Hunched in a seat in the corner of an L.A. Metro light rail car heading downtown on a recent weekend, an unhoused man was deep in conversation with someone visible only to him. Dressed in a dark, tattered hoodie with grimy cargo shorts barely hanging on his skeletal frame, the 40-something man rummaged through his backpack, arms quivering and hands shaking, as he fished out a bag of Skittles.
Minutes earlier he had entered the train, maneuvering around another homeless man and his stroller, which was loaded with belongings and plastic bags hanging from the handles. Across the way, a rider with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes stared out the window, bursting into fits of laughter, followed by loud, incoherent rants at no one in particular. A few seats away, a man sat with his head buried in his lap, while two others leaned on windows sleeping.
A pair of well-dressed 30-something white men boarded the train, each with two young kids in tow. As they looked for a place to sit, they scanned the other passengers, then quickly moved on to the next car. The scene repeated as new riders boarded, surveyed other passengers, then moved elsewhere. The quiet of the rail car was broken by the clicking sound of a lighter: The man whose head was buried in his lap was lighting up a substance, and a faint smell wafted through the car.
Scenes like this have become common in transit environments across the country, forcing agencies to grapple with ways to deal with an influx of homeless passengers while ensuring that all riders remain comfortable and feel safe.
“Homelessness is such a visible phenomenon in our cities — and it became even more visible in transit environments during the pandemic,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, a distinguished professor of urban planning and interim dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “It became more visible on buses, because people who are unhoused were using the bus as a shelter.”
While there has been much discussion about and research into homelessness, less has been written about the public spaces where many unhoused people spend their time — especially on buses and trains. To address that gap and to look for solutions, Loukaitou-Sideris decided to examine how transit agencies nationwide deal with the issue of homelessness.
“We really wanted to see how the transit industry understands the challenge of unhoused people on their system,” she said, “and how they respond to this challenge, what data they have or don’t have.”
Loukaitou-Sideris and her team surveyed 142 workers at 115 transit operators in the United States and Canada to understand how the problems of homelessness have changed in recent years, how the COVID-19 pandemic affected them and how their responses have evolved.
“We found from this quite extensive survey that homelessness on transit is a very omnipresent issue,” she said. “It is not one or two agencies that said, ‘Oh yes, we have a problem.’ Almost everybody acknowledged it as an issue that has become worse.”
But, she said, most agencies indicated they lack funding, training, support from local government and other resources to address the issue. What they did know was that their housed riders were highly critical of the unhoused riders — particularly their hygiene and aggressive behavior. Those impressions had a negative impact on ridership when most agencies were struggling to come back after the pandemic.
The national picture
MORE THAN 653,000 PEOPLE IN THE UNITED States — or about 20 of every 10,000 people — lack permanent housing, according to the 2023 Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. California and New York have the largest number of unhoused people, the report says, with more than 181,000 and 103,000, respectively.
It is hard to track the precise number of people sheltering in transit systems. More than half of the agencies surveyed estimated that at least 100 unhoused people spend time on their systems daily, while 16% of the agencies put the number at 500 or more. Agencies were able to provide only estimates, Loukaitou-Sideris said, because most do not gather data about the homeless population on their systems. Only 6% — including Los Angeles Metro — regularly try to track the unhoused people sheltering in their system.
L.A. Metro uses the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, which allows its outreach teams to identify people and enter their names, shared by numerous agencies throughout the city and county that work with the homeless.
“From there, they can be tracked, regardless of which program they go into — if they’re referred to interim housing or a permanent housing solution,” said Craig Joyce, L.A. Metro’s deputy executive officer for homeless outreach. “It’s essentially like a warm handoff to a solution.”
The crime of being poor
Homelessness is not a crime, and yet, while few agencies surveyed have formal policies on homelessness, many respond in punitive ways. Some agencies target homelessness by enforcing anti-loitering or anti-panhandling laws, using police sweeps of encampments or conducting fare-enforcement blitzes. Others target the unhoused indirectly by using “hostile architecture” — benches with high metal armrests, spikes or metal studs on ledges that prevent people from sleeping on them — or by removing seating areas altogether. Many transit agencies regularly “clear” cars of unhoused passengers by requiring riders to exit at the end of the line.
These actions, Loukaitou-Sideris and her team found, often are combined with outreach measures designed to assist in the housing and health needs of homeless individuals. Studies have shown that outreach can be more effective than punitive measures, which tend to remove or displace people only temporarily rather than address the structural issues causing homelessness.
“Even if you do a sweep, which could cost about $300,000, it is not effective,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “You have the immediate area happy, but this person will go somewhere else. This person has to go somewhere, unless he, or she, or they, die. I don’t think that is what society wants.”
