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Yes, the "homeless problem" is getting much worse. To the point where you are even seeing them inside the station. Mostly though they sit outside on the sidewalk, with their handwritten signs that they pass around. It's almost like they take shifts. I walk out of the station in the morning and see one guy holding a sign about how he is a homeless vet and needs money for a train ride to Huntington (which is a town in Long Island). Then on the way home, I see a totally different "bum" holding the exact same sign! What's even more pathetic is that if the bum really wanted to go to Huntington, he'd be bumming at Penn Central, which is where the Long Island trains run out of. They can't even beg accurately!

In the days of Guiliani, those bums were constantly picked up and taken to a homeless shelter. That discouraged most of the panhandlers (a homeless shelter is the last place they typically want to go).

It's a shame because Grand Central is such a majestic place. Even if my train comes in on an outer track, I go out of my way to walk through the lobby before I start my workday. I feel like the master of the universe walking through that place. Sometimes you have a classical quartet playing in the Lexington Street passage and I always make it a point to drop a few coins in their plate, while ignoring the panhandlers who only want the coins for their next 40-ounce can of booze.