Tunnel People

by Teun Voeten

Following the homeless Manhattanites who, in the mid-1990s, chose to start a new life in the tunnel systems of the city, this record tells the stories of a variety of tunnel dwellers from the perspective of an award-winning, European photojournalist who lived and worked with them for 5 months. Photographs and personal accounts detail the struggles and pleasures—including the government’s eviction of the tunnel people and Amtrak’s offering them alternative housing—of Vietnam veterans, macrobiotic hippies, crack addicts, Cuban refugees, convicted killers, computer programmers, philosophical recluses, and criminal runaways. Humorous and compassionate, it also describes what has happened to these individuals 13 years since they’ve left.

Genres: Nonfiction, New York, Read For School

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Teun Voeten is een Nederlands fotograaf en antropoloog. Voeten studeerde culturele antropologie en filosofie aan de Universiteit Leiden en studeerde aan de School of Visual Arts in New York City. Na zijn afstuderen verhuisde Voeten in 1992 naar Brussel, van waaruit hij internationale conflicten volgde voor de Nederlandse, Belgische, Duitse, Britse en Amerikaanse pers. In 1994 schreef hij het boek Tunnelmensen, waarvoor hij vijf maanden bij een groep daklozen in een ongebruikte spoorwegtunnel in Manhattan woonde. Vanaf 1996 concentreerde Voeten zich op “vergeten oorlogen” en maakte hij reportages in Colombia, Afghanistan, Soedan en Sierra Leone. In dat laatste land verborg Voeten zich op de vlucht voor muitende soldaten twee weken in het bos, een ervaring die zou leiden tot zijn boek How de body? Hoop en horror in Sierra Leone. In de jaren die volgden, richtte hij zich onder meer op de schending van de mensenrechten in Colombia, de “Bloeddiamanten” in Angola, de oorlog in Afghanistan, vrouwenhandel vanuit de Balkanlanden en in 2003 de oorlog in Irak. Zijn meest recente werk (2007) is een fotoreportage over het dagelijkse leven in Noord-Korea.

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing book to edit, dark and gritty and quite extraordinary. It's as though Hunter S. Thompson were Dutch, and a photographer, and went to live in the tunnels under Manhattan. And actually got his hands dirty collecting cans and bottles at 6 am, as well as trying out the tunnel drug of choice. It's every bit as noir as our Switchblade series, a clear look at the true underbelly of New York, along with the people who relate to it...from police to academics to non-profit workers. It's fascinating to see how all these worlds come together from the perspective of the tunnels. Teun spares no punches which I really like, as I hate the liberal tendency to romanticize, which in itself I find terribly patronizing. Instead he sees people clearly, and respects them with all of their strengths and their flaws. And of course his own experience (strengths and flaws included) comes through so nicely, this is no dry academic or even journalistic account, but a living breathing record of life underground, from frightening to hilarious, from tragic to just plain annoying...it's riveting all together, and I have read it enough times to attest to that.

Apart from that, no studies of what happens when people are displaced ever follow up after the study is done. But Teun stayed in touch, and we actually get to see where people are 13 years later. It's unique I think...

[Mark Schlatter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I'm always interested in people living in circumstances outside the norm. In this case, it's a collection of homeless people (mostly men) who have taken up residence in an Amtrak tunnel in New York City and, in some ways, have a better life than they would in the shelters or on the streets. (There's no running water, but they've built their own homes with kitchens and electricity --- think of them as squatters but in a different setting.)

From the description, I had thought this was a photographic essay, but the photos are sparse compared to the text. Teun Voeten lived in the tunnel twice for about three months each time, and the first half of the book is really just a recounting of his first residence in the tunnels. It's not really journalism, but more a personal account and an introduction to the people in the tunnel. Voeten gives a good sense of what life is like below ground, but the stories get a bit repetitive at times, and I found it a bit challenging when I thought Voeten was enabling destructive behavior (e.g., sharing some crack with his charismatic host Bernard).

The second half of the book is much better. First, Voeten uses a more journalistic style and adds a lot of context to the story, including many of the historical reasons behind the rapid increase of homeless people in the 80's and 90's. He also interviews people at the social agencies trying to get the tunnel people homes and the transit authorities who want to move them out. Second, the last half of the book has a narrative: can the agencies help these people before their homes are demolished? It's a sobering look at attempts to help when the people you are trying to help may be mentally ill, addicted, present illegally in the country, or just plain insistent on their way of life. There's a epilogue written about 15 years later that tracks the tunnel people and documents those who still try to live in the tunnels.