Loukaitou-Sideris and her team were unable to speak directly with homeless people, in part because of constraints during the pandemic, so the two studies they produced look at the issue primarily from the perspective of transit agencies and not the unhoused.
Nationwide, agencies have watched as the number of people seeking shelter on their transit systems has grown, while their budgets to deal with accompanying issues have not increased. Many have turned to external partnerships to address the needs of the homeless. “We saw an increasing trend toward more partnerships,” Loukaitou-Sideris said, “not only with policing authorities, which was the most common partnership, but also with municipal governments, health departments, clinicians and social workers.”
These partnerships are beneficial to the transit agencies, not only for financial reasons but because some of the partners are better equipped and trained to work with unhoused individuals.
“Bus drivers should know how to deal with an unstable person, and they get some training for that,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “But the bus driver’s primary job is to drive safe in the vehicle. That’s why we say it’s so important to have these partnerships.”
What to do?
In a second, separate report, Loukaitou-Sideris and her team identified strategies or programs that agencies are using to overcome the challenges related to homelessness on their systems. These case studies fell into four categories: mobile outreach by teams of clinicians, transit staff and law enforcement officers; discounted fares for unhoused riders; transportation to shelters; and service and resource hubs.
Several agencies, including L.A. Metro, have adopted mobile outreach programs, which have teams that move through the system offering services and referrals to homeless people along the train lines. In Denver, a mental health professional or social worker from a partner organization rides with law enforcement staffers to de-escalate confrontations and connect people with shelter services and counseling.
Another strategy seeks to address the lack of mobility of unhoused riders as well as low-income passengers by providing discounted or free fares. While these programs do not reduce homelessness, they allow riders to travel without fear of being caught without payment.
“We should think about unhoused people not only as using transit as shelter, but some of them work, and some of them may have mobility needs,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “So, being able to move without having to pay, that’s also a service.”
New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Madison Metro Transit in Wisconsin also focus on mobility by offering free transportation to and from homeless shelters. By partnering with local nonprofits, the agencies assist unhoused people who otherwise would not be able to afford the fare to reach a shelter or reserve a bed. These programs, the researchers found, helped build relationships and trust with individuals who may then become more willing to accept other services.
Finally, Loukaitou-Sideris and her team looked at Philadelphia’s Hub of Hope, which began in 2011 as a small, walk-in outreach center open during the winter. It since has grown to an 11,000-square-foot facility open year-round. The hub represents a partnership among the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), the nonprofit homeless services agency Project HOME and the city of Philadelphia.
Located directly on the SEPTA line in former headquarters of the transit police, the fixed-location hub provides a variety of services to people experiencing homelessness, including showers and laundry; coffee, tea and snacks; case management; primary medical care; and, through partnerships with other agencies, transportation to shelters and grab-and-go meals.
The researchers note some challenges with each of these strategies, such as lack of funding, lack of available housing in the service areas, inadequate staffing, inability to track people experiencing homelessness, and difficulty spreading information about the programs to people who need the services.
Loukaitou-Sideris acknowledged that there also may be opposition from the general public. Hub for Hope, for example, has helped about 100,000 people a year, leading to a decline in the number visibly experiencing homelessness at transit stations. But many commuters and businesses believe, nonetheless, that the hub is attracting more homeless people to the area.
“You have that always when you have a shelter. … The surrounding neighborhood is up in arms,” she said. “When making it easy for the unhoused riders to ride the buses, we have almost a revolution from the housed riders who don’t want to be sitting next to someone who is unhoused.”
Last August, a contingent of Southern California officials, led by L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, visited Philadelphia to learn more about Hub of Hope. L.A. Metro’s Joyce was part of the group.
“We were interested in understanding what the Hub of Hope actually was, how it operates, the kinds of viable resources it provided, what kind of difference it was making,” Joyce said. The group wanted “a good understanding of whether or not that kind of resource and approach would make sense for us to deploy and implement here.”
Such information sharing is what Loukaitou-Sideris hopes her team’s research can help facilitate. “We’re finding a lot of agencies saying, ‘We know it’s a huge problem. We perceive it as a challenge. We don’t know what to do about it,’” she said. “We felt that these lessons learned were important for other agencies, so it is available for free to agencies that are interested in learning about how others are dealing with homelessness.”
While there are still many hurdles, Loukaitou-Sideris said she is optimistic that agencies will be able to share information and come up with solutions.
“You cannot resolve the problem overnight. It’s more of a progressive thing,” she said. “If instead of seeing the numbers going up and up and up, we start seeing a trend going down, down, down, then it’s a step in the right direction.”
