A shocking idea to stop mentally ill homeless people from wigging out on the train.

The New York Times reported Saturday that there are roughly 50-65 people on a list maintained by the Department of Homeless Services that have acted aggressively in the past. There are separate lists for transit and above ground. Jordan Neely was on the subway list. When outreach workers encounter a homeless person on the list, the DHS is supposed to expedite their access to services.

There has been so much hair-rending about mentally ill homeless people that I’m surprised anyone in America still has hair. I’m too tired to run through the 5,000 opinions people have come up with, especially after Neely’s death, but one thing all the perspectives have in common—from hippies like me to the most sadistic law -and-order trolls (like Eric Adams)—is they implicitly agree it’s an intractable problem. The Adamses then put on their serious voice and insist we have to jettison nice little ideas like individual rights for the sake of public safety.

But … apparently it’s a problem with an extremely easy solution. If there are 50-65 people in a city of 8 million causing mayhem on the trains, terrorizing passengers by screaming and lurching around, hitting old ladies in the head, and lowering ridership—what if instead of giving them more rapid access to “services” we give them a nice place to live that’s contingent on them taking their medication? By “nice” place to live I don’t mean a slightly less horrific shelter. I don’t mean forced treatment in a mental institution, which is the solution some liberals have reluctantly embraced as the compassionate choice, even as it exists in very constitutionally murky territory. Not just an SRO, in which grown men live in gross, tiny rooms.

I mean a nice apartment, stocked with food, no restrictions on alcohol and drug use, no curfews, access to educational and work opportunities (access, not mandatory requirements), social gatherings to alleviate loneliness. Tickets to the theater! Yes, I know I sound insane, but I really just described how New Yorker’s who are middle-class and up live. Obviously we can’t do it for everyone but we can definitely do it for 65 people!

The writer Freddie deBoer has noted that mental illness is extremely complicated by the fact that people who suffer from psychosis also suffer from a condition that causes them to deny being sick and in need of medication. That’s a real problem. But, also, the calculus might be different if, in exchange for taking a few pills a day, you get the comfort, safety and freedom to build a life you can enjoy without sucking down K2 joints and a litter of vodka on a filthy sidewalk just to survive another day.

Much has been made about the fact that Neely had had access to treatment in the past but ended up opting out. It’s seen as more evidence of the intractability of the problem of mental illness among homeless people. Well, how much time do you want to spend in a hospital bed, especially if you (wrongly) don’t think you’re sick? We’ve all been in a hospital at one time or another. It sucks! The food is gross, you’re surrounded by reminders of sickness and death, it smells bad, the doctors are rushed and always seem to judge you just a little as they peer over their charts—and that’s my experience as an obscenely privileged person. You know how the best part of the whole thing is when you’re getting discharged and all you can think about is getting back to your house, where you can go to bed when you want or play video games or smoke weed or have a beer or 3?

When you think about it, it’s absolutely monstrous that the Overton Window on this issue is such that the progressive take is “more hospital beds.” It’s extra horrifying that there are literally 65 people—in a city of 8 million!—that we could do this for. Think about it: you don’t have to worry about some maniac taking a bat to your head because he’s medicated and eating cereal at home watching Lost.

When Neely walked on that F train he said that he was hungry, thirsty and didn’t care if he died. One of the witnesses said that he really wished someone had given him a sandwich. That prompted a cascade of snark about the naiveté of thinking you can cure active psychosis by giving someone food or a dollar.

Ok … well, do we think that severe mental illness is helped by hunger, thirst, and loneliness? Are you at your best when you haven’t eaten all day? Friends and family have shoved food down my gullet to get me to stop yelling at them.

I don’t mean to be cute. But it really is a testament to how much we’ve dehumanized people on the street that what I just described—access to things like food you like, hydration, and not being treated like a grotesque pariah—feels crazy even to me as I write it.