Humboldt County officials voted Tuesday to send a letter raising the alarm about San Francisco’s plans to bus homeless people out of the city.
San Francisco recently ramped up its effort to offer homeless people bus tickets out of town as part of its Journey Home program. Humboldt is among the top three California counties requested as destinations. County supervisors learned of this from reporting in The Standard.
“We were dismayed to learn that our small, rural county was among the top three destinations in the state where people experiencing homelessness were sent by the program,” states a draft of the letter to San Francisco Mayor London Breed that can be seen on the Humboldt County website.
Los Angeles and Sacramento counties are the two other most popular California destinations, according to SF’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Human Services Agency.
But new data obtained by The Standard from Humboldt’s own relocation program show that the county’s homeless people were bused to San Francisco on four occasions between October and March. Since August 2023, Humboldt has also sent homeless people to other Bay Area locations, such as San Rafael, Napa County, Santa Cruz, and Petaluma.
Humboldt’s Transportation Assistance Program, or TAP, provides relocation services to individuals and families who request assistance with moving. According to the program’s website, social services staffers verify that those who use TAP will be received at their destination by a relative, friend, or appropriate agency.
“We are concerned that providing bus tickets to other jurisdictions without verifying access to housing, family support or employment does not alleviate homelessness; it simply shifts the person to another county,” Humboldt’s letter says. “We urge you to ensure that Journey Home participants have the support they need to obtain housing and employment before they receive transportation assistance to Humboldt County. Let’s act together in partnership to alleviate homelessness throughout our state.”
Paul Boden, a homeless advocate with the Western Regional Advocacy Project, said the strategy of busing unhoused people out of town dates back to the 1960s, when welfare agencies offered bus tickets to previously institutionalized people in exchange for a signed pledge not to return for a year — a process that was known as “Greyhound therapy.”
“The aim isn’t to achieve a goal. It’s to get you out of our town, and it’s cheaper than arresting you,” Boden said. “The No. 1 answer to homelessness is to make them disappear. Then mayors write letters back and forth: ‘Stop sending your people here.’ Then it turns out they’re sending their people here. It shows the ridiculousness of us not trying to address why people are on the streets.”
When asked for comment, the San Francisco mayor’s office said it had not received the letter. Humboldt supervisors voted to send a revised version of the letter; the county did not provide a copy to The Standard.
“Our TAP program works really well, and hopefully San Francisco can go back to more — not just dumping — but assisting and actually helping people get help,” Humboldt Supervisor Rex Bohn said at Tuesday’s board meeting.