This is Transit Unplugged.

I'm Paul Comfort.

What do you think the primary mission of a public transit agency is?

I think most people would say it is to provide public mobility.

Whether it's on buses, trains, or microtransit.

But did you know public transit agencies are working in a lot

of other areas too, whether it's education, whether it is land use.

And also, now, they are working with vulnerable populations who are in the

transit vehicles and transit stations.

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.

Thank you, Paul.

It's great to meet you.

I've been heard about you so often and uh, it was always my dream in the

industry to meet THE Paul Comfort.

So, this is great.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

And I love the work you all are doing at SEPTA under Leslie, uh, there as your CEO.

Um, just phenomenal work.

Yes, yes.

Leslie is a phenomenal leader.

Without, um, her leadership, none of this that we're doing right now, innovatively,

would have been possible for us.

That's great.

So kind of interesting story.

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.

About the fifth or sixth.

It kind of vacillates.

Yeah, it kind of vacillates.

Back in, I've been at SEPTA for about, uh, 29 years this past August.

I started in 94, believe it or not, as a bus driver.

And, um, I did, I drove the bus for about, uh, 17 years.

Did that for about 17 years.

I got promoted to an assistant, excuse me, a transportation manager.

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.

Let's talk about unpacking.

Yeah.

The folks who listen can maybe mirror some of these that are successful.

So one of the things that we did, we knew very earlier

on that partnership is so crucial.

That's the P in scope.

Again, safety, cleaning, ownership, partnership, and engagement.

But let's just kind of back up a little bit with the ownership piece.

Many believe that transit companies should own the problem and employ and

deploy increased levels of enforcement to address this humanitarian crisis.

Well, number one, transit companies have owned the problem.

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?

Okay, so you've got all these volunteers and then you've

got some paid staff it sounds like.

So let's, let's get real down to earth practical.

So I'm sitting on a bus, I'm a vulnerable person, I don't really

have any other place to go.

Absolutely.

It's warm on the bus.

So I want to sit on there.

Uh, one of your folks addresses, comes to me.

What happens then?

Yes.

Great question.

So, uh, actually it's two, we, we work in pairs of two and we're not, and we

are, and we are not tethered by police.

We do have our own police force, SEPTA police.

My outreach team is not tethered by SEPTA police because they're not connected.

Sometimes the cop go out with that.

Yes.

And that's called a.

That as you, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but

that's called a co responder model.

That's right.

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.

So, okay, so now I'm sitting at a station.

You're sitting at a station.

I've been there for three hours.

Exactly.

All right, so then what happens?

Great question.

My team works in pairs of two, they go into the station, they may see 10

people experiencing homelessness, or 10 vulnerable individuals at that station.

My team go and they say, hey guys, my name is Ken, this is Paul, we're from

SEPTA Outreach, we're here to help you.

Anything you need, we're gonna offer that to you.

Uh, housing, mental health, etc.

I'm hungry and I'm cold.

Absolutely.

Okay, that's my thank you.

I'm hungry and I'm cold, so what are you gonna say to me?

Oh, come with me.

Okay.

We will take you and we will do what we call a warm handoff.

To one of our other service providers that would take you off

the system and get you in that place of respite where you can get help.

Here's the interesting thing.

99 percent of those people that we've experienced says no.

They just do not want service.

They don't want to go?

They do not want service, Paul.

This is a hard reality to me.

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, so you come to me and you offer me, come

with us, we're going to get you.

some blankets, we'll get you a place to stay, and some food,

and I say, no, no, no, I don't want that, so then what happens?

What happens is, my team says, we understand you don't want

service, my name is Ken, here's our card, reach out to me if you need me.

By the way, do us a favor, do you mind, you know, SEPTA is not

meant for human habitation, do you mind stepping off the property?

We don't kick people off, we don't push people off our property.

We guide them off the property.

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.

Gotcha.

So let's, let's, uh, break out a little bit into the services that are offered.

Mm hmm.

Okay, so we just went through a potential story that you would say come.

Alright, so tell us about your partners.

Yes, we partnered with the Philadelphia Office of

Homeless Services, Philadelphia's Department of Behavioral Health and

Intellectual Disability Services.

We partnered with a lot of the homeless service providers within the city of

Philadelphia and the surrounding counties.

Such as Gaudenza House, Your Way Home.

There's so many partners that we can't even get on this three minute podcast.

Yeah.

But it's so many partners that we partner with.

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.

Very great partnerships you've got going there.

Now, um, you just won an award last year for all this, right?

At APTA for your program, SCOPE?

We did, yes.

We won, uh, APTA's 2022 Innovation Award.

Uh, last year we accepted that award in Seattle.

That's awesome, man.

And if people want to know more about this so they can, you know,

check it out, where can they look?

Sure.

Uh, they can go on our SEPTA's website, septa.

org, and under there, there's a tab you click on safety, and then

you'll see, uh, scope program.

In the scope program, you'll see a wealth of information for me.

My contact information is there, kdivers at septa.

org.

Um, you can also call me at 215 580 8105.

I think that's a first.

I don't think, at 265 episodes anybody's ever given their Phone number.

So that's great, man.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

No worries.

Well, Ken, this is an amazing program, and it sounds like you're

having great success with it.

Yes, we are.

We have a lot of work to do, Paul.

I would never say scope is the panacea.

Yeah.

But it is a framework that we can build and pivot where necessary.

So we do have a lot of work to do, but the needle is moving in the right direction.

That's great.

And we've been joined here at breakfast now by a big name in the industry, Ms.

Flora Castillo, who kind of helped put this together.

Hey, Flora.

Good morning, Paul.

You know, I've wanted to get you on this podcast for years.

So look, I roped you in this morning.

So pleased to be here with you and obviously Ken has done

such a great job at SEPTA with the implementation and then pretty much the

design implementation of the program.

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.

So, it sounds like you guys have done that, though.

You've partnered with a lot of people.

This is an industry that, I mean, this is an issue.

That's affecting more than just SEPTA.

It's affecting everyone.

You have a great perspective on the industry as a whole.

What's your thoughts on that?

indeed, Paul.

This is an issue that was with us before the pandemic, but, um, post COVID,

obviously, has continued to exacerbate because there's just so many issues

that, um, have created this condition.

lack of affordable housing, uh, lack of good paying jobs, um, the,

uh, issues around accessing, uh, treatment beds for individuals who are

having a substance use, um, disorder.

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.

That's great.

Well, thank you both for the work you're doing at SEPTA and thank

you for sharing that today with our audience here on Transit Unplugged.

Thank you, Paul.

Thank you, Paul.

Hi, thIs is Tris Hussey editor of the Transit Unplugged Podcast.

And thank you for listening to this week's episode with our special

guests Ken Divers and Flora Castillo.

Now coming up next week on the show, we have Adam Barth, CEO of the

Stanislaus Regional Transit Authority.

Talking about consolidating two agencies into one.

And the advice he got from an early mentor that makes him a better CEO today.

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