'You're still sort of nibbling around the edges'

New York officials are deploying more resources to help homeless people on the subway system. The case of Jordan Neely, who was killed by a fellow passenger during an apparent mental-health episode, shows just how far the city must go to solve one of its most stubborn problems.

I reported last week in The Wall Street Journal on some of those outreach efforts. Photographer Jeenah Moon and I attended a vigil for Neely which morphed into a protest on the Lower East Side. We then went to end-of-line stations to see the work in action.

At the World Trade Center station, a police officer spotted a person sprawled across the bench aboard an E train shortly after midnight. “Good morning!” the officer shouted. “Are you getting services?” an accompanying outreach worker asked. The person sat up, mumbled something, and the team moved on. The train pulled out of the station again a few minutes later with the homeless people still on it.

Just 1,300 of the 4,600 people who checked into the shelter system because of the program remain there, officials said. And those placements are a fraction of the 318,000 interactions between homeless people and outreach teams since February of 2022.

“Even with huge resources, you’re still sort of nibbling around the edges,” said Sarah Feinberg, who ran the subway system in 2020 and 2021. “The death of Jordan Neely is the sadly predictable reflection of all of these huge problems.”

Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator who struggled with mental illness, died May 1 after 24-year-old Daniel Penny put him in a fatal chokehold on a subway train in lower Manhattan.

Prosecutors charged Penny with second-degree manslaughter last week after a chorus of New York officials described the incident as a murder. His lawyers said he was acting to protect himself.

The incident has inflamed New Yorkers’ continuing postpandemic debate around public safety and mental health. At the center of both issues is the city’s homelessness crisis, which Mayor Eric Adams—a former police officer who patrolled the subway system—has pledged to fix but so far has struggled to alleviate.

“There were many people who did care about a man named Jordan, but it wasn’t enough this time,” Adams said recently, “and we must keep trying before we lose another Jordan.”

The mayor didn’t attend Neely’s funeral Friday in Harlem. At the service, the Rev. Al Sharpton gave a eulogy saying, “when they choked Jordan, they put their arms around all of us. … all of us have a right to live,” according to the New York Post.

THE LCA SHOW: My colleagues in the New York Capitol press corps on Tuesday will perform our annual satirical revue of state politicians on Tuesday night. Gov. Kathy Hochul and State Sen. Joe Griffo will deliver the Democratic and Republican “rebuttals.”

It’s always a fun night, and I hope to see you there. You can get tickets here.

THE QUESTION: What’s the ZIP code for the GE plant in Schenectady?

Know the answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.

THE LAST ANSWER: Ex-U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from Erie County, resigned from office in 2019 as he pleaded guilty for his role in an insider trading scheme.