TOOL 27
Partner with Unhoused Population Resources

Long Description.

Theme: Integration of Land Use and Transportation; Role: Planners, Elected Officials, External; Complexity: Level 3; Scale: Local, Regional, State.

Overview

This tool presents opportunities to collaborate with organizations and service providers supporting unhoused populations to proactively address transportation safety risks near encampments and service hubs. Unhoused populations face unique risks, in particular with nighttime pedestrian activity on high-speed roads. This tool encourages cross-sector partnerships that promote long-term, systemic safety solutions, including targeted housing and infrastructure interventions.

Why Is This Important?

This tool is important for institutionalizing the Safe System Approach (SSA) in planning and programming because it acknowledges that upstream social conditions, particularly housing instability and transportation desire lines along and across high-speed facilities, contribute to heightened risk for unhoused populations on the transportation network. People experiencing homelessness are disproportionately represented among vulnerable road user fatalities, especially on high-speed, high-volume corridors where no pedestrian infrastructure exists. These risks are often highest at night, in transitional areas like freeway interchanges, and in communities with limited affordable housing and support services.

Traditional crash data often fails to capture the full scope of these risks due to underreporting or a lack of demographic detail. Partnering with health, housing, and social service organizations allows agencies to integrate qualitative data and better understand the scope and extent of the safety concern.

Description

This tool focuses on cross-sector collaboration with public health agencies, social service providers, shelter networks, and health professionals to proactively reduce risk for unhoused individuals who often live in or travel through high-speed transportation environments with limited or insufficient pedestrian facilities. SSA-aligned planning in this context means understanding the underlying causes of risk and taking steps to address them through both infrastructure and systems-level change.

Key Components of This Tool

Prioritize Road Safety Improvements in Encampment Areas

Encampments frequently emerge in disconnected, high-speed transportation environments like freeway interchanges, underpasses, or vacant right-of-way, often owned by state transportation agencies. These areas typically lack lighting, sidewalks, or formalized crossing opportunities and may be along roads with high operating speeds, especially off-peak. Agencies can conduct proactive audits to identify long-term encampment areas and prioritize them for infrastructure upgrades.

Coordinate with Housing and Health Agencies

Transportation agencies can partner with health centers, shelters, and transitional housing providers to co-locate services near pedestrian-oriented infrastructure and to create service hubs that reduce the need for pedestrian travel in areas without pedestrian infrastructure. Sanctioned camping areas or permanent housing solutions with built-in services and connectivity can help reduce reliance on informal encampment locations.

Implement Policy Reforms That Unlock Shelter and Housing Options

Housing strategies, such as zoning updates that allow shelters on church-owned land or the development of affordable housing near transit, can address a key upstream cause of homelessness.

Incorporate Near-Miss and Qualitative Data

Traditional crash reporting systems do not always capture the risks faced by unhoused populations, with this exacerbated by underreporting concerns. Agencies can develop processes to collect qualitative data, through community-based organizations, maintenance staff, and public health agencies, to better understand and respond to safety concerns. Near-misses and hard braking near encampments and support services locations can also provide proactive, surrogate safety data.

Recommended in Combination with Other Tools

1. Train Elected Officials and Decision Makers

4. Leverage Public Health Expertise and Co-Benefits

26. Remove Parking Minimums and Implement Shared Parking Procedures

28. Provide Affordable Housing and Balance Jobs and Housing

Case Study

Safety Interventions for Houseless Pedestrians

The Safety Interventions for Houseless Pedestrians report, released by Portland State University, highlights the heightened vulnerability of unhoused individuals to traffic-related injuries and fatalities. The study identifies that many pedestrian fatalities involving unhoused persons occur in areas lacking pedestrian infrastructure, such as freeway interchanges and high-speed arterials. These locations often lack sidewalks, crosswalks, and adequate lighting, increasing the risk for those on foot (see Figure 27-1).

Key findings:

• Unhoused pedestrians are disproportionately affected by traffic collisions, particularly in areas not designed for pedestrian use.

Source: haymarketrebel via Flickr.

Long Description.

A wide view photo taken under a bridge shows a road with a sidewalk next to it on which there are tents, scattered belongings, and a person walking.

• Encampments are frequently located in transitional zones with high vehicular speeds and limited pedestrian infrastructure.
• Traditional traffic safety measures often overlook the unique challenges faced by unhoused individuals.

Recommendations from the report include:

• Implement targeted infrastructure improvements in areas with high concentrations of unhoused individuals, such as adding sidewalks, crosswalks, and lighting.
• Develop cross-sector collaborations between transportation agencies, public health departments, and housing services to address the root causes of homelessness and associated safety risks.
• Incorporate data on unhoused populations into transportation planning to ensure their needs are considered in safety interventions.

More information about the research conducted at Portland State University can be found in the article “Safety Interventions for Houseless Pedestrians.”

Additional Resources

• National Alliance to End Homelessness: This organization shares best practices for implementing coordinated entry systems, housing-first approaches, and service integration. The frameworks provided by this organization can help transportation agencies build partnerships that address the root causes of homelessness through safer, more stable connections to care and housing.
• Pedestrian Fatalities in Darkness: What Do We Know, and What Can Be Done?: This document highlights the heightened risk of pedestrian fatalities at nighttime, especially in areas lacking adequate lighting and pedestrian infrastructure. The findings emphasize the need for targeted interventions, such as improved street lighting and infrastructure enhancements such as speed management, to protect vulnerable populations, including the unhoused, who often navigate these high-risk environments.
• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson: This book argues that the root cause of homelessness, particularly in high-cost regions like California, is not warm weather, access

• to services, or progressive politics, but a chronic shortage of affordable housing. The book dismantles the common narrative that homelessness is driven by individual circumstances or city-level policies, instead emphasizing how decades of underbuilding fueled by restrictive zoning, regulatory barriers, and local resistance have made housing inaccessible for low-income residents. Klein and Thompson call for an “abundance agenda,” a set of policy reforms aimed at legalizing denser housing, streamlining permitting, and removing barriers to new construction. Their work highlights how housing scarcity is not just an economic issue, but a moral one, underscoring that solving homelessness requires fundamentally reshaping how we build, permit, and plan for housing in growing urban regions.

References

Domine, Peter, Sean Doyle, Asif Haque, Angie Martínez Sulvarán, Nick Meusch, and Meisha Whyte. “Safety Interventions for Houseless Pedestrians.” Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects 184. 2022. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/usp_murp/184.

Klein, Ezra. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Simon & Schuster. 2025. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/9781668023488

National Alliance to End Homelessness. National Alliance to End Homelessness. Accessed July 3, 2025. https://endhomelessness.org/

Sanders, Rebecca L., Robert J. Schneider, and Frank R. Proulx. “Pedestrian Fatalities in Darkness: What Do We Know, and What Can Be Done?” Transport Policy 120, May 2022: 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2022.02.010