I learned a lot reading this, including the trade in recyclable cans that provided support for many homeless and the problems of just giving a homeless person a place to live if he or she can't handle that level of responsibility. I think the personal approach Voeten takes leads to a somewhat flawed but ultimately compelling work, and if you are at all interesting in the sociology of homelessness, it's a good read.

[Lori Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating. I watched a documentary a few years ago about European kids, mostly paint huffers, who lived in the subways, panhandling on the main floors for drug money, and the hierarchy among them and the programs in place to get them into school and placed in foster homes.

This book goes into the homeless who developed a community (and there really is NO other way to describe it but as a community) in the unused Amtrak tunnel in the subways of NYC. So many different types of peoples, lots of different educations, but what struck me is that nearly all of them had dreams, nearly all of them did NOT want welfare, very few felt they were homeless, and the red tape to get a homeless person into transitional housing or rehab is phenomenal, and daunting, so the average homeless person gives up because they feel society has given up on them.

These people have hearts, and brains, wants and desires, and I'm so glad that I read this book. I think everyone should read this and feel grateful for what we have.

A true eye-opener.

[Lauri Royall · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subject is fascinating and heartbreaking. My only criticism is the book felt as if it skimmed the surface of the subject and we may have been given a rather sanitized version of what life in the tunnels is really like, possibly because these were the Amtrac tunnels and so many journalists had been there on a regular basis, some of the stories by the tunnel people were practiced, rehearsed and delivered. It will be interesting to read about some other locations of tunnel people that did not get the media attention that this group did.

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Hard to rate. Good for what it is, but not really worth more than a couple of hours.

[julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

questionable ethics, profound findings

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. Fascinating topic. Author did good job at not over-dramatizing and being honest. Gives way more credibility that author lived in tunnel.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was journalistic style...made it a quick and easy read but really delved and showed the heart, creativity and told the stories of people making it on the streets. In the middle of the book, Tuen Voeten meets with the authorities and service agencies to understand the bureaucracy of assisting people from the streets/tunnels/bridges into transitional housing. A lot of paper work and cases of mental illness and drug addiction. A narrative into the lives of people that are disregarded in our general society...even less than the pets people have within their boxes...making due with the massive consumerist garbage culture that is prevalent in cities and large populations of people scrabbling. For anyone working in the homeless "industry" or as a service provider for the impoverished, this is insight into the dealings of the emotions and survival instincts of those making it on the streets.

[Clem Paulsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The community was run out of the tunnels decades ago, but the story of their time and society while they lived there has not diminished one jot.

It's a dramatic, very approachable, exploration of a world -- physical and human -- among the outcasts and the damaged. The setting is extraordinary and described with enviable skill in its impossible darkness and blinding light. And the society and its members live and breathe. The book is an accomplishment.

As the armchair Western Civ that I am, the book is quite hopeful despite what could be a possible downer subject -- it's the Noble Savage thing coming around again, isn't it? Bernard in particular here is soulful: he might seem he would survive anywhere, rise to the struggle, having fled the falseness of the society that spurned him, he quietly thrives in an order of his own making?

Very recommended!

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been interested in the tunnel people since I first read about them--about how they survived, about why they were there, and about how (some of them) got out. This book provided a good companion to Jennifer Toth's book The Mole people, which I read some years ago. Voeten actually lived in the tunnel (as a journalist) for a short time. Some of the language seemed a little garbled at times, but, overall, this constituted good reading.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. More limited in scope yet more definitive in detail and believability than Toth's classic treatment of the topic. The anthropological approach makes it a more interesting study, as well as the European 'outsider' point of view.

[Zach Neiheisel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps not the most eloquently written book, still a fascinating look into the lives of the homeless in New York in the early 1990's and a huge recommendation if you're interested in the subject matter.

[Teun Voeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not neutral review since I am the author.

Wrote this book in 1996.

Still damn proud of it.

Anthropological in depth investigative journalism at its best, if you ask me...

[Rainbowgardener · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. To start with quite disappointing because it was billed as photojournalism by a photographer. I was expecting mainly pictures with some commentary. Instead there are about five pages of small b&w photos, almost all of the book's subjects in their above ground lives. There are a scant handful of actual pictures of the tunnels.

