City Safari: SEPTA’s World Of Makeshift Cardboard Encampments
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Homeless vet
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Wed, Nov 27, 2019
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The block of 8th and Market Street, a stone’s throw from the new Gallery Mall, has become the unfashionable nerve center of Center City’s drugged-out homeless population.
The problem is so pronounced it’s even noticeable during the daylight hours. Spend ten minutes standing by the Frankford – Market Street El entrance at 8th and Market Street and you will be swept away by the activity there: Men pacing endlessly or loitering around the SEPTA ticket machines, some of them on the lookout for drug connections while others (benignly) ask for cigarettes or look for cigarette butts on the ground. Numerous men stand in corners under the stairs to the ticket area, their faces covered up in XL hoodies while others stay frozen in bent- over positions as if venerating an invisible sidewalk Krishna.
This is not a place where you will want to linger for long, because if you do, the ordinary passer- by will assume that you are a member of this collective (the guilt by association assumption).
The Burger King near the 8th Street station is a kind of “Get warm” ground zero for many of these people. A homeless man holds the door for customers going in and out. This Burger King is much like the infamous McDonald’s at Front and Girard in Fishtown where 90 per cent of the customers are methadone patients from a nearby drug clinic or homeless wayfarers getting something to eat with their panhandling money. The drama that one sees at this McDonald’s is epic. The McDonald’s at Broad and Arch Street down the street from PAFA is another five-star panhandling-homeless attraction. These are not places where tourists go after a kaleidoscopic experience at the Masonic Temple.
The scene at the 8th and Market station intensifies at night. Once the sun sets, the drug addicted homeless men (who refuse to go into shelters) come out in droves to set up their makeshift cardboard bedding along the main SEPTA passenger corridor leading to the train platform. This line of makeshift beds extends along both sides of the corridor so that commuters have to walk in-between this village of sleepers, most of whom are awake and sitting with their heads buried between their legs in some kind of drug induced “wipe out.”
Some of the homeless men stand or jerk around, their wild, untamed body language indicating K2 consumption. K2 is a synthetic cannabinoid in which users report some effects similar to those produced by marijuana such as elevated moods or the dangerous delusional and disordered symptoms of psychosis.
Conventional heroin usage (the needle) manifests itself in many ways but one recognizable sign is fat fingers. If you want to know whether a homeless person—even one as thin as the long-deceased Karen Carpenter-- is using drugs, just look at their hands. If you see abnormally fat fingers or swollen hands, there’s your proof.
The 8th and Market SEPTA commuter corridor has become a nighttime cardboard “Broadway” of sorts, not unlike the underground cardboard city that used to exist in the Broad Street concourse from Walnut Street to Locust Street over 16 years ago. The city managed to break up that conglomerate and the area has been uninhabited until recently. Now there are reports that the Broad Street subway concourse cardboard sleeping village is once again making a comeback.
While there are many peaceful (aka hurting) men who sleep at the 8th Street station, increasing numbers are not peaceful and should not be on the streets.
The problem is so pronounced it’s even noticeable during the daylight hours. Spend ten minutes standing by the Frankford – Market Street El entrance at 8th and Market Street and you will be swept away by the activity there: Men pacing endlessly or loitering around the SEPTA ticket machines, some of them on the lookout for drug connections while others (benignly) ask for cigarettes or look for cigarette butts on the ground. Numerous men stand in corners under the stairs to the ticket area, their faces covered up in XL hoodies while others stay frozen in bent- over positions as if venerating an invisible sidewalk Krishna.
This is not a place where you will want to linger for long, because if you do, the ordinary passer- by will assume that you are a member of this collective (the guilt by association assumption).
The Burger King near the 8th Street station is a kind of “Get warm” ground zero for many of these people. A homeless man holds the door for customers going in and out. This Burger King is much like the infamous McDonald’s at Front and Girard in Fishtown where 90 per cent of the customers are methadone patients from a nearby drug clinic or homeless wayfarers getting something to eat with their panhandling money. The drama that one sees at this McDonald’s is epic. The McDonald’s at Broad and Arch Street down the street from PAFA is another five-star panhandling-homeless attraction. These are not places where tourists go after a kaleidoscopic experience at the Masonic Temple.
The scene at the 8th and Market station intensifies at night. Once the sun sets, the drug addicted homeless men (who refuse to go into shelters) come out in droves to set up their makeshift cardboard bedding along the main SEPTA passenger corridor leading to the train platform. This line of makeshift beds extends along both sides of the corridor so that commuters have to walk in-between this village of sleepers, most of whom are awake and sitting with their heads buried between their legs in some kind of drug induced “wipe out.”
