Georgia Session moved to Memphis for a work assignment in September 2023. She didn’t have a car and assumed she would use transit to get around, something she’d done in other cities. But the first day she walked out to Poplar Avenue to catch the bus near her Midtown home, she noticed something odd. 

There was a woman sitting on a cardboard box near the Route 50 bus stop, which, like most in Memphis, consisted of a sign on a pole with no established seating area. Session asked the woman when the bus would be coming. 

“I don’t know, darling. I’ve been here for two hours,” the woman said.