Hey Mister, Can Ya Spare a Bus Pass?

What do tobacco and bus passes have in common?

On the street, I am almost always asked for one of these two things (but more often both). To many, these items may seem insignificant.

Although tobacco may not the most appropriate item to give away, it opens doors for "engagement" with folks on the street than any other approach I've ever tried. My pragmatism here outweighs the health concerns I have about tobacco. If I do not get an opportunity to build a relationship with someone on the street, tobacco addiction falls to the bottom rung on their ladder of potential risks to their health.

Opening the lines of communication is important. But if you ask me, the bus pass is the more important resource I'm providing. It means a whole lot more than simply a pass to ride the bus.

Consider "Johnny's" situation. He approached me several weeks ago and the right side of his face was grotesquely swollen and discolored. Johnny complained of a vicious toothache and it was obvious that he was suffering from a wicked abscess (a fairly common condition for folks on the street). Most of the folks on the street don't seek out a dentist until the pain is so bad they can't avoid it. But even then, locating a doctor, making an appointment, and showing up for treatment is a huge pain in the arse when you're living on the streets or in shelter. And, as I've mentioned previously, if you happen to be homeless here in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, you can almost certainly forget about pain prescriptions.

But, as I pointed out vigorously to Johnny, abscesses are nothing to screw around with. They can be extremely dangerous and even fatal if left untreated. Of course, Johnny was not only scared to go to the dentist (like at least half of the population), he was also in so much pain he was unable to walk the distance it would take to get to one anyway. Although I was on foot myself this particular day, I did have a pocket full of passes. I gave him two all-day tickets and ordered him to head to the local emergency room and ask for some antibiotics before he keeled over in front of us. Just about any qualified dentist was going to make sure the infection was under control before they worked on or pulled the tooth anyway, and any self-respecting ER doc would know that instantly. My statement was closer to the truth than either of us imagined; the doctor at the ER told Johnny that if he would have waited just a few hours more, he almost certainly would have wound up in their ICU unit, if he wasn't dead instead.

They gave him an IM shot of some big-gun antibiotic, a small handful of samples and a script that equaled out a 10-day regimen of antibiotic treatment. Johnny sold the second bus pass I gave him for $4, saving someone almost a dollar on an all-day pass in the process, and was then able to panhandle the remaining $4 for the $8 bottle of medicine. Johnny continues to thank me today for demanding he go to the ER, but the truth is, the bus pass was the instrument that got him there, and frankly, it may have also saved his life.

One of the reasons the passes are so valuable is that in Nashville, the services designated for the homeless are scattered all over the city and and getting them often requires long walks. This makes accessing more than one per day difficult in its own right. It gets worse when the person must access a service on the west side of town while the lunchtime meal service is on the east side of town. It becomes even more problematic if the sleeping spot is in yet another part of town. If the individual is hoping to stay at the Mission or the local Salvation Army Men's Lodge for the evening, they will need to make certain they are able to be at the door by 4pm. This pretty much rules out afternoon appointments anywhere besides the south side of town, since there is little hope that you will be able to traverse the distance quickly enough after the appointment to make it to the agency in time to get a bed. And by the way, if it's the Mission they're hoping for, they will probably need to get there considerably earlier than 4pm, since folks start lining up shortly after lunch on many days.

Another reason they're so valuable is that, well, they're valuable. It costs $4.80 for a regular all day pass. That may not seem like much to many of us, but it may just provide someone with some food who has walked to an appointment with a prospective employer and missed the lunch meal in the process. If they're also unlucky enough after their interview to be so far away from the mission or the SA they can't get back in time for a bed slot, that lowly bus pass may turn out to provide them with a cash resource for the only food they've had the entire day, since you've got to be "in" the mission or SA in order to access the evening meal.

I've seen bus passes traded for coats, backpacks, sandwiches, tobacco, booze, and shoes. I've watched people let others hold bus passes as collateral while they use the holder's pushcart to haul cans to the local recycler. I've even seen bus passes used as currency to pay back folks when the individual had no hard cash but did have a couple of passes.

Passes have always been fairly expensive here, but prices increased - and routes were eliminated - this summer, making the transportation situation even more difficult for the poor and the homeless. Unfortunately, because of the scattered services, lack of transportation, coupled with a dearth of outreach, makes providing services to the homeless more difficult than it has to be.

However, it wouldn't be hard to fix this problem. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) currently has discount plans available for seniors and the disabled. Why not provide similar discounts on a sliding scale, based on income? Better yet, MTA could provide an ID (these are already issued for those who are able to use the discounted passes) that allowed a set number of free rides during normal business hours, thereby ensuring that individuals could make critical appointments to agencies, doctors and employment interviews. There are ways to overcome the obstacles facing those who are trying to help themselves. We need to do all we can to ensure individuals get the hand up they so desperately need and providing transportation to important services seems like a relatively easy way to both get, and keep, their ball own rolling.