A few other California cities are duplicating San Francisco’s tactic to merely hand the homeless a one-way bus ticket out of town, not because it's proven to be a particularly effective strategy, but more because it's just cheap and easy.
The San Francisco strategy to put a dent in the homeless population by just handing unsheltered people a one-way bus ticket out of town has been around for about 20 years (one shelter resident described it to the Examiner in 2016, as the “Get your ass out of here” program). But the SF Board of Supervisors expanded the program earlier this year, and then Mayor London Breed made it a centerpiece of her major encampment crackdown this summer. Breed’s policy shift this past summer, rather controversially, was to offer the bus ticket out of town before offering the person a shelter bed.
Breed’s encampment crackdown may not have saved her politically, but the idea of just handing the homeless a one-way ticket out of town seems to be catching on among other California big-city mayors. CalMatters reports that multiple other California cities are trying new programs to bus unsheltered people out of town.
“Reconnecting people living on the streets with family members or loved ones who want to care for them is just common sense,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan told CalMatters. “It’s the least expensive, most impactful program we could launch.”
We mention San Jose, as CalMatters notes that city has budgeted $200,000 to start their own busing program this coming February. And yes, $200,000 is darned cheap for a government program. CalMatters adds that Sacramento County had a similar program, but discontinued it because it was so little-used. The City of Los Angeles does not have a formal busing program, but some nonprofits in that city run their own, shipping a few hundred people out of town per year.
But this bus goes both ways. As CalMatters points out, cities in other states like Texas also bus their own unhoused people to California. So the strategy may be a wash in the long run, with just as many incoming as outgoing people.
CalMatters crunches the numbers since Breed ramped up the busing program, and found that 151 people have taken up the offer since the August encampment crackdowns. The publication notes that 29 of them (about 20%) went to other California cities, and a small handful went to various other states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia.
But in true San Francisco fashion, according to CalMatters, “Due to a data processing error, the city couldn’t provide information on where 34 people went.”
Image: AEMoreira042281 via Wikimedia Commons
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