The LA Times ran a story three days ago (reprinted in today’s Seattle Times) about a church-run program in Lancaster, California that gives homeless people a one-way bus ticket out of town. The story includes a few favorable quotes from homeless people who took bus tickets from the program, but makes it pretty clear that the real goal of the program is to make homeless folks someone else’s problem. (Lancaster’s mayor has even donated $10,000 to the program, saying the city has enough of its “own” homeless without having to deal with those from other cities). The headline the LA Times chose is descriptive but neutral: “Homeless in Lancaster get free tickets to go away.”
So what headline did the Seattle Times go with? “To reduce homelessness, nonprofit offers free 1-way bus ticket out of town.” It’s a subtle difference, but important: As even some who support the program acknowledge, it’s more likely to shift the burden of homelessness elsewhere than reduce it, because most homeless people don’t have strong family support systems or good job prospects in other cities. (People who have those things are less likely to be homeless) The couple featured in the story, for example, just moved to California from Las Vegas last month, hoping job prospects would be better there. Mobility isn’t their problem; getting jobs is. Now, they’re taking a one-way trip to Denver, where one of them has a relative. Their goal? To get “a fresh start.” Again.
Hey man, c’n ya spare me $3.42? I’m just shy of havin enough to buy a bus tick’t…
The local county psych hospital used to get patients found on the streets, who had been sent here from somewhere else with a “free” bus ticket.
The staff called it Greyhound Therapy.
“Califor-nya! Is good to the homeless!
Califor-nya-nya,
Is good to the hooomleeeessss…”
-Cartman (singing Tupac’s “California Love”) while ridding Colorado of homeless people by busing them to California
Portland used to ship their homeless up to Seattle the same way.
Hawaii, on the other hand, looks at this sort of program with envy.
They’re still trying to figure out what happened to the last several outbound buses.
Every city has an urban legend like @4’s. They’re telling it now in Ballard.
While the program does raise some questions, your example is bad. The family in the story not only has a relative in Denver; that relative has agreed to take them in. So sending them there is in fact reducing homelessness, by two. And the family was grateful, because there was nothing for them in Lancaster, but they lacked resources to go where they had a place.
It sounds like that program can help that couple. They’re moving on after finding out that Lancaster doesn’t have any jobs. Meanwhile, programs like this are completely worthless for those who are chronically homeless, where simply providing them with jobs isn’t going to come close to solving their problems.
If we did this in Seattle, the rest of King County would suddenly have tons of homeless people.
Now this is a “free ride zone” that I could get behind.
in the sum of the economic shambles of the moment – it is nothing
zzzzzz
(and as noted above, not uncommon at all)
Erica, NEWS, please.
The framing of the stories between the two cities, as pointed out by ECB, shows culturual differences. Whether we know it or not, we are influenced by the measures our city has taken to take care of its homeless population. Apathy versus compassion? Conservative/progessive?
The people in the story have strong ties elsewhere. I wonder if a study of the larger homeless population would prove otherwise. The article in yesterday’s PI.com about the study and the house on Eastlake for chronic alcoholics run by DESC touches on this. They have a link to the study which raises general questions about the homeless population.
um, i’m pretty sure this church group stole their idea from a south park episode….yup, positive.
Check out the positive results of Seattle homeless program results in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA):
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abs…
Lancaster was the last place I lived in cali. I left in 1981, it was a shithole, and I can’t believe that anyone would want to move there.
San Francisco started doing this in 2005. Only about 10-30 people a year used it.
Misleading headline from the SeaTimes. Remember their hyped headlines during snow? About the I-5 closure? Of the shooting of the Jewish center in Belltown?
Thanks for linking that, otter.
“The story includes a few favorable quotes from homeless people who took bus tickets from the program, but makes it pretty clear that the real goal of the program is to make homeless folks someone else’s problem.”
Oh really, Erica? It wasn’t “clear” to me. To me it was clear that this program enables homeless people to go where they have job prospect or where they have relatives who will take them in. Sometimes when things aren’t working out in one city, a move might be in order. As someone who moved to Seattle from Texas, a drastically different place, you should be able to relate to that.
knowing stuff (like how to use language) isn’t what the seattle times is good at
All I can think of is that family in The Grapes of Wrath.
You can buy a house in Cincinnati for $1000. This is the greatest idea since sliced bread. The homeless don’t have a chance here in ripoff Seattle.
This was done by Seattle in the late 80s or early 90s. Homeless were sent to San Francisco…
I’d rather see us put our $$$ into shipping out wine thieving ‘journalists’ any day.
lets ship the hobos to mexico
@12
It totally is the South Park Episode! The ended up sending the South Park homeless to California and now they are sending in a big diaspora somewhere else.