Does Public Transit Serve People Experiencing Homelessness? A National Assessment of Homeless Shelter Accessibility in the US

Public transit offers critical access to opportunities and services, especially for people experiencing homelessness who often face significant mobility challenges. Despite evidence on vulnerable populations’ dependence on public transit, there is no systematic assessment of transit access around homeless service providers nationwide. This study integrates Homeless Inventory Count Raw data with the National Transit Map, General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), and OpenStreetMap (OSM), to examine the spatial disparity of transit accessibility of homeless services across the U.S., as well as the patterns from 2015 to 2022. Geocoding each homeless service project in relation to its local public transit network, the analysis finds substantial disparities between urban and non-urban communities despite increased accessibility over time. Being located in a service area with a higher Black or Hispanic population and unemployment rate related with better transit access. However, transit access was worse for emergency shelters, the frontline of homeless services, indicating transit inequity for service providers or emergency shelters serving relatively remote locations where people may not have access to other services. Beyond identifying the transit access for homeless services, this study contributes to the social equity literature by extending the intersections of multiple inequities, specifically, homelessness, transit, urbanicity, and socio-economic and demographic characteristics.