San Francisco County, Humboldt County Spar Over Homeless Busing Programs

Both San Francisco County and Humboldt County sparred over their respective homeless busing programs throughout the week, revealing that they sent each other homeless people as one of their top destinations.

San Francisco’s original homeless busing program, Homeward Bound, ran between 2005 and 2013 under the guidance of then San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Over 10,000 homeless were sent out of the city under the program, with only one in eight getting back. And, as the Globe noted earlier this week, many charities in and around the city still offer bus tickets for homeless people in the city wanting to get out, with some being sent as far away as Florida.

However, San Francisco never revisited Homeward Bound despite the homeless population growing exponentially and making shelter spots hard to come by. In September of last year, a new busing program, Journey Home, began on a small-scale soft launch. Between then and August 2nd, the city only paid for 92 tickets out of San Francisco. However, Mayor London Breed announced last week that the bus program would be returning to the city on a larger scale, as part of her sweeping reforms to tackle homelessness in the city and remove encampments. According to Mayor Breed, Journey Home would “prioritize relocation support and services.” All homeless people in the city will be offered a bus ride before offering shelter and housing, essentially removing the “housing first” policy that has prevailed.

Meanwhile, in Humboldt County to the Northwest, their busing program has been slowly but steadily sending homeless people out of the county as well. Known as the Transportation Assistance Program (TAP), they have given a nonrefundable one-way ticket to a predesignated location since August 2023. While the numbers have been generally low, with only a handful of people sent to San Francisco, it is still significant for the small County of only around 136,000 people.

This week, Humboldt County severely challenged San Francisco’s busing program, especially where they sent homeless people within California. While the two most popular places within California were larger counties such as Los Angeles County and Sacramento County, the third most popular was the small Humboldt County. The County criticized the program on Tuesday, with Humboldt County Board of Supervisors Chairman Rex Bohn trying to pressure San Francisco into housing them in the city first before sending them to their County.

“The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors was recently made aware of data related to the City of San Francisco’s Journey Home program,” said Bohn in his letter. “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.

“We understand the urgency with which San Francisco intends to act to alleviate homelessness. 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. 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.”

Homeless busing issues

However, only a few days later, Humboldt County found itself under fire by San Francisco, as statistics show that they had San Francisco as their number one destination to send people to, with 4 homeless people going to San Francisco in the past year along with Fresno, Forest, VA, and Reston, CO. While it is only 4 people compared to the higher number coming from San Francisco to Humboldt, it showed that Bohn ignored what his own County had been doing. Also, comparative to the size of San Francisco, Humboldt County had actually sent more people on average than San Francisco.

With both sides essentially telling the other not to send homeless people to their respective Counties now, it shows that more than busing programs are needed, as the problem tends to just shift around without larger coordination.

“It’s been a cycle going between counties for some time now. This spat between Humboldt and San Francisco isn’t new,” explained Cristobal Reynoso, who helps run a homeless charity in Los Angeles, to the Globe on Friday. “But we have to remember, all these people getting tickets refused housing in their original place and took tickets to places where there were family, friends, or where they had the means to get better assistance for themselves.

“Busing works in that the homeless people taking the tickets are going to place where they can get their own shelter. Like crashing on a relatives couch. If Humboldt really wants to make this an issue, have them prove that the people bused to them are back on the streets. Show that it is a shift of homeless people. I mean, they aren’t just packing buses and dumping them there. These are strategic tickets. San Francisco’s original busing program only had one in 8 getting back there. Humboldt needs to provide more data to show that it is more of a burden for them to really have any sort of argument.

“There’s no easy answer for this, but it is obvious that no one wants their county to get an increase of homeless people. That’s something every county doesn’t want.”