Geographic Mobility Leads to Upward Mobility

I would like to see programs that promote mobility of homeless individuals, such as help with applying for the disability discount card for the transit system. This is the opposite of the current tendency for centralized homeless services, which creates a concentration of poverty that compounds problems and makes it harder to escape.

When I was in downtown San Diego, it cost $2.50 for a one way bus ticket or $5 for a day pass. After they switched to a Compass card, it went up to effectively $7 if you didn't have a card to put it on. The cards cost $2 as well.

We used a lot of spray peroxide while on the street. You can get a spray bottle of peroxide for a dollar something at Walmart. It is over $3 at CVS Pharmacy. There is no Walmart in downtown San Diego, but there are CVS Pharmacy locations. It made no sense to spend $5-$7 on bus fare to try to save $2 or so on this item. With being homeless, we could not stock up on cheap stuff to make it make sense. So we were paying over $3 for this item because that was the least worst answer.

There were programs that provided bus tokens to homeless people, but it was very limited and only for specific purposes. My recollection is that you get bus tokens for things like medical appointments. You could not get them for general use. There did not seem to be any programs that either gave bus passes away simply to help you get around generally nor any programs to help people apply for disability cards to get reduced fares. I found this very frustrating.

After I left downtown and went to the North County, bus fare in the North County was $1.75. This was a big deal to me. I used buses a lot more in the North County simply because they were more affordable.

Then I moved to Fresno where bus fare was $1.25 and where the bus system was better in a number of other ways. For one, you do not need exact change. They issue change cards that can be used to pay for future bus fares. For another, they had a good automatic system that announced street names and connections. It does it both verbally and visually. In San Diego, bus drivers make these announcements. They sometimes forget and can't always be understood.

Services in downtown San Diego were concentrated around 16th and 17th streets. You had St. Vincents, Neil Good and God's Extended Hand all very close to each other. Some homeless people simply spent their entire day hanging out there, waiting for the next free meal. This is likely contributing to the current hepatitis epidemic.

I would like to see programs that actively seek to disrupt this horrifying concentration of poverty. Helping homeless people get bus passes or even helping them apply for disability cards to get a break on fare would help. The more physical mobility I developed, the more upward mobility I experienced.

For me, greater physical mobility came in two forms: 1) developing physical stamina to walk greater distances and 2) repeatedly moving to areas with progressively cheaper and better public transit. Each move to a place with cheaper and better public transit made it easier to do things like take the bus to Walmart to get things more cheaply. When bus fare there and back is only $2.50 instead of $5-$7, it becomes much more feasible for the savings to exceed the cost of bus fare.

The easiest and cheapest bus pass access program would be to help homeless people apply for disability cards with the transit system. It is an existing resource. It is not means tested, so they won't lose it if their income goes up. Many homeless people are handicapped, so many of them should qualify.

Disability is a major contributing factor to becoming homeless. But, with being both homeless and handicapped, applying for this can be impossible to navigate. IIRC, in San Diego, among other things, you need a doctor to fill it out and sign off on it. This is a potentially huge barrier for a homeless person.

I managed to get food stamps because Catholic Charities helped me apply. I was too sick and overwhelmed to deal with the paperwork. I never got around to applying for a disability discount with the transit system. I was not aware of any service that helped with that. Because I have serious health issues and eyesight issues, I likely qualify. It would have helped me. But I couldn't cope with it on my own. This is probably true for many homeless people.

I also think just giving away bus passes or bus tokens to homeless people would be a good thing, but that is potentially very expensive and has other inherent problems that I don't know how to address.

When I was homeless in San Diego, there were supposedly 10,000 homeless people in there. So let's do the math: $72 for a non disabled monthly bus pass in downtown San Diego x 10,000 homeless people x 12 months in a year = $8,640,000 annual cost before factoring in administrative costs for such a program. In contrast, helping those who qualify for the disabled discount actually get it should be a small fraction of that amount and should be a one time thing with long term benefit for them.

Additionally, giving away bus passes because you are homeless is a means tested solution. Such programs are inherently problematic because they become something you can lose if your life gets better. Losing it can then cause things to come unraveled. In contrast, a disability card is not based on income or status as a homeless person. You can keep it if it helps improve your life materially. They won't take it away if your income goes up or you get off the street.

So, I think as a first effort, the place to start is to help homeless individuals with disabilities get their disability fare. But there is likely room for other solutions as well. Any program to help give homeless people bus/transit access would help provide mobility and that physical mobility helps provide upward mobility.

Increased access to public transit makes it easier to do things like access services, shop for bargains, and job hunt. Any and all of those can help a homeless person start improving their situation. If they are helped to have such access in a way that won't be taken away if they get more income or stop being homeless, then you have something that genuinely helps them escape dire poverty, instead of another program helping to keep them entrenched in poverty.

Although this post is mostly about accessing the local bus system, the basic concept of geographic mobility leading to upward mobility has broader and deeper implications. For example, I developed a portable income while homeless. This allowed me to repeatedly relocate while still homeless. Each relocation took me to a more affordable area and my standard of living gradually improved, even while still homeless.

My most recent relocation allowed me to get off the street and into a cheap rental. So, for me, this was an important element in getting off the street entirely.