Transit Agency Responses to Homelessness

Abstract

For many of the more than 500,000 Americans unhoused each night, transit settings provide a common location for shelter, especially since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Transit operators must address the impact of homelessness on their service, while at the same time upholding their social responsibility to serve all riders, housed and unhoused. Agencies large and small have therefore begun implementing programs and partnerships to respond to homelessness. In order to assess the range and effectiveness of these strategies, the researchers documented and analyzed case studies of the ways U.S. transit agencies are addressing homelessness on their systems. Building on the research team’s prior nationwide survey, the authors identified 10 key operators and interviewed 26 relevant staff people, as well as staff from other partnering organizations, in order to learn how they initiated and carried out each strategy. The study also investigated the scope and resulting impacts of each strategy, the challenges each strategy has encountered (especially since the pandemic began), and the lessons learned during its implementation.

About the Project

More than half a million individuals experience homelessness every night in the U.S. With the scale of the crisis often surpassing the capacities of existing safety nets — all the more so since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — many turn to transit vehicles, stops, and stations for shelter. Many also use transit to reach destinations such as workplaces, shelters, and community service centers. This project investigates the intersections of the pandemic, transit, and homelessness; the scale of homelessness on transit; and how transit agencies are responding to the problem. All told, centering the mobility and wellbeing of unhoused riders fits within transit’s social service role and is important to improving outcomes for them and for all riders.