How SEPTA is Making a Difference in the Lives of Vulnerable People

In Philadelphia, SEPTA, the transit agency there, has a program called the SCOPE program. That stands for Safety, Cleaning, Ownership, Partnership, and Engagement. The leader of the program is a very engaging man himself, and his name is Ken Divers. He's the Director of Outreach Programs. I sat down with him.

At the recent IMPACT conference to talk about their program along with Flora Castillo, former APTA chair with a long history in transit and healthcare who's helping to, consult on this SCOPE program. They talked to me about how they're working with vulnerable populations in and around the SEPTA transit system in Philadelphia, what some of the results have been, and where they're headed with the program. I think you'll find it a fascinating conversation.

I hope you enjoy it on this episode of Transit Unplugged.

Well, we are in, uh, Phoenix, Arizona, and who would know that I would meet a neighbor of mine, basically. Kenneth Divers, uh, who works at SEPTA in Philadelphia. And I wanted to bring you some very good, interesting information about a program he runs. Ken, thanks for being with us.

We're going to talk about, um, the homeless program that you operate there, the outreach program that helps, uh, unhoused people and other folks. Um, but we're at breakfast now. We were going to go to this conference impact, uh, conference here to their breakfast, but they moved it up an hour and Ken and I were talking on the elevator and I said, dude, let's just record this right now. We were going to do it, uh, Over the phone later, but this worked out great. Great, terrific.

So Ken, give me, uh, up front a little bit about the program that you operate right now at SEPTA, which is the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in Philadelphia. I think it's the fourth or fifth largest transit system in America.

I did that for a number of years, which was really where I built the Ken Divers brand, um, things that I was involved in, you know, world stage events such as Eagles, when we won the championship, the, uh, Merriam golf tournament. But as a result of that and the work that I put involved, put in place, I got promoted to an assistant director, what we call the chief on the street. I manage over 80 supervisors and also the operators. so did that, got promoted in 2021.

Uh, I believe that was February the 7th of 2021, February the 27th, my COO, Scott Sauer, pulled me, uh, to find a solution to this humanitarian crisis that found its way in our system. Now, this crisis of homelessness or the vulnerable population did not start in 2021. As you know, it kind of preceded that. But the pandemic exasperated the issue, like it does with most companies. So, when I brought on Flora Castillo, very, very wonderful woman in the industry.

She reached out to me and said, Ken, I see what you're doing. Let's get together. Let's talk about how we want to solve this. And she and I, in a weekend, developed what we call the SCOPE program. SCOPE is an acronym which stands for Safety. Cleaning, Ownership, Partnership, and Engagement, and that is a comprehensive plan to address the social ills that found its way on the transportation company. Now, let me just say this on the onset. My job at SEPTA, SEPTA's job is not to house the homeless.

That is not what our core competencies are. Our core competencies, as you know, is to move people. However, we have to rethink our business model. And one of the ways to do that, Paul, is to find a solution or find a framework that we can bring in social workers, or what I call certified peer specialists. Those people who have lived experience, who were once members of the vulnerable community.

And just for the audience's sake, many people ask, why do we call them the vulnerable community instead of the homeless? Because the vulnerable community, they have members. Who are suffering from, sexual abuse, elder abuse, mental health abuse, uh, or, or, or suffrage. We have people in that community who are young adults, and then we also have members of that community who are homeless. And that's why we call them the vulnerable community. Gotcha.

So a part of the vulnerable community, what we do is, is I bring on, uh, I think back then in 2021, we. Uh, contracted with three outreach firms and the RFP was written as such that when these individuals or these certified peer specialists or MSWs, BSWs, and for those who don't know MSWs, Masters of Social Work, BSW, Bachelors of Social Work. Yes, most of these outreach workers are credentialed. A lot of them are, but most of them are not. They're what we call certified peer specialists.

And again, as I said before, these are people who have lived experience who came out of that. that community.

Now, I myself was a member of the vulnerable community. I used to live in an abandoned building when I was in my early twenties for quite a while. Um, my little brother currently is still out there. Matter of fact, my outreach members that I hire probably have engaged my family members, my little brother, my little sister, who's out there, my older brother before he passed, my nephew, my uncles. So this is very near and dear to my heart, Paul.

So what we do is with our outreach teams, my outreach team, we go and we engage this vulnerable community and we lead them off the system. We offer them services, a wealth of services, housing, mental health treatment facilities. I mean, I can go on and on down the line.

Now, what we do differently, what's unique with us, with SEPTA in Philadelphia, is when an individual refuse service, the love, the care, the compassion that we show them and that we offer them, when they refuse service, what my team does, we gently ask them to leave the system. We do not tell them, we do not kick them off, we gently ask them. If you can leave this system and believe it or not, we have a 70 percent success rate.

70 percent Now, I know we only have a few moments, so I don't, I don't have to, I can't get into everything that we're doing under the SCOPE program, but just some highlight features. Yeah.

We have in some cases have employed and deployed increased levels of enforcement. I know we have. However, enforcement cannot solve the issue. And SEPTA transit companies cannot do this on its own and that's why what we do, we advocate with our state legislator in Pennsylvania, our city council. Our mayor's office, our managing director's office, et cetera, to take ownership of this public health crisis that found its way on this public transit system.

And as a result of that, we were able to build a robust network of partners within our service area. SEPTA is in five counties. We're in three states. We service over 2, 200 service miles. So we were able to build a robust network of partners, including universities such as Drexel University, where we have, this is our third cohort, the third year doing this. We have 17 first year medical students doing their six month practicum on our system, and we call them health navigators.

