The Deeper Problems Inside The Bus Terminal At Union Station
(CBS4) - More reports of violence over the weekend at the bus terminal at Union Station has RTD looking for solutions.
"Obviously there is a lot of crime out there right now, and this is societal problem," said Tina Jaquez, RTD spokesperson. "We want to make our system safe for our customers and our employees, and that's what we're dedicated to doing.
Commuters are seeing it.
"Just keep my head down and my AirPods in and just walk to work you know," Sean Gray said. "A lot more homeless people, a lot more people asking for money, asking for food stuff like that. You know it could be drug related too."
"We tend to use that word homeless and lump a whole bunch of people into a single category, but there's different you know all kinds of different categories of experience of homelessness," said Vincent Atchity of Mental Health Colorado. "Some homelessness is driven by those kind of emergent economic circumstances, were due to job loss or other kinds of actualities people, families, you know, find themselves without a place to live. We have resources in the community that can often be helpful in terms of re-stabilize things, people who are having that kind of experience."
But there are others who are harder to help.
"When their experience of homelessness is combined with some kind of unmanaged mental health condition and also a co-occurring substance use condition of some kind, then, it's not always so simple."
Ridership on RTD lines dropped dramatically during the pandemic to about half what it was in 2019. The latest figures from January of this year show a one-third increase over January 2021. But with more people taking refuge in public spaces and a lower number of riders, the number of people with problems may be more apparent.
Atchity says pushing people out in sweeps is a temporary solution.
"Clearing one area for the sake of some kind of media opportunity or another, that's not solving a problem," he said. "That's just shuffling a problem in a different direction."
But getting troubled people into housing is hard, particularly if there are people with a combination of problems that includes drug use.
"When somebody's got a complex condition, it can be nearly impossible," Atchity said. "And if you add the experience of homelessness and the poverty that that's obviously most often associated with it, on top of that complex set of health needs meeting all of that is extremely complicated."
Commuters who see it daily want good solutions as well.
Sean Gray understands the need he sees.
"The mental health issue is a really big issue and until we figure out how to help these people in a way that's actually going to help them, I think we're going to see a lot of this stuff happening."