→ Culture
One-Way Tickets for Homeless?
| Wed Jul. 29, 2009 1:51 PM PDT
Since 2007, the city of New York has bought one way tickets for nearly 600 homeless families to the city of their choice. Destinations have included Florida, California, and even Johannesburg, South Africa, via trains, planes and automobiles. Mayor Michael Bloomberg embraced this program as a realistic and relatively inexpensive solution to New York's overcrowded homeless shelters. Sending the families to a new city, as long as they have a friend or relative to live with there, is much less expensive than the average $36,000 a year spent on a family in shelters. Once the families arrive at their new homes, New York social workers check in on their progress periodically and the city has on rare occasions fronted funds for rent and a security deposit.
In 2006, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the New Yorker about a similarly creative program in Denver that could have saved the city a fortune while making strides towards solving its homeless problem. The experimental program gave free housing to chronically homeless people who had accumulated massive hospital bills, which were paid for by taxpayers. The study found that subsidizing housing for homeless people cost an average of $10,000 a year per person, about a third of what the city would spend on social services if the people remained on the street. The idea, writes Gladwell, "is that once the people in the program get stabilized they will find jobs, and start to pick up more and more of their own rent, which would bring someone's annual cost to the program closer to six thousand dollars." By 2016, Denver hopes to create an additional 800 housing units for the chronically homeless to compound the success of this experimental program.
San Francisco Mayor (and now CA gubernatorial candidate) Gavin Newsom announced in 2005 that his Care Not Cash program, which took homeless people off welfare in favor of social services, had decreased the number of homeless people on welfare by 84 percent, disproving critics who said it could never work. This voter-approved initiative decreased monthly welfare checks to homeless people from $410 to $59 and used the money saved to pay for homeless services, including food and shelter.
On the surface, these experiements in New York, Denver and San Francisco sound like a homerun. They appease progressives because they offer social services to a disadvantaged population. And who doesn't love a goverment program that saves money? But they are far from perfect, and raise questions about where to draw the line and how to guarantee that once the cash runs out, the homeless won't end up back on the streets.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Of the New York plan, Arnold Cohen, a New York homeless advocate told the New York Times, "What we’re doing is passing the problem of homelessness to another city. We’re taking people from a shelter bed here to the living room couch of another family. Essentially, this family is still homeless." And the Denver program certainly has its problems. Years living on the street takes its toll, and some are simply too mentally or emotionally unstable to remain in a program.
It is difficult for taxpayers, and especially fiscal conservatives, to support a program that gives government support to individuals who can't seem to help themselves. But with budgets tight and few signs of the economy bouncing back soon, it'll be tough for cities to resist programs that reduce homelessness rates at a low cost, even if the long-term outlook is unclear.
Comments
such a sensationalistic headline......
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Jul. 29, 2009 4:01 PM PDT.
The headline is a bit misleading/ill-informed/bias, and many articles like this promote the idea that cities are simply busing out their homeless. In NY and SF, programs mentioned in this article, are part of a more comprehensive (and cost saving) approach to a timeless issue. Some homeless may choose to move cities, but those that do not (the majority) are still faced with a multitude of barriers to moving out of homeless, even with the few hundred gone who moved cities or obtained the limited supply of Newsom's "care". And this is what gets highlighted, not all the amazing programs and new, innovative ideas going on around the country. (try the National Alliance to End Homelessness for a starting point with the research and programming)
the bottom line is that in places like NY and SF, there is simply not enough really, truly affordable housing, and housing developers don't want to build more and cities can't pay for it anyway.
it's too bad though, if the measure of a successful society were how we take care of our vulnerable populations, we'd be a terrible success story.
Nothing New/Something On My Mind
Submitted by heatherczerniak on Wed Jul. 29, 2009 8:20 PM PDT.
New York City is doing that other big cities all across the country have been quietly doing for almost twenty years. Cities in the South will hand you a one-way Greyhound ticket voucher to get all the way to Alaska if you want to go that far, plus $25 cash for meals on the way. About 80% of the welfare cases in New York and California are not originally from New York or California. And the majority of homeless in large cities are from the southern states that won't raise their own state/local taxes. That's why the northern and western states have high state/local taxes. The South won't take care of their own poor, so we have to take them in. At the same time, The Northern and West Coast states pay two-thirds of the federal taxes and get back less in federal spending, while the southern states get $2 in federal spending for every dollar they pay in federal taxes.
In other words, I have something I wanted to get off my chest. Help the homeless, but everyone needs to pitch in.
$36,000/yr ???
Submitted by Gary K on Thu Jul. 30, 2009 4:00 AM PDT.
New York spends an "average $36,000 a year spent on a family in shelters." WTF??? That's $3000/mo. Even in NYC you can find a decent place to rent for that price including utils. I'd think housing them in shelters would cost a lot less. Sounds like someone is sucking down some graft.
I've never understood why
Submitted by Benjamin (not verified) on Thu Jul. 30, 2009 6:36 AM PDT.
I've never understood why homeless need to live in the most expensive cities. I've lived in both NYC and SF, and had to work two full-time jobs to live in both. There are far cheaper places to live, places with reasonable rents, where a person could get a minimum-wage job and actually make enough to live in an apartment. Let's face it folks, NYC and SF are awesome cities, and people flock to awesome cities. This drives down the housing stock, and drives up the cost of living in these cities. It is not the government's responsibility to look after people who want to live in these places and can not afford to. Get a piece of land and grow your own food, think outside the box and figure out how you can make a life for yourself, don't always rely on the government for help, because right now it seems they can barely take care of themselves. If the California government were a person, it would be homeless right now.
Post new comment
MoJo Comments: Send Us Your Feedback
We changed our spam software to better filter comments. Should you encounter any issues, please let us know.
