Busses Against the Homeless
I have had two recent encounters with the problem of homelessness.
My first was at North Hills, I had just finished watching Wakanda Forever with my friends when we were about to leave, and a middle-aged man approached me and started talking to me. I engaged, and he spoke about how he needed an uber or a ride to a hotel because his ride had been canceled on him, and the busses had stopped by this point. One of my friends had the uber app and ordered an uber for him, and we waited to make sure he left safely. As we waited, he argued that he was not a drug user, was just going through a rough spot as he was getting a divorce, and tried to sympathize with us about how he went to ECU and also was a bartender and bouncer back in the day. Why do the homeless have to defend themselves or beg for dignity? We had a great talk with him about his days as a bartender as he realized we were friendly and respectful people; he even sang us a song he was working on, which was quite good.
My second encounter was on Hillsborough Street. I was walking back to my dorm one evening and passed a bus stop with covered benches, then I noticed that the benches had little dividers in them, separating them into 3 separate seats. These had no purpose but to prevent someone from lying down on the bench. These benches were in a covered bus stop, so it was definitely a targeted design trying to remove the homeless from the area. Along with bus stops not being friendly to the homeless, bus schedules are not as well because if you do not have your own mode of transportation after 10 pm, it is costly to get anywhere.