In some ways these are the elite of the tunnel people. Denizens of the abandoned Amtrak tunnel, not the actual subways, they are just below ground so light and air come in through grates. They have been visited by journalists many times, filmed, movies made, gotten paid for their stories. Almost all of them have if not jobs, then at least hustles, like collecting recyclables for the deposit. Some of them are drug dealers. They are people with lots of resources like knowing how to tap into electric lines to provide themselves with electricity.

There are things to be learned and messages here. A lot of his point is about how the system fails these people. E.g. these are the Clinton years and there hardly is any welfare only workfare. So one of the guys trying to get on welfare to get out of the tunnels, is assigned to work picking up trash in Central Park in the middle of a NYC summer. It is blazing hot and he only lasts a couple days. So then he gets a job as a bike messenger making a lot more money. But the job is off the books, so he can't show proof of income, so it doesn't help him get housing. Over and over paperwork and bureaucracy are obstacles rather than help for the people they supposedly serve. And of course the supply of affordable housing is completely inadequate to the need for it.

The book ends in 2009, before the Trump years, but clearly the situation has not improved. Near the end of the book, the city closes down and cleans out the tunnels. They make an effort to find housing for the tunnel people they are moving out. In some cases this succeeds, in other cases it just moves the homeless along. And a few of the tunnel people manage to burrow in deeper and hide and not get moved out. But now their community is gone, their access to resources is much less and their lives are way more miserable.

The writing is serviceable, not beautiful or evocative and somehow it feels like he mostly misses showing us these people's hearts.

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tunnel People by Teun Voeten (PM Press 2010) (305.569) (4083).

Here is another subculture that I never knew existed: underground squatters in American cities living in the infrastructure. Author Teun Voeten took the anthropological approach of "participant observer", which means that "...the researcher moves between a role of distant observer at certain times, to an involved actor at other times" (p.3). The author spent five months in 1995 and 1996 living in New York City in the Amtrak railway tunnel that runs below Riverside Park from 72nd Street to 125th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Voeten estimates that at any given time there were between thirty and fifty people living in the Amtrak tunnel, scattered in small groups into "camps." The author lived among these squatters in the filth and danger of this active subway tunnel.

Most of those living in the tunnel were both mentally ill and long-term substance abusers. They survived on a combination of government benefits such as SSI / welfare and money they were able to earn from simple jobs such as "can men" by working a day or two a week collecting cans and bottles for redemption for the five-cent deposits.

It was a dangerous existence, whether from the rats, the filth, the disease, the chance of electrocution from the "third rail" of the active Amtrak railway, or from the often unstable tunnel neighbors.

Compounding the problems of the tunnel dwellers was the fact that Amtrak was actively planning to evict them. At the same time, there was an active federal program in place which offered alternative housing to which the tunnel denizens were heartily resistant. The tunnel people were shielded in large part from any heavy-handed removal attempts by Amtrak or any governmental entities by the fact that their plight had been publicized in past books, magazine articles and documentary videos, thus granting the tunnel people quasi-celebrity status. In other words, if the authorities became too aggressive in their attempts to evict and relocate the tunnel people, the underground dwellers already knew which members of the media to contact to generate immediate and sympathetic coverage of any heavy-handed governmental tactics. Needless to say, the authorities seemed to prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak.

This is a compelling tale of a small niche of survivors in America's largest city. Kudos to author Teun Voeten for a job well done and a story well told.

My rating: 7.5, finished 3/11/16.

Reread 8/21/25 (4083). Updated review: [Note: I failed to include this in my reading list in 2016, and I had placed it on a Kindle edition of Goodreads which wasn’t synching. I deleted it, reloaded it, and assigned it a number when I read it again on 8/21/25.]

One interesting note from rereading is a reference to the acronym MICA, which is apparently used by social workers and anthropologists who are involved with the homeless. “MICA” stands for “Mentally Ill Chemical Abuser” and can refer to those addicted to alcohol, crack cocaine, or (wait for it) tobacco.

My rating: 7.5/10, finished 9/01/25 (4083).

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the 90s, journalist Teun Voeten visited the abandoned Amtrack tunnel under New York City to speak to some of the "tunnel people" living there. He took to living in the tunnel for short periods of time to get a more complete view as he interviewed them.

