Watchdog...

The MTA’s multimillion-dollar effort to shrink the homeless population in the city’s subways has been an expensive bust, the agency’s watchdog says in a damning new report.

Complaints about vagrants in the system surged after the agency last year revamped its $5 million annual effort to get the unsheltered out of the subways and into shelters — while homeless-related train delays continued apace, MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny’s office found.

The “very expensive” and “minimally effective” program cost at least $2.6 million in overtime on top of the contact but 10-person teams of MTA cops and social workers from contractor Bowery Residents’ Committee lured just three transients out of the system per station per night, the report said.

“On the nights OIG staff observed the program, dozens of apparently homeless individuals stayed on the trains for every 1 that accepted services,” IG staff wrote.