Now, these first year medical students, they are regaled in a vest that's emblazoned with the trappings of SEPTA and their logo, and we call them health navigators. And these medical students, they go onto our property, at our stations, on our trains, to engage the vulnerable community, to lead them off the system and in the places where they can get help and it's been successful. This is our third year doing it.

We also have a relationship with another university, Cabrini University, and um, they gave us their health and exercise science students. And because of these partnerships, we were, we were contacted by Newman University. We were contacted by LaSalle University because they want to get into the fray as well. but these are some unique partnerships, but not to be outdone. We even had a company called Northeast Treatment Center, AKA NET.

They actually read about what we were doing and wanted to be a part of the solution. They knocked on our door and said, Ken, We believe what SEPTA is doing to address this crisis, how can we help?

Yeah. Yes. When you have a police officer with an outreach worker, I'm not a big fan of the co responder model. And I'm going to tell you why, because as those co responder models are ambulatory. In other words, instead of being static at a station, a hotspot location, they're ambulatory. They move around to the system. It's very difficult to measure their success. Okay. So you guys are on the buses. Mike, well, we're not on the buses because believe it or not.

We don't, in Philadelphia, we don't have a major issue with our buses. We have them on our stations with our subway, our elevated, our, our trolley stations. That's where the issues are.

Wow. When I started this in 2021, I did not realize that, that 99 percent of the individuals that we experience, experiencing homelessness or a vulnerable community, they just do not want service.

Okay. Believe it or not, Paul, um, and this is non enforcement, it's non enforcement, but believe it or not, 70 percent of those individuals actually get up and leave. You know why? Because we treat them with dignity and with respect. Now, so 70 percent of those individuals actually leave the system without being coerced or forced or anything. Now, to put that into perspective, last year, Our outreach team, we had over 44, 000 removals off the system.

44, 000. And sometimes those who were experiencing violent tendencies, we had to call SEPTA police. SEPTA police had to come and address those issues and remove those individuals who were showing violent tendencies. But our team, without the aid of SEPTA police, Paul, we had about, I think it was about 38, 000 removals without the aid of SEPTA police.

In fact, SEPTA actually have access to, Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services, HMIS system, and HMIS is a homeless management information system. Most transit companies have access, may have access to that via their outreach firm that they hire, however. Not so with us. Our outreach firm had access to the HMIS system through SEPTA for us, which is very unique. Very unique. And why is that important?

Because we can easily manage those folks that my outreach team engages and better give them what they need to see where they were. Where were you last week in the system? We can better identify those things. So that's why it was very crucial. Flora and I dealt with the Homeless Management Information System for quite some time, trying to advocate to get that on board, and we were able to successfully do that.

Not to be outdone, Paul, we've also purchased 500 emergency shelter beds from the Office of Homeless Services so that any individuals that our outreach team engages, we have places actually for them to go. Now, mind you, this is temporary. It is an emergency shelter bed. It is not a long term housing. We are working very aggressively to get long term housing, work with our partners.

But I want to say this and as we wind down, Paul, SEPTA, we do not measure our success by how many folks we get into housing. We measure our success by how many individuals we get off the system. Our secondary benefit is to get those person housing. But my mantra that I always say, I shared this with you the other day. Our goal is to make homelessness on SEPTA rare, brief, and non recurring, while creating an environment that is clean and safe for our employees first, and then for our riders.

In that order.

We were just, you know, as a consultant on the project him we're impressed by the, leadership of our general manager, Leslie Richards, who, you know, told Ken and I to just be as innovative as possible, try anything, because, um, she did see this as a business imperative to be able to ensure that the system was safe, and that the employees felt, uh, safe coming to work, so that our riders could come back to work, so, um, I would say, uh, as someone that's been, um, very passionate about the

intersection of homeless In transit and healthcare, I was pleased to, help develop a holistic approach that not only, shows our, uh, riders and our, uh, partners what we're doing, but also engages them in and activates them to do and support us because we cannot do this alone. We need partners. We need the housing, players. We need the mental health providers. We need the elected officials who control policy.

And, uh, we need our employees and, you know, anyone who, um, you know, needs to support this effort.

In our industry, um, what I've noticed over the years is that we have really started to own the issue in terms of, using the power of transit as a convener.

As an educator, as a, um, you know, community stakeholder to bring the parties together to, build the bridges, anywhere you go, um, LA Metro under the leadership of Stephanie Wiggins is doing a great job in thinking about multiple innovations, you know, CTA in Chicago under the, um, you know, Dorval Carter are trying new innovative ways of partnering.

you have small systems, uh, in Orlando where we were just, doing APTA where the new, uh, executive director is, is looking at ways to how to, uh, approach this because not only does it affect, uh, riders, but it affects, um, tourism, it affects how people, uh, show up in, in the downtown, so. I would say that as someone that, um, loves this industry and sees, um, the innovate, the ways that we need to approach it, I'm very, pleased on how in the progress that we're making.

And, it's not our issue. It's a societal issue. And, uh, we're making a dent in terms of breaking those silos and bringing other, you know, other people together.

The last thing I would say Paul is that I'm very happy that, um, you know, the Biden, uh, Harris administration has created the All Inside Initiative under the auspices of the Interagency Coordinating Council on Homelessness, where they have identified six cities, plus the whole state of California, to provide technical assistance that cuts across housing, so if you think about HUD, they send money for the emergency shelters and others, health and human services,

mental health, We heard just yesterday they are making some significant, um, uh, changes and impact by just changing small things that are breaking silos amongst all these different providers that get in the way for people getting, uh, housing ultimately and then through a, you know, to a path of independence.

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