If you live in a big city, then you’ve probably noticed more homeless people in your local downtown area than anywhere else in the city. Sometimes they’ll be congregated in the local parks there, while other times you’ll see them sitting on benches at bus stops or on the sidewalks.

Being a former homeless person, I understand why they often migrate to the downtown sections of cities. I say this because I myself did the very same thing every single day. I would sleep in a more industrialized area of the city where there was less traffic and less people, but every morning I’d get up and walk three miles to the downtown area for various reasons.

So let me clue you in on why downtown areas are so heavily-populated with homeless people. The main reason why is because it’s a centralized location that normally has everything they need, or at least most of the things they might need. But summing things up like that is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’d like to understand this phenomenon better, I’ll now cover a few other reasons why downtown areas attract homeless types and why some people must go there every day.

Historical Prominence
The downtown area is often where most organizations, buildings, and other important features of a city are located. This is because in many cities, the downtown area was often the first area of the city to be built. In the USA, downtown areas are often the areas that existed in the 1800’s, long before the rest of the city around them was built.

These were the areas that may have existed during the days of the wild west, when the first buildings erected there were the saloons and other wooden structures you often see in old cowboy movies. In parts of Europe and elsewhere, the downtown areas can date even further back, even as early as when the ancient Greeks existed.

So because these areas often have had historical prominence, they are often where the civilizations of the cities first started and where most businesses and structures were first built. Because of this, they often become hubs for different things.

Thing of a human body, and how the veins in a person’s body move blood throughout the body. The heart is the center of the body where all the blood from the veins leads to and from. This is essentially what a downtown area is, the heart of the city, where most of a city’s largest roads first led to and from. So for this reason, you’ll often have more structure and more centralization occurring there.

It can become a transportation hub, an economic hub, or a combination of both. However, some downtown areas are very run-down and can feel like ghost towns as you’re walking or driving through them. It all depends on which city you’re in and how the local economy is there.

Transportation Hubs
As I’ve already mentioned, downtown in any city can serve as a transportation hub. What I mean by this is that it can be the epicenter of where all public transportation or traffic goes through. Cars, buses, subways, and even trains; They can all end up in downtown at some point.

At different times I was homeless in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Jose, California, it often didn’t matter which bus I jumped on. Most of the time they would all eventually go through the downtown area of whatever city I was in.

Downtown is often at the center of the city because as I’ve already stated, it’s sometimes where the town or city first started and everything sort of gets expanded outwards from there. So you’ll often see many homeless people downtown simply because they’re going there to use public transportation to go elsewhere, or because they’re taking advantage of all the people who do frequent through there riding buses so they can panhandle or do other things that involve interaction with others.

Sometimes you might simply see them waiting at bus stops because they’ve gotten off one bus and now need to get on another bus going in a different direction. So the downtown area can serve as a median, or a Point B between a Point A and Point C. It can also serve as a location to meet others who are taking public transportation around the city. Because most homeless people don’t have cars, they ride buses or other forms of public transportation very frequently. It makes sense that you’d see them more often where most of the public transportation goes.

Social Services
Most cities tend to put their social services department smack dab in the middle of their downtown area for different reasons. It can simply be because they know it’s a transportation hub, as I had just went over, or it can be because most of the local city government or municipal buildings, such as courthouses and police stations, are also located there. It might even be because they know this is where most poor people who need help are located or can easily travel to.

For whatever reason, you’ll often find a city’s social services department downtown or somewhere near the vicinity. This is also why you’ll see many homeless people walking around downtown. Many are either coming or going to the social services building for various services that can help them.

When you’re living on the streets, everybody directs you to social services when they know you need help. If you visit a shelter, at least one person will probably mention this department to you and tell you how you can apply for help there. If you go online and look for resources to help homeless person, the state and federal governments will often lead you to the website for your local social services department.

So it’s not surprising that there’d be an influx of destitute people going there each day seeking assistance. Controversially, sometimes a city might decide to put social services in a downtown area when that section is more run-down than other parts of the city.

It might simply be because they know that’s where the homeless people will congregate since so many need to apply for welfare benefits (EBT, general relief, etc.) or job services. It might be their way of trying to keep the local homeless population away from the rural areas where people with homes live, so the real estate values in the city aren’t affected and so there’s less crime in the rural areas where people actually live.

There’s been a number of studies on how homeless populations may or may not affect real estate values and experts are often divided on the issue. Regardless, there’s all different types of reasons why social services may be located downtown and not elsewhere, but these are some of the less probable (but still possible) reasons.

Shelters
In big cities, shelters often decide to build their headquarters or buildings in the downtown area because they know that’s where most homeless people are each day. It often starts with the social services department being located there first. As a result, many people visit social services and this, in turn, causes the shelter organizers to place their organizations nearby.

This makes things much easier for many people living on the streets since they don’t have to travel too far between the places they eat and sleep (shelters) and the place where they can reach out for job assistance, welfare benefits, or other resources (social services).

Camping Rights
Then, there’s the whole issue of zoning areas and where people are legally allowed to sleep at night when sleeping outside. Many cities and counties discourage people from sleeping outside anywhere other than downtown areas or industrial zones.

This is normally because they don’t want people without homes to camp out in the lawns or on sidewalks outside the residences of people who do have homes. Some shelters are simply overwhelmed with the amount of homeless people they have in their communities and it’s not uncommon for beds to be completely full with no vacancies. So some local governments have no choice other than to offer solutions on where these people can sleep.

Cities like Los Angeles have designated sidewalks on certain streets and blocks in their downtown areas as being legal areas where the homeless and poor can sleep at night. This is why Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles has existed for so long and why there’s such a high concentration of tents set up on the sidewalks there at night.

It’s not uncommon for the city or county governments to specify only certain hours when outside camping or sleeping can take place there. So when you see people walking around downtown or waiting at bus stops who look like they’re really struggling in life, they may be waiting for the sun to go down so they can set up their tents and sleeping bags there.