BART’s plan to deal with homelessness
The pandemic has meant more people seeking shelter on transit, as agencies grasp at solutions
Bay Area public transit agencies are struggling to deal with a rise in homelessness during the pandemic as emptier stations and more people in need of shelter collide.
Now, BART, which has long wrestled with the issue, is pushing forward with a new plan to help homeless people while pleading for local and state assistance as the agency tries to bring riders back.
The number of homeless individuals in the Bay Area has swelled to nearly 35,000, a 25% increase from 2017, with many more at risk of losing shelter
“We have to call on ... county and local officials, because they’re leaving us in this situation.” Bevan Dufty, BART Board of Directors
because of the pandemic, BART staff told the board during a workshop Friday. Half of the system’s trains had a homeless person aboard during a count last November, a drop from years before, although general ridership has nosedived much more.
The agency’s new homeless action plan introduced Friday includes advocating with government, expanding publicprivate partnerships, and continuing to build out its new $8 million progressive policing department that will hire social workers and unarmed ambassadors to respond to homelessness. The agency is also in talks with Oakland to potentially create a temporary citymanaged safe parking site on BART property in exchange for more homeless resource assistance. It’s too early for specific locations or a timeline,
staff said.
The issue is not unique to BART: Nearly half of 115 transit agencies surveyed in December documented an increase in people experiencing homelessness on their systems due to the pandemic, the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies reported.
COVID19 has pushed more people onto the street and shuttered shelters, advocates say. BART’s Board of Directors and staff stressed their desire to help but also their frustration about regional efforts to tackle the issue.
“We have to call on these county and local officials, because they’re leaving us in this situation,” said BART board member Bevan Dufty, formerly San Francisco’s homelessness czar. “It is not our fault that the systems are so broken around the Bay Area that we can’t make the connections. And I think on some level, our riders understand; they’re just frustrated and scared because they see a situation that is unchecked.”
BART leaders admit the problem is too big for them to solve alone, but as board member Robert Raburn put it, “We don’t have a choice.”
Helping homeless people — and getting them off transit systems — has become a higher priority for BART and other agencies as they struggle to recover from the pandemic’s impacts. The heads of six transit agencies in California, including BART, AC Transit and SamTrans, said in a letter to state legislators last month that the presence of homeless individuals and safety were identified by riders as main reasons not to ride transit. Riders gave BART’s management of homelessness one of the lowest ratings of any subject on the most recent rider survey, although overall numbers improved from last year.
“We will not rebuild our ridership without addressing homelessness,” board member Janice Li said. She responded to criticism from the public that BART should focus only on transit.
“We’re running trains and doing a damn good job with it,” Li said. “(Homelessness) is part of broad, systemic and fundamental failure, and to ignore this problem and wish it away and pretend that BART should not play a role is the most toxic and destructive way to view human life. ... At BART we will only approach homelessness with compassion.”
Board member Debora Allen said the crisis demands compassion, but cautioned that trying to fix it alone is “going to take a lot of money, and that concerns me.” She referred to a meeting Thursday where staff said the pandemic will cost the agency more than $1 billion.
This fiscal year, BART budgeted $2.6 million to respond to homelessness, including paying a community outreach coordinator, homeless outreach teams and elevator attendants, and preventing and cleaning encampments.
An outreach team — run with San Francisco — connected 2,345 individuals to services from March to November last year, staff reported Friday. The team in partnership with Contra Costa County connected 1,555 individuals with a countyrun service center, 570 with warming centers, 27 with health care, and 21 with shelter beds.
Another recent BART partnership is the Regional Impact Council, led by nonprofit All Home, which has set goals to create housing in the Bay Area. Tomiquia Moss, All Home’s founder and chief executive, said BART understands the impacts of homelessness and owns land it has prioritized for developing housing in the past.
Kelley Cutler, a human rights organizer at the Coalition on Homelessness, said BART has improved over the years in shifting away from armed enforcement pushing people from stations to more homeless outreach — but there’s a lack of housing to offer.
“No matter how much outreach, no matter how many outreach people you get, they don’t have resources to offer people,” Cutler said.
BART also faces a challenge partnering with five different counties, Tim Chan, group manager for station area planning, told the board. For example, San Mateo and Alameda counties don’t share the costs of homeless outreach teams, Chan said.
Kenneth Kim, senior director of programs at nonprofit GLIDE in San Francisco, said he believed BART’s multicounty jurisdiction means the agency is less engaged locally.
“It’s great to see they’ve got this plan, but BART doesn’t show up at any of the community meetings that I’m at,” he said.
BART will begin community engagement by summer, the agency said.
BART and other agencies are also pressing the state for help. The joint letter to state Assembly Members Wendy Carrillo, DLos Angeles, and David Chiu, DSan Francisco, said transit systems are not eligible to apply for state grants for homelessness, and pleaded for more assistance.
In a statement, Chiu said he appreciates the work by BART and others, but onetime funding is limited to agencies that directly provide housing and shelter beds. He said the challenge is that California has not yet committed to ongoing state funding for homelessness, and he is cosponsoring an Assembly bill to create permanent support.
With limited resources, homeless individuals such as Michael Lehman, who frequents Civic Center station, have few other places to go. The former high school basketball player said he became homeless and spiraled back into drug use a year and a half ago after his mother died from cancer.
“I’d like to get my own place and be off the streets and do the right thing again,” he told The Chronicle last month. “It’s kind of difficult in this situation.”