Homeless Relocation Program Exposed

When San Francisco’s homeless are ready to reunite with friends and family, they can simply pick up the phone and call a hotline connecting them to journey home, a city program providing free one-way tickets out of temptation and human suffering.

Rules say the transportation is exclusively for the homeless.

But a joint investigation by Frontlines Turning Point USA and Discovery Institute shows that’s not always the case.

Numerous tipsters told us they were getting free bus, train, and plane tickets out of this small office in the Mission District, and claimed these taxpayer-funded rides were being obtained by people who were not even living on the streets.

So we went in to see for ourselves.

After asking us a few basic questions, workers checked off some boxes and, a few days later, handed our team member, who lives in an apartment, a one-way plane ticket to Phoenix, Arizona.

And no one called to see if he even landed.

Mission Action is the city contractor running the show.

This non-profit focuses on helping the Spanish-speaking community with services and also gives guidance to illegals on how to avoid ICE agents.

No one at Mission Action would answer our questions about the clear breakdown in protocol for distributing tickets.

“There was very little vetting done,” I told one of the workers at Mission Action. “Could you tell me why?”

“I’ll have to send you to our media person,” he responded.

So we asked new mayor Daniel Lurie what’s going on.

After 100 days in office, he’s still assessing which programs are working, which ones need to be reformed, or simply cut.

“What we found is that people are so sick on the streets, that we’re not able to get them onto a bus,” says Lurie.

Mayor Lurie thanked us for bringing this to his attention, but says his team needs to look into this before possibly taking any action.

San Francisco has three relocation programs including Journey Home, which started a couple years ago under former mayor London Breed.

She wanted to make sure outreach workers offered chronically homeless drug addicts an easy option out of the city before encampment sweeps.

As for its effectiveness, the latest data shows 251 individuals have been relocated, which averages out to about seven people per month, barely making a dent in the city’s homeless population, that’s now more than 8,000 men and women living on the streets.

And the other challenge: getting the homeless to accept these services.

“I’ve heard of it,” one homeless man said about the relocation program, “but there’s nothing really for me to go back to.”

We even tried to direct several people to Mission Action’s offices, but they all refused.

“Oh, my passport was stolen and stuff, man,” another homeless man told us.

Independent journalist Erica Sandberg says there is plenty of wasteful spending on homeless services in the city,

“The abuse of the system is something that San Franciscans are no longer tolerating,” Sandberg explains.

And says if the mayor wants to keep Journey Home, he must take swift action to correct course before it grounds his plans to address this massive crisis ravaging his streets.

“Are people asking those right questions?” Sandberg asks. “Are they going to the trouble to make sure there is somebody on the other end? Is it being properly vetted? If not, don’t do it. It’s a waste of money.”