BY PETE DONOHUE / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2014, 3:36 AM
Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Gilbert Taylor joined 3,000 volunteers Monday night, Jan. 27, 2014, into Tuesday morning for the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate, an annual city-wide headcount of New York's homeless population in New York. The commissioner toured around Madison Square Park and into the nearby 23rd St. N/R train station.
The homeless population in the subway has soared 90% in recent years, prompting an ambitious new effort to get the troubled riders assistance and off the rails, city officials said.
The city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are funding a $6 million outreach program that for the first time will regularly seek to engage the homeless in all 468 stations and on trains while they are in service — not just at end-of-the-line terminals or select “hot spots,” city officials said.
The program, which will be run by the Bowery Residents’ Committee, will triple to about 60 the number of workers the nonprofit now has assigned to the subway, said Danielle Minelli Pagnotta, assistant commissioner of the city Department of Homeless Services.
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