POLITICS: NYC subway is no homeless shelter, Zohran Mamdani — can’t you PRETEND to care about the city?

Leftist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has a . . . remarkable idea: Make sure even more mentally ill homeless people are constantly thronging the subways.

Yes, Mamdani wants to convert empty retail spaces in the MTA system into city-run facilities offering drop-in services for the homeless and outreach toward longer-term solutions. 

His vision, as he smarmed to a fawning interviewer, would provide “a moment of relief, a moment of care, a moment of guidance” to homeless people. 

The typical strategy of the left: Offer “solutions” that signal compassion but do nothing meaningful for those they claim to help, even as they add to the burdens on everyone else.

New York’s homeless don’t suffer from a lack of social-worker outreach, and the city doesn’t need them to have more reason to plague the subways.

A recent MTA survey shows that straphangers rate their safety in the subway at slightly below an already-worrying 6 of 10, and that a desire to see fewer people behaving erratically underground is a major, major issue. 

Mamdani’s proposal would encourage more mentally ill homeless to enter the system.

Of course, he is the child of unthinkable privilege, with a famous film-director mother and a globally renowned academic father — in strong contrast to his “I’m the MOST authentic New Yorker who ever lived, just a scrappy kid from the mean streets finally hitting the big time” campaign schtick. 

So no shock he’s happy to use people with less money, status and power to advance his career (any child of Hollywood and the Ivy League learns that at his parents’ knees). 

If Mamdani wanted to make the subways better, he’d be fighting for more cops and more paths to involuntary commitment.

How about this: As a Queens assemblyman, Mamdani has a taxpayer-funded office in desirable Astoria just a few blocks from a busy subway station.

So you go first, big guy: Convert your space to serve as a model for these outreach centers. (You can always have your mom rent you a different spot to work from.)

Then voters will know you’re at least acting in good faith — not just another rich kid play-acting for the transplant class.