Free Travel for the Homeless to Go Away

It's one of the most dumb ass public servant-initiated policies, and it's been doing the rounds for a while all around the world. It's also the quickest way to decrease homelessness in a city or state.  

Long story short: there is often funding available to pay for homeless people to travel by bus or train or plane to move to ‘somewhere else.'

Sometimes there is some kind of supposed ethical line behind the program, like sending them back to their community of origin or sending them to a city where their situation would supposedly be improved by pre-arranged shelter housing or a supposed opportunity for employment.

But realistically the ticket to somewhere else is motivated solely by the want to move homeless people out of ‘our city' and into some other location the politician isn't accountable for.

If you are on the streets and want to travel, check in with your local service providers and see if they have this type of funding. Free travel can be helpful with seasonal weather or if you need to exit stage left out of a criminal jurisdiction...  or if you just want to see another part of the country.

One of the oldest scripts for bringing in coin on the streets is to say some junk like "my Mum is sick and I need to get money together to travel to ‘city x' and look after her." Don't worry, that fairy tale is alive and well. But if you do actually want to travel, use and abuse programs like this to your advantage.

New York sounds fun! Mayor Bloomberg recently provided tickets to the local homeless to travel out of the city to anywhere else... can you do the accent? Maybe your sick mother is living in New York?

Sorry I've got to call bullshit on this program in all its manifestations around the world.

In Europe it exists to send people from one country back to another, in the states it exists to shuffle homeless people out of one voting district into another, and in many other countries around the world to the same end.

And, you guessed it, the money to pay for this oh-so-politically convenient transport is always from the local politicians who want to export their homeless to anywhere else.

This is not in the spirit or values such as "we rally together to help those in need" espoused by so many Americans. It's a lame public servant putting money behind shipping the expense of homelessness somewhere else, and they should be called on it.

If you are currently or formerly homeless you are invited to join the Homeless Forum.