They Just Need a Safe Place to Be:” How Public Transit Became the Last Safety Net In America

On May 2, a young man named Jordan Neely was killed on the New York City subway. Neely, who was an unhoused New Yorker, was reportedly behaving erratically, so a fellow passenger, an ex-Marine who as of this writing has not been arrested or named by law enforcement, put him in a choke hold until he died. In the wake of this shocking crime, Aaron Gordon of Vice‘s Motherboard vertical examines how public transit became the front line of America’s housing crisis:

[J]ust because it is a known problem doesn’t mean there is an intelligent, evidence-based public discourse on what to do about it. The fact is that transit agencies have, to varying degrees, been dealing with this question for decades. Paradoxically, many members of the public, politicians, and the political commentariat clamor that transit agencies do something, even though the root cause of homelessness is quite obviously a housing problem and not a transit problem.