Los Angeles struggles to solve subway homeless crisis
Homeless people find subway stations a comfortable haven.
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At the entrance to an underground metro station, Tracy Hellams, an American, was sitting on the station floor burning the strings of her jeans at 3 a.m., along with 10 other homeless people waiting for the station's doors to open and trains to arrive in Los Angeles.
Helms' life has been a mess since she was eleven years old, after her mother's death, leaving her to move around in orphanages.
When she turned 54, she became mentally ill and was addicted to alcohol and drugs.
She does not want to stay with other addicts, so as not to “provoke” her desire to use drugs.
She says: “I lived in the metro and its stations for four or six years.
I feel safer there.”
The homeless have always found the metro and its stations a comfortable refuge, as the metro transport systems are calm and air-conditioned, and they can sleep in the stations, on trains and buses.
However, their numbers began to increase very rapidly in recent years, which confused the passengers and hampered the efforts of the Transport Corporation aimed at increasing the number of passengers, which decreased during the “Corona” crisis.
As in public libraries and squares, metro officials found themselves in the midst of the area's homeless crisis, forcing them to become a de facto social services organization.
In 2018, the Metro Foundation launched the first-of-its-kind initiative to provide shelter to homeless cyclists.
She started the program, which was a $1.2 million project, and has grown into a $27.5 million initiative.
But this problem kept growing.
The Metro Transportation Corporation estimates that there were about 5,700 homeless people in its transportation systems last August.
Steve Fisher, director of the subway outreach program run by Help the Homeless, said homeless bikers are more isolated and suffer from behavioral problems than homeless people who live in crowds on the streets.
Metro supervisors complain of harassment of homeless people and filthy seats.
Social workers are trying to persuade Helms to go to a shelter at night, as they offer some homeless people in south Los Angeles, to be moved to the shelter, but Helms refuses, because she does not want to stay with others in one room.
"I was trying to get this guy to give me a room on my own, because I love my art and I'm a poet," Helms said.
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