Portland is about to start handing out bus tickets to people living on the streets who might have a better situation waiting for them elsewhere. The program is called Homeward Bound, and it's modeled on a program of the same name that has been giving people bus tickets out of San Francisco for a decade.
Homeward Bound in San Francisco was inspired by the foster care system, San Francisco's Director of Human Services Trent Rhorer told Dave Miller on Think Out Loud. Rhorer oversees both the foster care system and Homeward Bound.
Portland's new program to offer bus tickets out of town to the city's homeless who have better situations waiting for them but lack the resources to get there on their own is modeled after San Francisco's 10-year-old Homeward Bound program.
OPB
One of the first things the city does when removing a child from his or her parent is attempt to find relatives for the child to stay with.
"That's something we had never really tried for homeless individuals," Rhorer said.
Outreach workers would hear from people on the street who thought they had jobs and places to live when they came to San Francisco, but those opportunities fell through and they didn't have the resources to get home, Rhorer said.
So since 2005, San Francisco has given almost 10,000 homeless a free ticket to a better place where they have relatives or someone willing to take them in. Hundreds have gone to neighboring cities or across the country. Over the last ten years, San Francisco has given 213 people bus tickets to Portland.
A map of all the places San Francisco has given its homeless bus tickets to in the last 10 years.
San Francisco Human Services Agency
The Human Services Agency doesn't give tickets away indiscriminately; people seeking a ticket have to get their family members or responsible individuals on the phone with confirmation, then pass a warrant check to make sure they aren't fleeing criminal charges. After that, San Francisco pays for their bus ticket and meals for the trip.
And the agency also checks in a month after the trip, asking the family member or responsible person if the formerly homeless individual is still staying with them, if he or she got a job, moved out, or is out on the street again.
In that last case, unfortunately, there isn't much San Francisco can do.
"We really don't have the resources to provide social work in all cities throughout the country," Rhorer said.
Rhorer said this doesn't happen often, or else his staff would overhaul their policy. But Homeward Bound staff has not always made those follow-up calls: An investigation by The San Francisco Examiner found that in 2006, Homeward Bound didn't follow up on 958 cases out of 1,132, and some individuals ended up back in homeless shelters in other cities.
Think Out Loud received a number of comments about this on our Facebook page.
Tom Schwartz agrees with the program. He writes: "If they have a better support net somewhere else I think it's a great idea to send them home. I don't, think it's a good idea to just pass them off to the next town to just get them out of our hair."
But Naomi Bloom wrote: "Portland's homeless people need HOUSING — not tents, not bus tickets to elsewhere."
And Susan Moray added: "Apparently it's a round trip because others are giving them free bus tickets here."
