It takes 5 hrs, 31 minutes to get from SF to Humboldt on the Amtrak Thruway bus
Rumors that SF is shipping its homeless population to other northern California cities was validated last week, as the city of Humboldt complained that SF is simply shooing its homeless to the North Coast college town. SF Standard reports.
San Francisco recently ramped up its effort to offer homeless people bus tickets out of town as part of its Journey Home program. Humboldt is among the top three California counties requested as destinations. County supervisors learned of this from reporting in The Standard.
“We were dismayed to learn that our small, rural county was among the top three destinations in the state where people experiencing homelessness were sent by the program,” states a draft of the letter to San Francisco Mayor London Breed that can be seen on the Humboldt County website.
“We are concerned that providing bus tickets to other jurisdictions without verifying access to housing, family support or employment does not alleviate homelessness; it simply shifts the person to another county,” Humboldt’s letter says. “We urge you to ensure that Journey Home participants have the support they need to obtain housing and employment before they receive transportation assistance to Humboldt County. Let’s act together in partnership to alleviate homelessness throughout our state.”
Paul Boden, a homeless advocate with the Western Regional Advocacy Project, said the strategy of busing unhoused people out of town dates back to the 1960s, when welfare agencies offered bus tickets to previously institutionalized people in exchange for a signed pledge not to return for a year — a process that was known as “Greyhound therapy.”
“The aim isn’t to achieve a goal. It’s to get you out of our town, and it’s cheaper than arresting you,” Boden said. “The No. 1 answer to homelessness is to make them disappear. Then mayors write letters back and forth: ‘Stop sending your people here.’ Then it turns out they’re sending their people here. It shows the ridiculousness of us not trying to address why people are on the streets.”
Read the whole thing here.
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