Some of the homeless men stand or jerk around, their wild, untamed body language indicating K2 consumption. K2 is a synthetic cannabinoid in which users report some effects similar to those produced by marijuana such as elevated moods or the dangerous delusional and disordered symptoms of psychosis.
Conventional heroin usage (the needle) manifests itself in many ways but one recognizable sign is fat fingers. If you want to know whether a homeless person—even one as thin as the long-deceased Karen Carpenter-- is using drugs, just look at their hands. If you see abnormally fat fingers or swollen hands, there’s your proof.
The 8th and Market SEPTA commuter corridor has become a nighttime cardboard “Broadway” of sorts, not unlike the underground cardboard city that used to exist in the Broad Street concourse from Walnut Street to Locust Street over 16 years ago. The city managed to break up that conglomerate and the area has been uninhabited until recently. Now there are reports that the Broad Street subway concourse cardboard sleeping village is once again making a comeback.
While there are many peaceful (aka hurting) men who sleep at the 8th Street station, increasing numbers are not peaceful and should not be on the streets.
The “sleeping” encampment at 8th and Market is enough to make the public transportation-taking Walnut Street Theatre ticket subscriber want to run the other way and take a taxi or Uber. Most people would certainly want to avoid the 8th Street station. Peaceful or even mildly rambunctious homeless men are one thing, but mentally ill homeless men who act out in a violent way are quite another.
And this is what is happening.
During my wait for the El at 8th and Market after seeing The Gifts of the Magi at the Walnut’s Independence Studio on 3, I went into the 8th Street station and waited for the train headed for the Girard Street station. Standing with my back to the cardboard encampment, at some point I turned around to observe the out-of-control scene: men preparing their cardboard, blanket or newspaper beds while others stood around in small groups. Homeless men seemed to be drifting in from all directions. At one point one of the men caught my glance and said something to me.
That “something’ was probably a garbled panhandling request but I couldn’t be sure. I moved closer to the commuter corridor so I could hear what the man was saying, offered an “Excuse me” at which point a sleeping man wrapped in mummy blankets rose up and yelled at me to “Get back” and “Shut up.” Separating us was a Plexiglas wall. Seconds after this another voice was calling to me. The tone was persistent and came from a section of the commuter corridor I could not see. I inched forward to get a better look and saw a homeless man sitting in a self created cardboard bathtub. Shirtless, he really did look like he was taking a bath sans water and soap. That’s when I felt I had entered the lion and tiger section of the Philadelphia Zoo, for here was a wild animal, scowling and threatening me. It certainly was not a fitting ending to a great night at The Walnut although the bathtub nut case instantly got me thinking of the Sixties play, Marat/Sade by Peter Brook. Marat/Sade, as The Independent reported in 2011, “is full of catatonics, schizophrenics, paranoiacs and manic depressives.”
In my own Riverwards neighborhood, there’s been a marked increase in angry mentally ill homeless men. I witness this all the time walking back and forth to the bus stops along Aramingo Avenue. There are also chronic problems with the opioid addicted homeless blocking the commuter entrance and exit stairs at the Market-Frankford Kensington and Allegheny station.
“Mental illness is a major contributor to homelessness,” Mental Illness Policy.org reports. “Mental illness was the third largest cause of homelessness for single adults (mentioned by 48% of cities). Lack of treatment for the most seriously mentally ill causes the kind of delusions and bizarre behavior that makes living alone or at home with families untenable. As a result, many become people with untreated serious mental illness become homeless and communities are forced to bear the cost of that.”
After my 8th Street experience, I decided to email SEPTA about the problem and got an immediate response—two emails plus a phone call. I was told that the 8th Street problem has been building for a long time and that SEPTA is working on a solution.
There was once a homeless boy who lived in a pipe.Andrew Busch, Chief Press Officer SEPTA, Media Relations promised me a comment by press time but that did not come through. I did receive this general SEPTA response, however:
The SEPTA Transit Police and Philadelphia PD actively engaged in efforts to address the widespread problem of homeless persons using out stations to seek shelter. SEPTA and the City of Philadelphia are working with a variety of social service agencies to try to make a positive difference. This is definitely a work in progress.
Of course, finding a solution won’t be easy, especially when the vast majority of homeless refuse to seek treatment and refuse to go to shelters.
The city has reached a point where homeless Pro-Choice just isn’t an option.
