Survival Training

[December 17th, 2008]

When a 27-year-old homeless man from Minneapolis climbed aboard the Portland Streetcar on Monday morning, he settled in for the long haul.

After getting on at the Northwest 23rd Avenue stop, he found two seats side by side—one for himself, and one for Ishe, his 4-year-old pit bull.

Ishe took the window seat, and the man who called himself John opened the bright-red sleeping bag tucked under his arm and from its plush folds pulled out two blankets and an extra coat. The coat was for Ishe, draped across her back. The folded blankets went under John’s butt for extra comfort.

With facial tattoos and the words “Dead” and ”Sexy” spelled in ink on his fingers, John stood out among the morning commuters around him. One was yawning at his phone. Another applied mascara in a hand mirror. Both looked up annoyed as John began chatting to Ishe about the cold weather.

But John, who did not pay the $2 streetcar fare, didn’t let the dirty looks bother him. He spends more time on the streetcar than any commuter, and he settled into his seat like it was his living-room couch.

“I rode transit all day yesterday,” he told WW. Like all the homeless people interviewed for this story, he declined to give his last name.

As temperatures dropped into the teens this week, some homeless residents retreated to familiar territory—the Portland Streetcar. With cushioned seats, heat blasting from the ceiling, and fare inspectors almost unheard of, the streetcar provides a free and even classy way to beat the cold.

When the streetcar debuted in 2001, the city planners who designed it and the U.S. Congress that funded it probably didn’t intend to build a rolling shelter. But homeless residents who use the streetcar, which serves about 12,600 riders a day, say the 8-mile line is a reliable way to escape the cold without being harassed.

“It’s like the library or any other place that’s open,” says Marc Jolin, executive director of JOIN, a nonprofit for the homeless. “It’s generally folks who live in the downtown area and are looking for a place to go.”

You can’t board a TriMet bus without paying a fare. Inspectors and police are more common on the MAX than the streetcar, handing out fines for failure to pay. But on the streetcar, homeless residents say they can ride the one-hour-and-15-minute loop as many times as they want without being asked for a ticket.

“Occasionally you have a driver who’s having a bad day,” says John. “Otherwise, they don’t bother you.”

In three hours spent on the streetcar Monday morning, Dec. 15, when temperatures dipped to 22 degrees outside, WW spoke with 11 homeless riders. Most said they were on board to warm up.

David, a 32-year-old from South Carolina, held his sleeping bag in his lap while reading a discarded copy of The Oregonian and munching on a baguette. He said he’d slept under the east end of the Morrison Bridge the night of Dec. 14, as winds gusted up to 45 mph.

“Just reading the paper, hanging out for a while,” he said. Next he planned to hit the library.

Sitting in the driver’s seat at the Oregon Health & Science University Commons stop during the 10-minute layover between loops, streetcar operator Sharon Reddick says she has no troubles with the homeless. She asks passengers to leave only if they’re acting up or passed out drunk.

“I can’t pinpoint them because I know they’re homeless,” she says. “I don’t like to discriminate.”

Rick Gustafson, head of Portland Streetcar Inc., says he’s received no complaints in seven years about homeless ridership. On average, he says, about 20 percent of riders don’t pay the required fare, a number he’s apparently OK with. He calls it simply good customer service that drivers allow riders to stay on board indefinitely.

As for fare inspectors, Gustafson says they ride “probably several times a month.” More often, passengers are confronted by a survey taker who asks them to pay but doesn’t enforce the rules.

Gustafson notes that 24 of the streetcar’s 42 stops are inside Fareless Square, so many passengers ride for free anyway. He says he’s against canceling or shrinking Fareless Square to crack down on those who abuse the system.

“There are far more effective mechanisms to deal with the atmosphere rather than overreacting and changing the fare system,” Gustafson says. “So far, we have not had to resort to being more of an enforcer.”