Just after 1 a.m. Thursday, with the outdoor temperature a tick above 10 degrees, Jason Pettigrew settled in for the night in what he said was not his usual resting place.
On the L train.
“It’s freezing, freezing cold,” the 34-year-old homeless man told THE CITY while crossing 14th Street on a Brooklyn-bound L, where he nestled against friend Dom Wilson, who wrapped herself in a blanket. “I mean, we could go to drop-in centers or shelters, but they’re already full — and no park tonight.”
With the city in the grip of its coldest spell in two years, the subway system becomes a default shelter for homeless New Yorkers reluctant to seek beds elsewhere — even as the Department of Homeless Services says it’s increased round-the-clock outreach efforts during a “Code Blue” weather emergency when temperatures drop below 32 degrees.
On a southbound C/E line platform at 34th Street-Penn Station, Rose Williams brushed off the repeated efforts of a pair of homeless outreach workers who tried to convince her to go to a drop-in center by saying, “It’s too cold to be out here.”
The 57-year-old told THE CITY she prefers to ride the E train all night — “it’s a little warmer,” she said — over going to a shelter or a drop-in center.
Jason Pettigrew, left, and Dom Wilson on an L train, Jan. 22, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Williams, who said she has been homeless for five years since a series of surgeries turned her into “a raging addict,” cited a recent stay at a drop-in center that ended with her methadone bottle and some personal belongings being stolen.
“My brand new hat, scarf and gloves that I paid for after panhandling for a couple of hours — gone,” she said. “The shelters are awful, they really are.”
At Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer, a homeless man stayed on the E train drinking a grape soda long after the automated “This is the last stop on the train” announcement played over the train’s speakers, asking everyone to “please leave the train.”
The 30-year-old, who identified himself as God Lyac, said he feels safer staying on trains during the overnight hours.
“I choose to stay out of shelters until I’m ready to go in,” he said. “You definitely feel warmer and safer [in the subway].”
Such scenes in the subway are indicative of a city shelter system that “doesn’t work for everyone,” according to Dave Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless.
“There’s a number of people who tried the shelter system and found that it just didn’t meet their needs,” Giffen said.
He pointed to a Coalition for the Homeless survey from 2021 that showed more than 75% of the 200 respondents who were living in the streets or on the subway felt “they had to give up safety, dignity and agency” by going into the shelter system.
According to DHS’s most recent Homeless Outreach Population Estimate, the annual “point in time” survey of unsheltered individuals in the city, there were 2,047 people sleeping in the subway on a single night in January 2024, a 4% decrease from the previous year. The next HOPE count will take place Jan. 28.
While there is no precise measure of how many people seek shelter in the subway specifically on freezing nights, Giffen said it’s natural that more homeless New Yorkers turn to the transit system as an option.
“It’s public and it’s indoors, it’s out of the elements,” he said. “I mean, where are people going to go?
“If you lost your home and had no network of family and friends, where would you go when it’s 12 degrees outside?”
The blast of cold weather came as the police presence in the subway was supposed to have surged this week, with Gov. Kathy Hochul pledging to have uniformed officers on each train between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. and to add providers for medical and psychiatric care in the transit system.
God Lyac on an E train during a frigid winter night. Jan. 22, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
In visits to three terminals and multiple subway lines late Wednesday into early Thursday, THE CITY did not encounter officers aboard a single train, only on platforms — but did see police remove a homeless man’s oversized cart from a train at the No. 1 line’s South Ferry terminal in Lower Manhattan.
The 2020 death of subway train operator Garrett Goble in a March 2020 fire ignited by an alleged arsonist in a shopping cart led the MTA to ban large carts from the system
Station workers who spoke to THE CITY said they’d welcome the increased presence of both police officers and homeless outreach workers.
“Some of them refuse to go, but some of them do go,” said a station cleaner at the Jamaica Center-Parsons/Archer terminal for the E, J and Z lines. “So the workers help them and give them clean clothes, they give them socks.”
Greg Ulto arrived at the terminal late Wednesday with a fellow volunteer from a church group to distribute 60 pre-packed meals that included peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apple sauce and Twinkies.
Greg Ulto hands out meals to people sleeping on trains at the Jamaica terminal, Jan. 22, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“Tonight, we came out because it’s extra cold,” he said. “There’s more people inside on the trains, without a shadow of a doubt.”
The 52-year-old Bensonhurst man said he started working with the homeless after suffering from drug and alcohol addiction. He said he has been sober for three decades.
“It’s just a matter of just alleviating some suffering,” Ulto said. “Some people we get to pray with, but that’s not the primary thing, the primary thing is just to meet a need and let people know that people care.”
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