Growing number of homeless people caught up in NYC crackdown on sleeping on subways

NPR | By Samantha Max

Published May 11, 2026 at 5:47 PM EDT

A growing number of homeless New Yorkers are finding themselves in court after police caught them taking up more than one seat on public transit or lying on the floor of a station in recent months.

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Samantha Max

Samantha Max covers criminal justice for WPLN and joins the newroom through the Report for America program. This is her second year with Report for America: She spent her first year in Macon, Ga., covering health and inequity for The Telegraph and macon.com.

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