Anchorage to Buy Homeless One-Way Plane Tickets

Published October 27, 2009 @ 01:42PM PT

Homeless service providers in Anchorage, Alaska are giving "pilot program" a whole new meaning. This week, the city announced plans to buy hundreds of one-way plane tickets to fly its homeless population out of Anchorage and into remote Alaskan villages. City officials say they are enabling "family reunification"; I say they are shirking their duty to serve the homeless.

We're calling shenanigans on you, Anchorage. Are plane tickets really the best you can do?

Anchorage is not the first city to adopt such a terrible policy. In the past year, Hawaii and New York City have both come under fire for shipping out their homeless with plane tickets.

It's not hard to understand why this policy is becoming increasingly favored by financially strapped cities. Plane tickets are cheaper than providing case management, housing, or homeless prevention assistance. In the short term, when demand is up and funds are low, plane tickets might seem like a brilliant idea; a fast and cheap way to ease demand and serve more people.

But any short-term financial gains in one city will inevitably become a long-term burden on another unsuspecting community. In the long run, plane tickets are nothing more than a cruel, cheap way of ridding a city of its homeless population through exportation. Put them on a plane, then forget about them; someone else's responsibility now.

Let's call this policy what it is: a cop-out.

When it comes to serving the homeless, we can do better than simply providing plane tickets.

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Comments (6)

Now there will be people claiming to be homeless to relocate for free! LOL

Posted by Graham Smith on 10/27/2009 @ 06:48PM PT
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San Francisco's had a similar policy/program with bus tickets. These are just NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) methods to rid a place of homeless, but trying to sound good at it.

Yes, any number of people do exploit these to go on travels, head south for the winter and other purposes quite other than "reunifying" with anyone or having it "help" solve their homeless predicament. I've talked with quite a few, personally.

Berkeley, CA has lately been trying take credit for a very significant sounding reduction in homeless population, but the fact of this on the street is that this is being done by driving people out of town, in several ways -- including simply harassment.

Homeless folks that have been "out here" for any length of time become keenly aware that communities regularly go into this kind of mode of only just wanting them to go away. And so there are regular migrations whereby people just have to move around, being pressured out of one place and then another. But all those places are revisited, too, until the cycle repeates.

Locally, the police don't even refer to homeless folks as "homeless" anymore... but as "nomads".

Posted by SlumJack Homeless on 10/28/2009 @ 09:10AM PT
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Alaska does have a homeless problem but this is not the way to handle it. They should be paying people way back to the state they come from, because other states are sending people to Alaska.

There are Alaskan homeless but I believe it is less then 50% the total of people that are homeless there at this time.

I am an Alaska native that is homeless.

Posted by James Brouillette on 10/28/2009 @ 09:35AM PT
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I don't see any problems with this as long as the homeless are givin the option to go to the destination of thier choices. As long as they do not take advantage of the gift of quick and comfortable travel option. This should be praised as a way to reunite families, especially during the holiday season. Alaska is a much harsher environment to live in if you were homeless anyway, they should consider this an opportunity of a lifetime.

Posted by Original Antone Wheeles on 10/28/2009 @ 10:30AM PT
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I see a lot of wrong with this.

The sate of Alaska has more then just Alaskans homeless and getting benefits. There is hundreds alone in Juneau that came to Alaska just so they could get high benefits. This includes from teenagers to the very very elderly. Our lowest cost houseing is full to the point that Alaskans can not get into it in anyway.

The other thing they move north for is the PFD which the state pays out every fall. This can be from a few hundred to the 3700 their paid out last fall.

Posted by James Brouillette on 10/30/2009 @ 11:23AM PT
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Um have you seen the current airline prices, it cheaper to send them off as of now according to southwest airlines.

http://www.southwest.com/

Althought it may seem the better option to send the people that just can't make it off to another type of environment the point that we are still americans has been overlooked. Once the impact of the prior state catches up with you in the new state then what, keep state bouncing via cheap plane prices?

The fact that homelessness is a growing trends and seems to be getting worse as individual states are taking matters into their hands that assumption of a national viewpoint is missing. What if we wanted to do this as a nation, could it happen?

Posted by Aaron Shaw on 10/28/2009 @ 11:10PM PT
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Author

Shannon has worked in homeless shelters and service organizations in San Francisco, the Triangle region of North Carolina, and currently in the greater Boston area. She is a graduate student studying housing and urban policy at Tufts University.