While this book took me a while to read, I finished feeling like I knew the tunnel people and had a more complete understanding of why someone might choose to live there and how they might not consider themselves to be homeless. The people are presented fairly, including the authors of two other books I currently have on my TBR about tunnel life (The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City and The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City) - Teun interacts with Margaret, and presents the reaction of the tunnel people after the release of Mole People (spoiler: it was not favorable). I'm going to have to watch the film "Dark Days" again, because Teun also met Marc Singer, the director, and interviewed some of the same people as are in that film. It will be interesting to read the other two books, because I can see from the table of contents many of the same names. It's clearly a very small group who consented to help the journalists (or who were not too paranoid or on drugs).

[Grace Boehlke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Tunnel People felt like an immense privilege. What was meant to be an anthropological study, this book slowly warped into something greater as I made my way through it. Through the author’s experiences, the reader feels closer to the subjects as time passes. Every adventure in canning, every trip to a diner reveals more about the people who live in the tunnel. Subjects morph into friends and that change in temperature is felt so strongly through the way it’s written. This is a well-rounded book, with photos, a handwritten letter from one tunnel-dweller, and an epilogue from 13 years after the book was researched. Not only are you let into these people’s lives as they live in the tunnel, you get to see them a decade later and how their lives have changed (or stayed the same in many ways). The care and love put into Tunnel People moved me and I am incredibly in awe of this author’s work.

[B. S. O’Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fascinating look at how a certain segment of the homeless population lived for years in an NYC Amtrak tunnel. Aside from a few typos, the book is well-written and features some interesting personalities whom the author got to know while residing in the tunnel with them. There are documentaries (most notably Marc Singer’s “Dark Days”) and other books on this same population so if your interest is piqued there is more material available.

[Amy Fair · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author was an arrogant ass. Such a disappointing read on such a fascinating subject.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating ethnography!

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

strange book, but occasionally enlightening

[Artur Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Debaixo de uma das cidades mais icónicas do planeta, num labirinto de túneis e passagens subterrâneas, vivem aqueles que a sociedade rejeitou: viciados em drogas, pessoas com problemas mentais, homens e mulheres que cairam nas fissuras da sociedade e se vêm sem um lar, um porto de abrigo. Teun Voeten, num admirável trabalho de sociologia, viveu entre as gentes que fizeram dos túneis de Nova Iorque a sua casa, registando uma crónica de esperanças perdidas, lutas contra a burocracia, e as histórias de vida dos habitantes do mundo subterrâneo. Documento intrigante, retrata os sem-abrigo que colonizaram os túneis ferroviários com uma certa dose de fascínio que não cai na complacência e na romantização do mundo underground. Uma leitura perturbadora.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was originally marketed to me as a photo book, so when I ordered it I was expecting a book of large prints documenting the lives of these people.

Upon receiving it I realised it was much more of a field journal with thirty-odd small black and white photographs.

The photography holds up well and the subject matter is truly interesting, but it did not meet my initial expectations and I also felt that the size of the photographs was unfortunate.


Would gladly pay for an 8*10 style book of Voeten's expanded photography from this expedition.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. I couldn't finish this. I knew it would be depressing, but I am not up for that kind of depressing right now. Plus, as a person that studied anthropology, I am very critical of his field research techniques. Very amateur, although he doesn't claim to be an anthropologist, he presented his findings as an ethnography.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting study of people who were living in an Amtrak tunnel in Manhattan. The translation (was originally written in Danish) was at times odd but this did at times add a nuance to the subjects' language that was probably not there. The author seems quite prejudiced against some tunnel dwellers for small, sometimes childish reasons, which was surprising.

[Ashley Marie]

Lincoln LOL Preston & Child, in the Author's Note of Reliquary, suggest Jennifer Toth's THE MOLE PEOPLE for further nonfic reading about the communities inhabiting the network of underground NYC tunnels, but as that publication appears to contain numerous inaccuracies and unverified claims, I may look into this one first. And Voeten's is more recent. Fingers crossed!

[Bas Vossen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is about the NYC homeless population living in abandoned subway tunnels, because nowaday rent is impossible for many people. It shows how monstruous overpopulation has become in our time and day.
Probably these days people think about hamas when reading 'tunnel people', I hope in a year everyone has forgotten that horrible terrorclub.

[Generalmills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly interesting read. Loved the 2010 updates as to where they are now.

[Dan]

Didn't finish. It was good, but started to get repetitive and I was distracted by other things.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a very trying read. Readable and enthralling on one page, boring and tedious the next, I had trouble maintaining my focus on the book and gave up after about 100 pages.