In a glossy video uploaded to social media in late January, Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned New Yorkers about the upcoming snowstorm. Sporting a slick green jacket and his trademark smarmy grin, Mamdani advised commuters to opt for public transit if they needed to travel.
It was good advice, considering the city’s roads were about to become nearly impossible to navigate. But it would’ve been nice if the mayor had added a footnote: A new cold-weather policy preventing NYPD officers from ejecting rulebreakers from the subway meant the city’s public transit system was about to become a lot more dangerous.
This week, it was announced that New York City saw a 20% increase in transit crime in February. Twenty-seven percent of those offenses would be felony assaults.
The NYC subway transit system saw a 20% increase in crime in February alone. Stephen Yang
The decision to implement the new policy was one grounded in “compassion,” City Hall rep Sam Raskin said in a statement. And therein lies the problem.
Policies informed by warm feelings instead of the cold, hard facts are always destined to fail. Good intentions are not a governing philosophy.
No, homeless people are not inherently bad people, and yes, of course they deserve as much dignity and respect as the next person. But they’re also much more likely to be mentally ill and addicted to narcotics. It might sound cruel to kick such a person out into the snow.
Mayor Mamdani prohibited the NYPD from ejecting subway rulebreakers during the cold snap. Stephen Yang for NY Post
Even crueler is prioritizing the interests of the misbehaving few over the wellbeing of the millions of law-abiding New Yorkers who just want to make it home in one piece. A government’s first obligation is public safety. When that obligation is diluted in the name of optics, the most vulnerable—seniors, shift workers, women commuting alone at night—pay the price.
As the snow fell, if it wasn’t violence that New Yorkers had to worry about, it was grand larceny, which accounted for over half of the 192 reported crimes. And if it wasn’t theft, it was defecation.
One New Yorker described in horror a recent morning when he and many other commuters had to pack themselves into a single subway car because the neighboring one was covered in feces. The culprit? A homeless individual stretched out on a bench, enjoying an entire F-train car all to himself.
Everyday commuters should not pay the price for the city’s flawed shelter system. AFP via Getty Images
Quality-of-life offenses may sound minor to policymakers insulated from the daily grind, but for the people forced to navigate them, they are anything but.
Misguided, toxic empathy is what drove the mayor’s decision to halt the clearance of homeless encampments, which he announced a month before taking office.
“If you are not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing that they so desperately need, then you cannot deem anything you’re doing to be a success,” he said at a press conference. In a December op-ed for The Post, Judge Block, the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote that the decision would lead to “more crime and disorder on the streets—and more deaths among the homeless themselves.”
And that’s exactly what happened. Between 2021 and 2024, New York City saw an average of 14 deaths due to cold exposure per year. Since Mamdani took office, at least 19 people have already died.
In mid-February, the mayor pulled an about-face, announcing the clearances would recommence. You live, you learn, right? Well, rather: People die, you learn. Leadership should not require a body count before reality sets in.
Subway systems and sidewalk encampments are not the solution to a city’s homelessness problem. Shelters are. And homeless New Yorkers, by law, have a right to access those shelters—shelters, mind you, that our tax dollars pay for.
But the shelters don’t allow alcohol and drug use. And unfortunately that’s a sacrifice a lot of homeless people are unwilling to make.
The subways have become a default safe haven for the homeless. ZUMAPRESS.com
Real compassion sometimes demands hard limits and uncomfortable enforcement. Socialists like Mayor Mamdani are not operating from a place of cruelty. They really do believe they’re doing what’s right. But while their eyes are fixed on some fanciful future, they will time and again fail to deal with the inconvenient truths in the here and now.
Equity-based schemes that incentivize giving up and shooting drugs over pragmatic policies that reward overcoming obstacles and working hard will always yield tragic results.
A city cannot function on vibes and virtue alone. New Yorkers, housed and unhoused alike, deserve so much better.