(The Center Square) – While serving as mayor of San Francisco, California Governor Newsom spearheaded a program to bus the homeless out of San Francisco in a voluntary program called “Homeward Bound.” Started in 2005, Homeward Bound, still an ongoing program, spending an average of $180 per return with a “very low return rate to San Francisco.”
This program is not dissimilar to programs proposed by Anchorage, Alaska Mayor David Bronson to send the city’s homeless to Los Angeles to avoid cold deaths as the city’s main shelter, a stadium, resumes post-COVID operation as an entertainment and sports venue. Neither is it dissimilar to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s heavily criticized program to send migrant arrivals, with their alleged permission and knowledge, to warmer welcomes in California and New York.
At the time of Homeward Bound’s start, San Francisco’s homeless population was roughly 6,000 and has since increased to nearly 8,000. However, with Homeward Bound having shipped a self-reported 11,000 homeless to other cities across the United States, whether the program reduces homelessness in San Francisco is unclear.
Bronson’s campaign, however, appears to have stalled, with the city’s liberal Assembly unlikely to approve funding for his endeavor.
While the morality of DeSantis’s ongoing sending of migrants to California and New York is in question, it appears to have secured the desired response, at least from New York. On Wednesday, New York Mayor Eric Adams called for the Biden administration to declare a state of emergency to manage the crisis at the southern border, saying the ongoing influx of migrants to the sanctuary city could cost the city billions of dollars. Newsom, meanwhile, threatened DeSantis with kidnapping charges for his actions.
Bussing homeless to other cities and states, however, isn’t just limited to Newsom’s San Francisco. According to a national, 18 month investigation conducted by The Guardian in 2017, well before major recent increases in homelessness, found that the success of most of these programs is connected to ticket recipients signing away their right to receive homeless services in that city should they return. The Guardian’s investigation also found that relocation services tended to be sponsored by higher income cities, and that the most frequent destinations were areas with lower costs of living, including more affordable cities.
