Mayor London Breed, outgoing mayor of San Francisco, made waves recently with a major policy shift: Before providing a shelter bed or any other services, city workers must first offer every homeless person they encounter a bus or train ticket to somewhere else.
But while San Francisco has gotten an outsized amount of attention for putting its busing program at the forefront of its homelessness strategy, other California cities and nonprofits continue to quietly send small numbers of unhoused people all over the country. At least one new program is set to launch early next year.
Providing free bus tickets to unhoused people is nothing new in San Francisco, which has been offering some form of this program for about two decades, said Emily Cohen, deputy director of communications and legislative affairs for the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. But usage declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel was restricted, and it didn’t pick back up, she said. The mayor’s directive was intended to fix that, she said.
San Francisco offers three programs to help unhoused people relocate outside of the city. Journey Home, launched in September 2023, has the lowest barrier to entry. While other programs require clients to work with a case manager on a detailed plan to find and hold onto housing when they arrive in their new city, Journey Home requires only that someone be healthy enough to travel and prove they have some connection to their destination city.
“Journey Home needs to be so deliberate and to really center the agency and the autonomy of the person it is offered to, and not used as a cudgel to threaten arrest or jail time,” Illa said.“The intention is to facilitate connections with loved ones and home communities, if that is a safe and healthy option for you,” she said. “But no one is required to take that option.”San Jose has budgeted $200,000 to launch a relocation program called Homeward Bound, which is expected to start in February.
The city of Los Angeles doesn’t run a busing program, but multiple nonprofits within the city offer similar services. PATH helped 313 clients reunite with family in the last fiscal year, and a little more than half of those clients left LA County.Cities and nonprofits in other states also run busing programs — and sometimes send people to California.
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