Since Mayor London Breed launched a plan in August to bus more homeless people out of San Francisco, the city has relocated dozens — some as far away as Florida and Texas.
But officials say the program has barely left the station and will ramp up after more city staff are trained on the mayor’s directive to primarily offer bus tickets to homeless people over housing and shelter.
A total of 55 homeless people have used the city’s relocation services since Breed issued the executive order on Aug. 1. That number is up by 14 from June’s total, but down by one compared to May.
Of 36 homeless people who have been relocated under the Journey Home program since Aug. 1, 13 were moved to other cities in California; the rest were moved to Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas.
Officials are not releasing the names of all the cities people were bused to, due to privacy reasons. The remainder of the 55 relocated since Aug.1 used another service that doesn’t have public data showing where they were sent.
In total, the Journey Home program has relocated 111 people since it launched in September 2023. A similar program called Relocation Assistance, or Homeward Bound, has relocated over 13,000 homeless people since 2005 and now operates as part of Journey Home.
Among those relocated within California since Journey Home’s inception, seven people were sent to Sacramento, seven to Los Angeles, six to San Joaquin, and six to Humboldt. Nine other people were sent to six other unnamed California counties.
Advocates for homeless people have argued that Breed’s bus ticket plan is a political ploy that isn’t new or effective.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, said she doesn’t expect usage of the program to increase — even with more aggressive enforcement measures.
“There’s a limited number of people that came from out of town and have some place they can go,” Friedenbach said. “It’s just not an expansive way to address homelessness.”
Despite Breed’s Aug. 1 pronouncement that city workers would offer relocation aid before attempting to move people into shelter, more than a dozen homeless people The Standard spoke to in the Tenderloin and SoMa on Wednesday said they weren’t offered a bus ticket during their recent interactions with city workers.
Some homeless people said they were born in San Francisco, ruling them out of the program. Others said the idea is unappealing, or illogical, considering they’d escaped violence or trauma in their home states.
“I have nowhere to go. My house burned down,” said Jessica Potter, noting that her Mount Shasta home went up in flames in July 2023.
‘You will leave San Francisco’
Documentation obtained by The Standard sheds fresh light on the parameters of the city’s Journey Home initiative, the latest iteration of the city’s bus ticket program. Before obtaining a bus ticket out of town, would-be participants must agree to refrain from using drugs or alcohol on the bus. They must also be tested for their ability to consent to the program, records show.
“This program is completely voluntary,” sample language used by program staff reads. “By participating, you will receive a ticket to your home city and a small stipend for food. You will leave San Francisco and may lose any public benefits you currently receive.”
The forms also ask for the phone number of someone who lives in the client’s preferred destination, but under rare circumstances, this is not required, the homelessness department said. Nobody has been disqualified from the program since the mayor’s directive was issued, the Human Services Agency said.
In August, the city said clients of the Journey Home program aren’t required to have a place to live in the destination of their choosing. This raised alarm in Humboldt County, where county supervisors accused San Francisco of “dumping” homeless people in other towns.
During a mayoral debate last week, candidate Mark Farrell said Breed’s bus order “is probably one of the worst ideas the city has ever encountered.”
“Mayor Breed really wants to get into busing wars with governors of the southern border states and get into a competition with them?” Farrell said. “We’re going to lose that battle.”
In a statement Wednesday, city officials clarified the program’s policies, explaining they conduct regular check-ins with program participants along their journey.
“In the rare case that the client does not want us to contact any family or friends, we can check their connection in another way, say receipt of benefits in another California county or by showing a document that connects them to that destination,” the homelessness department said.
Mayor London Breed’s office said in a statement that the bus ticket initiative is just one part of the city’s larger homelessness strategy.
“A so-called ‘busing war’ sounds like a phrase made up by activists who oppose the city’s efforts to bring people indoors,” Jeff Cretan, Breed’s spokesperson, said in a statement. “The city works carefully with each individual seeking this service to ensure they have a safe place to return to.”