Busing or Blame-Shifting? The Battle Over Who Sends Homeless People Where

As Cities Argue Over Relocation Programs, We Must Remember the Human Lives at the Center of it All

Humboldt County, CA, and San Francisco are the latest pair to start some drama about who is busing homeless people where. This seems to be a huge bone of contention amongst local government leaders all over the place. The way they bicker about it brings to mind children who aren’t allowed to leave the table until they’ve finished their dinner, secretly trying to sneak their vegetables onto a sibling’s plate while no one is looking. I would have hoped our political leaders had matured beyond that stage.

As it turns out, people are going both places because they are- surprise! —full humans with freedom of movement and the agency to decide where they travel (for now). This trend of trying to close off the city gates to anyone below a certain income level is becoming dystopian fast.

A Letter Has Been Sent

This latest tantrum started with a news article. A few Humboldt County supervisors caught wind of a story about San Francisco’s new Journey Home program. It’s a tweak on the old Homeward Bound program, which operated not unlike Humboldt County’s own homeless relocation program.

Journey Home has relocated 92 people so far to locations where they’ve lived before or have connections. Of those 92 people, 25 have been relocated to other counties within California rather than out of state.

The issue county supervisors had with this program came in the part of the report that listed Humboldt County as one of the top 3 most requested in-state destinations alongside Los Angeles and Sacramento. This, they could not abide. Supervisors voted to send a letter to San Francisco Mayor London Breed to point out the program’s shortcomings and complain about the big city facilitating the movement of unhoused people into “ our small, rural county.” Emphasis mine.

After the public letter came the big “gotcha” moment. The San Francisco Standard published an article with a title that says it all: Humboldt ‘dismayed’ with SF homeless bus program. Turns out they bus people here too , which exposed the truth and missed the point.

The Real Impact of Homeless Relocation Programs: Beyond the Numbers and Headlines

The focus of all this bickering between local governments is always on who is sending people where and sometimes how many. We rarely break through the surface enough to get into topics of significance, such as the results of these programs and whether they are effective at helping people secure housing. Even when those topics are mentioned, as in the Humboldt County letter, the public takeaway seems to stop at the level of “x place complained about busing from y, but it turns out x was busing people to y all along!”

There doesn’t seem to be a widespread understanding yet that homeless relocation programs vary widely in their terms and efficacy. Some on one side of the spectrum work carefully with receiving cities to ensure that an incoming person will have access to housing, services, and employment. In contrast, others on the other side of the spectrum pay people to take a trip anywhere else so long as they promise never to come back.

If they return, they may find that their access to shelters and services has been cut off as part of their agreement to receive relocation services. The results of each of these types of programs are very different.

Then there are the relocation programs that are less than voluntary. While they may still be presented as voluntary, the alternatives to accepting relocation may be things like arrest, fines, mistreatment, or exposure to escalating criminalization designed to force unhoused people out of town.

People Are Not Problems

The busing debate has been raging for decades now, and it shows no sign of stopping any time soon. It’s politically advantageous.

It seems that every local government is constantly talking about an “unprecedented influx” of unhoused people from some other place. This rhetoric may serve politicians as a way of distracting them from their responsibility to care for their constituents. Still, it further alienates people who have already been forced to live on the extreme margins of society. It turns people into problems, and no local government wants to be tasked with solving what they see as nothing more than other people’s problems.

And while homeless relocation programs are a real mixed bag , the palpable disgust on display when people complain about them “dumping” people in their hometown is unequivocally gross. What tends to get lost in all of this busing rhetoric is the person at the core who is choosing to relocate and to where.

Both of the relocation programs in question are completely voluntary. People choose where they want to go, a right that most of us enjoy freely. But suddenly, when it comes to homeless people, it shouldn’t be allowed. This double standard is where it starts to get dystopian.

It’s scary to see that the decades of anti-homeless propaganda has worked so well that every day people have a visceral reaction to the mere idea of unhoused people moving to their town. The “homeless people = bad sentiment” is so strong that this idea conjures up images of every over-the-top homeless stereotype rather than the kid you went to high school with who had a rough home life but now wants to return home. Or the family that used to live next door who left seeking better opportunities in a bigger city but came up empty.

Politicians may see these people as nothing but problems they don’t want to be the one to solve, but we don’t have to. We can choose to see them for who they are and not buy into the political game of hot potato they’ve unwillingly become part of.

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