One-way ticket: how American cities move homeless for hundreds of kilometers

The authorities of American cities have been relocating homeless people for 30 years: they offer free tickets for buses to the homeless so they can move to another place. In recent years, homeless relocation programs have become more common, attracting more cities across the country and costing the budget millions of dollars.

Фото: Depositphotos

During the 18 Monthly Investigation Edition The Guardian conducted an analysis of these programs, compiling a database of 34 240 trips and analyzing their impact on cities and people.

As of the beginning of the 2017 of the year, there were about half a million homeless people in the United States. This problem is most seriously manifested in the western states, where the rate of homelessness in a number of large cities is growing rapidly. States such as California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have one of the highest rates of homelessness per capita. It is in these states that the homeless resettlement program is most actively used, in particular, it operates in 16 cities and districts located in these regions.

Over the past 6 years (from 2011 to 2017 years), more than 20 000 homeless people have been displaced by buses within the continental US.

The Guardian It was possible to determine the results of several dozen such moves based on interviews with displaced homeless people, as well as with their friends, relatives, shelter managers, police officers and employees who purchased them one-way tickets.

Some of these trips became a route out of homelessness, and many recipients of free tickets said they were grateful for the opportunity to start a new life. Returning to the places where they had previously lived, many again find old friends and support who provide them with a safe place to sleep and help with finding work, which as a result leads to the opportunity to rent their own housing.

Nan Roman, head of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said that relocation programs can have a positive effect, although they are not a panacea, in part because most people have become homeless in the places where they were born and raised, so they have nowhere to go.

These programs are not only aimed at helping people, they also serve the interests of cities that consider free bus tickets for the homeless as a cheap and effective way to reduce the number of homeless people in the city.

People usually travel thousands of kilometers after a cursory check by the authorities to determine that the displaced will have a suitable place to stay when they get to their destination. Some program participants stated that they were forced to get tickets, while others said that they had to live on the street after arriving in the cities where they were moved.

Фото: Depositphotos

New York was the first major city to start a homeless relocation program back in 1987. At the moment, the resettlement program in this city is the most ambitious among the cities of the United States, 500 000 is allocated annually to it.

Nearly half of 34 000 trips analyzed Guardiancame from New York. Unlike other relocation initiatives, New York is characterized by the movement of entire families.

New York is moving homeless people not only on buses. About 20% of travelers get airline tickets. In the 2011-2017, the 650 homeless people of New York were moved to other countries, including New Zealand, France, India and the Philippines.

2 of New York City's homeless were relocated to the US overseas territory of Puerto Rico.

Most of the people displaced from New York were relocated to lower middle-income areas than New York.

There are some obvious reasons why it would be better for impoverished homeless people to move to less affluent cities: these include cheaper housing and a lower cost of living. To some extent, the relocation of homeless people from richer to poorer areas is a product of logical analysis and seems like the right decision.

However, poor cities often have damaged infrastructure and problems in the economy, so the homeless’s ability to build a new life there is very low.

Since the cities began offering free tickets to homeless people to move to another place, these programs have caused controversy. In the run-up to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, the city was accused of getting rid of the homeless by buying them free tickets wherever they went, so that they would leave.

In 2013, the mental hospital Rawson-neal in Las Vegas, Nevada, discharged about 1500 patients with a small amount of medication and a bus ticket to leave the city. One of the patients committed suicide after completing the trip, and another committed murder.

Official records indicate that San Francisco authorities in the period from 2010 to 2015 a year contacted only three homeless people displaced during this period to find out how they settled in a new place. Starting from 2016, after the change of leadership of the program, almost all people who were displaced from San Francisco after arriving at a new place received requests from the authorities of the city, in which they tried to find out how they settled in a new place and if they had any overnight.

About 70% of 416 displaced homeless people from Portland had a roof over their heads three months after the trip, and of those who left Santa Monica, 60% had housing six months after the move.

For many homeless people, relocation becomes a solution to their problem.

But not for everyone, for some people, conflicts in the family became the cause of homelessness, and this problem is just waiting for them in their hometown if they decide to return.

For example, in 2016, 49-year-old Fran Luciano, who was homeless in Fort Lauderdale, decided to return to her native New York. There she only had an ex-husband, whose contact she gave to the authorities, but warned them that she could not stay with him, because they had a very big conflict during the divorce. She was sent anyway, the ex-spouse did not help her, as a result she spent the night in one shelter, then in another, after which she returned to Fort Lauderdale.

The woman complains that city workers who issue tickets to the homeless do not care if the displaced person really has support and a roof over his head in his hometown. Sometimes even relatives are not ready to help or provide normal living conditions.

Фото: Depositphotos

San Francisco has one of the highest numbers of homeless people in America, and this is a costly problem. After taking into account the cost of police and medical services, every chronically homeless resident of the city costs San Francisco about 80 000 dollars annually. Bus tickets are much cheaper.

The relocation program here was launched in 2005 year. If this program did not exist, and the homeless who had left San Francisco, would have lived in the city, then there would now be homeless people there about 18 000, which is more than twice the current homeless population of San Francisco.

According to city reports, nearly half of 7 000 homeless residents of San Francisco between 2013 and 2016 have said they’re no longer homeless by simply getting one-way tickets to move from that city.

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