End of the Line?

Larose Sledge seemed unsure where she was going on a recent Thursday afternoon as she rode a BART train from San Francisco’s Civic Center to the San Jose station.  

Sledge was quietly struggling with a mental health crisis as she grasped at a stack of newspapers that hid her supply of drugs from BART police officers who walked by. She cried profusely as the train passed Oakland, where her four children live and whom she’s ashamed to visit in her current state. 

Sledge told The Standard that she takes the train to the end of the line as often as three times a week because she prefers it to staying in a homeless shelter. And she’s just one of the scores of homeless people across the region who use the train system as a temporary shelter that’s relatively safe and out of the cold. 

Keep scrolling to continue reading...

BART may be a transit system, but like so many others in big cities across the nation, the agency is struggling with how to address the seemingly ever-growing homelessness crisis as it careens toward financial disaster. The agency's spending on social service interventions and related items has ballooned to upward of $30 million annually, with federal funding expected to run out in two years and hundreds of millions in deficits to follow as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on public transit revenues.

And there is no savior in sight.  

At a time when the agency desperately needs to win back commuters—its monthly ridership sits at around 40% compared with what it was pre-Covid—riders are particularly frustrated with its performance both on managing homelessness and delivering basic service. 

Alongside bad weather and operator shortages, BART’s on-time performance dipped below 75% in November and has continued to decline in the intervening months. Delays due to police activity, which can stem from drug activity or other crimes, frequently stymie service according to BART data.  

A recent customer survey from BART showed a 6% increase in those who were dissatisfied with BART’s service compared with a 2020 survey. The proportion of those reporting they were “very satisfied” dropped from 39% to 26%. 

The issue that BART riders ranked as the one the agency has done the worst job on? Addressing homelessness. 

The agency’s conundrum mirrors that of other transit systems nationwide struggling with the dual crises of rising homelessness and diminished ridership post-Covid. And it also reflects familiar debates over stricter police enforcement versus investing in social services. 

Bob Powers, BART’s general manager, said that the system’s regional status means that it has to be a part of the solution around homelessness issues, which hurt rider satisfaction and the rider experience. 

“I do not run a social service agency. I run trains,” Powers said. “But I’ve got to do what I can to keep the rider experience as positive as I can, even if that means funding some [homeless outreach] teams, partnering with the counties to fund those teams or creating a progressive policing program."

The Progressive Policing and Community Engagement Bureau, introduced by the BART Police Department in 2020, is central to the agency’s Homeless Action Plan. 

Berto Calero and Karen Seiler are partners and two of the 19 members of BART’s crisis intervention specialist team, a unit of that bureau tasked with engaging homeless or distressed individuals in the system and connecting them to services.

Generally, the duo are assigned to San Francisco stations, and they pinpointed Civic Center Station and the ends of the lines, when riders are required to disembark, as particular hotspots of activity. 

“At the end of the routes, a lot of us get stuck,” said a homeless man who gave the name Jesus GX and was smoking fentanyl in Civic Center Station. “I feel like they should run BART 24 hours for people with nowhere to go.” 

Although they are uniformed staff under the auspices of BART police, the crisis intervention team members have no weapons. Instead, they carry police radios for communication and Narcan to help reverse overdoses.  

The initial idea was to have the team of specialists working with sworn officers to respond to calls, but officer shortages have meant that pairing often isn’t possible. 

Calero said he administered Narcan to two separate people in one day who were overdosing at Civic Center BART Station. But oftentimes the aid they render is less dramatic. Calero and Seiler emptied their pockets and showed the socks, coffee packets and snacks they hand out to riders in need. 

As they walked through the train car, they checked in with folks leaned over in their seats, or other riders with signs of distress. In between, they paused to help a rider lift and secure his bicycle. 

On the Fruitvale Station platform, they encountered a man in the throes of a mental health crisis who was tearing out and tossing pages from tabloid magazines. The duo paused for a few minutes attempting to introduce themselves and offer help before moving on.

Most of their working day is spent in a similar manner, gently prodding or greeting those who are struggling, many of whom refuse their help. For those who are interested, Calero and Seiler said they are often stymied by factors outside of their control. Namely, the availability of resources such as shelter beds or treatment programs. 

“It’s really all about focusing on the wins,” Calero said. “When you get those, you ride them.”

One of the major gaps in BART’s approach to homelessness is the fragmented system of cities and counties across its service area and the inability to track individual outcomes. That means it’s difficult to measure success. 

That doesn’t stop BART from trying. In its homelessness plan, the agency lists a 5% annual increase in service referrals and a 5% reduction in the number of encampments and fires annually.

Ja’Son Scott, the deputy chief overseeing the Progressive Policing Bureau, said his staff is recording information on the number and location of contacts with individuals, as well as the proportion of those accepting services. However, officials did not have updated data to share on those numbers.

Concerns around transparency and ineffective spending led to a BART Office of the Inspector General probe into a homeless outreach contract with the Salvation Army, which found the organization was only able to link one person to residential drug treatment even after the agency paid $350,000 of a $500,000 contract.

At a meeting last month, members of BART’s board floated the idea of creating a nonprofit to source private donations and public funding for social services. BART board member Janice Li said that the agency needs help because of its role as a default provider of shelter, but there are few details on what a nonprofit model would look like. 

“Obviously, this would trigger a ton of accountability and oversight,” said Li in an interview last month.

In the meantime, the BART Police Department said it will boost its uniformed police presence on trains and stations by mid-March in an effort to prevent disruptions and reassure riders that trains are safe. But the absolute numbers are still quite small: The plan is to add between eight and 18 officers above the 10 currently on foot patrol.

BART’s police department is facing a 14.6% vacancy rate among sworn officers, officials reported. 

Debora Allen, a board member with a reputation as a budget hawk, said BART’s approach to homelessness doesn’t square with the system’s grim fiscal outlook.

“When you have a transit system that’s running a $300 million deficit, it doesn’t make sense to be spending $15 million a year to try and link people to services that 90% of the time they won’t accept, or that don’t exist in the first place,” Allen said.

Another aspect of the enforcement strategy is what’s called “station hardening”—making it more difficult to evade paying for fares. BART board members will be asked to approve funding for upgrading the system’s fare gates in March, although the upgrade process may take three or four years to complete.  

Allen’s solution follows a familiar playbook: Fill the existing vacancies in the police department and post at least one officer at each station during operation hours. 

Though many homeless people said they feel safer on BART lines than they do in shelters or the streets, using the trains as a shelter also presents its own dangers.

Sledge said that she is sometimes robbed when she falls asleep, leaving her empty-handed in an unfamiliar city. 

“I don’t know how I’m going to get back or where I’m going to sleep,” Sledge said.

The visuals in this story were produced by Jesse Rogala, Paul Kuroda and Benjamin Fanjoy with visuals editing by RJ Mickelson and Sophie Bearman.

This story was edited by Annie Gaus.