Can LA Metro do a better job addressing homelessness on its trains, depots and buses?
Los Angeles County Fourth District Supervisor and Metro board member Janice Hahn thinks so.
Hahn and a delegation that included officials from Metro, the county of Los Angeles and also the mayor of Long Beach, visited a Philadelphia transit agency last week that posted a 35% reduction in unhoused individuals on their system.
“I feel like we can do better,” Hahn said during an interview on Friday, Aug. 11, after touring the homeless treatment facilities of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in Philadelphia on Aug. 10 and Aug. 11.
The key to SEPTA’s success is a multi-faceted Hub of Hope, an 11,000 square foot center built in a former subway concourse that was last used 25 years ago by the police department. Each day, It takes in 70 or more homeless riders removed from trains by the agency’s outreach team, Hahn said.
The permanent center includes food services, showers, laundry facilities, a public health clinic staffed with doctors and mental health counselors, plus a team connecting the unhoused to temporary and permanent housing, Hahn said. It is not an overnight shelter, she stressed.
“There were also rooms for people who had kids, with games to play,” she added. “It is like a drop-in center.”
The Hub of Hope began in a 150 square foot storefront in a suburban train station in 2012 but expanded in 2018 to its current facility, which Hahn thinks could be a model for LA Metro.
“In the Hub of Hope, they (homeless) are taken care of in a way that I think we have difficulties in just knowing what to do with our unhoused riders,” Hahn said. Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins has called the homeless who ride trains and buses for mobile shelter a humanitarian crisis that decreases ridership and affects frontline employees.
Hahn noted that SEPTA outreach teams in Pennsylvania move through trains and platforms continuously on mornings…
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