Law & Principles

Edmond-OKC-Norman rail plan raises questions about homeless encampments, crime

August 27, 2026

Ray Carter

Oklahoma City officials have proposed the creation of a $1.8 billion commuter rail system that will cover 39 miles from Edmond to Oklahoma City to Norman and include 10 stops, plus one special-event station.

While backers tout the plan as a form of economic development, the experience of similar rail systems around the country and reams of research show the rail plan could quickly export homeless encampments and associated crime across the metro area.

A spring 2025 article in TR News, a publication of the Transportation Research Board, noted that public transit agencies nationwide are struggling with “increases in the number of houseless individuals on their systems.”

While some homeless use public transit for legitimate purposes, TR News also noted that some homeless “sleep in train cars for shelter.”

“They may set up tents at transit stops, park recreational vehicles adjacent to or on transit property, or live in encampments,” TR News reported.

A 2021 study produced by researchers at UCLA similarly noted that the homeless often “find shelter in various public spaces, including transit vehicles, bus stops, and transit stations.”

“Homelessness in transit systems is prevalent in many U.S. and Canadian cities and also visible (though even less studied) in some European cities,” the UCLA researchers stated.

The report noted that in a survey of 55 U.S. transit agencies, 91 percent reported that homelessness was a challenge for their agency.

When Saint Stephen’s Human Services counted homeless residents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the UCLA report noted that across five biannual counts, more than 55 percent of those counted were sleeping on transit. One survey found people using public transit for shelter were more likely to be men between 25 and 54 years of age. The UCLA report noted those men were more likely than other homeless individuals “to have been incarcerated, to be addicted to drugs or alcohol, to have a mental illness, and to panhandle.”

Those figures are similar to data collected on Oklahoma City’s homeless population.

The 2026 report, “OKC Point-in-Time Count: A Snapshot of Homelessness,” found that more than two-thirds of those living in homeless encampments or similar arrangements were men, and a significant share reported having a serious mental illness and/or a substance abuse disorder.

Public transit, including rail service, can shift the location of homeless encampments and associated crime, according to public data.

At the Dec. 9, 2025, meeting of the City of Dallas Housing and Homeless Solutions Committee, city officials were presented with data showing a strong link between public transit and crime, including commuter rail transit.

Allen Guinn, a clinical professor of information technology and operations management at Southern Methodist University, used Dallas data regarding mass transit service, crime, and homelessness to map out areas where the three overlapped.

“Data always has a story to tell,” Guinn said. “Sometimes it’s the story you want to hear. Sometimes it’s not necessarily the story you want to hear.”

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), a transit agency serving the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex of Texas, operates buses, light rail, commuter rail, streetcars, GoLink, and paratransit services in Dallas and twelve suburbs.

Guinn found a notable correlation between DART service and homeless concentration, felony assaults, robbery, and felony drug sales.

According to the Dallas 311 data, there were 44,545 calls concerning homeless encampments between October 1, 2020, and September 30, 2025.

Guinn’s maps showed homelessness and associated crime were often geographically clustered near DART stations, including both bus and rail service.

“You can see this all around the city, that homeless encampments tend to be built around public transportation,” Guinn said. “And again, that’s not unexpected.”

The problems associated with mass transit extend well beyond an aesthetic blemish on the local community.

“There’s a lot of research that shows, or calls for, a strong correlation between violent crime and public transit,” Guinn told Dallas committee members.

He noted one January 2020 report that examined the crime impact of two labor strikes, in 2009 and 2026, that forced the temporary closure of 47 subway stations operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in Philadelphia.

Researchers found total crime decreased by 38 percent within the immediate vicinity of the stations during closure.

“Public transit in Philadelphia appears to be associated with elevated violent crime in the surrounding community,” the report stated.

When Guinn mapped drug crimes in the Dallas area, he noted the results showed “very little of it that is not on a DART major line, a lot of it concentrated around homeless encampments.”

The story is similar at other mass-transit systems that include commuter rail service.

A 2018 article by MPR News in Minnesota described “a chronic homeless population living on the Twin Cities light rail system” that was “rising at an alarming rate.”

The report found about 85 percent of homeless riders were paying fare for the rail service, but those fares were often provided to the homeless by social service agencies.

In early 2022, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) identified 89 homeless encampments in subway stations and 29 encampments inside the subway tunnels.

The connection between homelessness, mass transit, and crime was most notably highlighted in August 2025 when Iryna Zarutska was murdered by Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., while riding the rail service in Charlotte. Brown, a homeless man with a history of mental illness, had been arrested at least 14 times between 2011 and 2025.

A subsequent report on the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), released by North Carolina State Auditor Dave Boliek, found the transit system had “no physical structures (e.g., turnstiles or gates) in place to deter entry by non-ticketed individuals” and often failed to enforce the collection of fines.

“As reported in the days after Iryna Zarutska’s murder, her alleged killer did not purchase a ticket when boarding the bus to the CATS transit center or upon entering the light rail,” the auditor’s report stated.

The report noted that a second (although non-fatal) stabbing incident had occurred on the light rail on December 5, 2025.

The report estimated roughly 45 percent of riders on the Charlotte rail system did not pay a fare.

In a letter of response included with the audit, Charlotte city officials said funding from a recent sales-tax increase could lead to “evaluation of a dedicated transit police division funded through new recurring revenue.”

Photo credit: ONE Transit, via Future Transit System Plan