hochul’s plan as overdue action, even as advocacy groups for the homeless denounced “criminalising poverty.” For subway operators, fewer encampments portend fewer disruptions and improved morale. For social services, involuntary hospitalisation is a costly bandaid—a gesture at fixing root causes in a city where affordable housing remains desperately scarce and mental health care, while improved, still teeters on the edge of adequacy.

What of the second-order effects? If the state ratchets up its interventionist policies and Mamdani acquiesces, New York risks further entrenching a model of enforced care—one that appeals to anxious property owners but may find itself snarled in legal challenges. The city’s own history offers caution: past sweeps often produced churn, not rehabilitation, as the homeless circled between platforms, shelters, and ER beds. Conversely, should Mamdani prevail, the subways may become a test bed for less coercive, more gradualist outreach—a wager on trust and civilian mediation over citation and compulsion. This gentle approach, however, courts charges of naivety from an electorate justifiably tired of social experiments performed at rush hour.

Divided tracks: local wrangling meets national scrutiny

New York’s debate is not sui generis. Los Angeles, Washington DC, and San Francisco have all cycled through similar arguments: whether to meet entrenched homelessness with force, faith, or laissez-faire drift. Each city oscillates between punitive sweeps and episodic compassion, with results that are typically ambiguous. Europe, for its part, largely eschews policing in favour of extensive public housing, underwritten by the state—a luxury less easily procured in a city where real estate remains closer to gold than to a public utility.

Yet the American context makes solutions stubbornly elusive. Legal pressures (see: the Supreme Court’s expected ruling on homelessness and public spaces in 2026) further complicate matters. Some federal judges, invoking constitutional protections, have already chipped away at blanket removals unless emergency shelter is available. New York’s “right to shelter” doctrine (incarnate in Callahan v. Carey) both undergirds and constrains the city’s responses: hotel-room conversions and social workers’ clipboards proliferate, but so too do public grievances and fiscal strains.

Such is the terrain on which Mamdani and Hochul must now spar. Any durable solution will need to be data-driven, pragmatic, and—crucially—scalable beyond election cycles and editorial outrage alike. SCOUT’s reported metrics (few published), the subjective judgments of field nurses, and subway crime figures all deserve more rigorous scrutiny lest policy drift become doctrine.

For now, Hochul’s boldness may buy time and headlines; Mamdani’s diffidence, a measure of grace for the unhoused. Yet, the deeper malaise remains: homelessness cannot be swept up with a broom or benevolence alone. The risk, as ever, is that New York’s vaunted spirit of innovation degenerates into mere improvisation—a daily triage rather than a cogent long-term policy.

New Yorkers deserve subways that are safe, humane, and predictable; their homeless compatriots, a future off the platforms, not merely out of sight. Whether either side prevails, the city’s next act on this stubborn stage will surely be watched—and picked apart—by urban policymakers far beyond its borders. ■