Transit should be free and the money spent implementing the fare-collection system should be spent on housing the homeless instead.

So, give them homes. Tiny homes are cheap and for most homeless people not having a house or address is the number one reason they can't get a house or address. The others need to be in a care facility. It should take a true renegade to remain homeless. But we value profits over everything else.

edit sorry I have feelings about this lol, I didn’t mean to send all this energy at you, more like I needed to howl into the void

This is such an enraging narrative and I encounter it all the time. My city has lots of homeless because the climate is temperate (and for other reasons but not the point of this post). My city also has free bus transit (no fares no nothing).

People ALL the time hem and haw to me about being concerned if we have free transit it will be “overrun” by homeless. Often it is people I am talking to about mass transit living in my own city who have zero clue we have even have free bus transit.

At the end of the day if you are “concerned about the homeless” using the bus too much or something you know the best solution? Use the damn bus, not only will you actually see with your own eyes that homeless are just using the bus like everybody else, you help push the needle of what the average bus user looks towards you and away from whoever you are imagining as bad.

Free mass transit is the foundation of the best cities in the past and future, hamstringing transit because of a fear of homeless “ruining” it is the definition of shooting ourselves in the foot for no reason.

Yes I see homeless on the bus a lot, I see lots of people on the bus. There tends to be a lot of humans on the bus.