PORTLAND, Ore. — This week, the Associated Press reported on a story out of Anchorage, the most populous city in Alaska. It had to do with the city's homeless population and the fact that its mayor had recently suggested buying plane tickets to fly those people elsewhere, away from potentially deadly winter temperatures and other environmental hazards, like bears.
Mayor Dave Bronson suggested that the city buy one-way tickets for those who wanted to either get to warmer climates or even other cities in Alaska.
Even though Alaska poses some novel difficulties for people living unsheltered, the idea of shuttling homeless people elsewhere is far from a new idea. Portland has been on both ends of this tactic before, sending and receiving.
"When people approach us and want to go to someplace warm or they want to go to some town where they have family or friends that can take care of them, if they choose to go there, we'll support that," the AP quoted Bronson as saying.
Anchorage has a homeless population of about 3,000 people, according to AP, but only 614 shelter beds. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the city turned its arena into an additional shelter for another 500 people. But after complaints about violence, drug use, trespassing and litter plagued the shelter, the city turned it back into an arena for hockey and concerts this past spring.
Two years ago, according to the report, Bronson suggested building a shelter and navigation center on Anchorage's east side. But he went ahead without getting the contract approved by the city council, so the plan fell apart. A stop-gap proposal that's since emerged would provide space for just 150 people, instead of the thousands they require.
Last year, eight people died from exposure in Anchorage, a record for the city. So the mayor said he had no choice but to suggest a ticket out of town.
"I have a moral imperative here, and that's to save lives," Bronson said. "And if that means giving them a few hundred dollars for an airline ticket to go where they want to go, I'm going to do that."
But the idea has been met with fierce resistance, including from the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska.
"It is past time for state and local leaders to address the underlying causes of homelessness — airplane tickets are a distraction, not a solution," the ACLU said.
It's worth noting, too, that many homeless people in Anchorage are Alaska Natives — 43%. That adds another dimension to the mayor's proposal.
"The reality is there is no place to send these people because this is their land. Any policy that we make has to pay credence to that simple fact," said Christopher Constant, chair of the city's governing council. "And so we cannot be supporting policies that would take people and displace them from their home, even if their home is not what you or I would call home."
The AP reported that the Anchorage Assembly, which Constant chairs, leans liberal. Mayor Bronson is a conservative, and it's clear that they often do not see eye to eye. Moreover, Bronson's plan is not funded, and it's unclear whether it will go forward.
The old shell game
The idea of putting homeless people on a bus or plane to somewhere else has been around for decades, sometimes right out in the open. Back in 2013, KGW reported on how San Diego and San Francisco were giving people one-way bus tickets to Portland. That same report showed that since 2002, St. Petersburg, Florida had put 13 people on buses to Portland. It's been reported many times in the intervening years as well, from all manner of places.
In all of those cases, people were ostensibly coming to Portland in order to live with a friend or relative.
And Portland has done precisely the same thing. In 2016, Multnomah County started the "Ticket Home" program, aka "Homeward Bound," paying for one-way bus tickets out of town. KGW reported in 2017 that many of those people ended up right back on the streets, just in a different city.
Hundreds of people got tickets from Portland each year to cities across the country — yes, including in Alaska. The majority went to California. The program was modeled on San Francisco's own busing program, the one that sent hundreds of people up to Oregon.
At that time, a number of major cities were doing the same. They most likely still are. Multnomah County's "Ticket Home" program is still conducted by Portland-based organization Transition Projects. According to the group's website, applicants must have a host at their destination verify that they'll have stable housing for at least three months after arrival.
Is homelessness home-grown?
Over the weekend, an article from the New York Times covering Portland's struggles with homelessness cited government data suggesting that the city has attracted transplants from all over the country. It's likely to bolster speculation that Portland's homeless population is somehow uniquely transient.
NYT's story linked to Multnomah County's 2019 Point in Time count, which is not the most recent data available. So we looked at the 2022 data, seeing as county officials have released an overview of 2023's results but not the full report.
People interviewed during the count were either homeless and unsheltered, or in emergency or transitional housing. Of those, 20% reported being from Multnomah County originally and 3% had no answer. The remaining 77% were from elsewhere originally, though over half said they'd been here for more than two years.
Over half of the transplants also said that they were not homeless when they arrived here. Just over 45% said that they arrived already homeless.
Of all the people who said they'd come to Multnomah County from elsewhere and were homeless on arrival, roughly 38% were from nearby — either from somewhere else in Oregon or from Clark County, Washington. Nearly 24% said that they were from somewhere else in Washington or from California. About 33% were from somewhere else in the U.S. and 2.8% from outside the country.
Putting some of the data together, about half of all people surveyed who had a response recorded on the topic were either from the Portland metro area or somewhere else in Oregon: 1,137 of 2,322 people, give or take. That's actually a little higher share than the overall percentage of people who live in Oregon and were born here. At least in 2018, about 43% of Oregonians were born here versus 57% from elsewhere, according to state economist Josh Lehner. It's unclear if that has shifted significantly within the last five years.
No matter where you're at, counties tend to caution that the federally-mandated Point in Time counts are just a glimpse of the full picture and probably aren't totally accurate — they almost certainly don't include all of the people experiencing homelessness in a given area.
The Story airs at 6:30 p.m. every weekday on KGW. Got a question or comment for the team? Shoot an email to thestory@kgw.com or call and leave a voicemail at 503-226-5090.