NY Program Ships Homeless Families to the Carolinas

NEW YORK (AP) - New York City is buying one-way plane tickets for homeless families to leave the city. It's part of a Bloomberg administration program to keep the homeless out of the expensive shelter system, which costs $36,000 a
year per family. More than 550 families have left the city since 2007. All it takes is for a relative to agree to take them in.
The city employs a travel agency for domestic travel and the Department of Homeless Services handles international travel.
City officials say there are no limits on where a family can be sent and families can reject the offer.
Families have been sent to 24 states and five continents, mostly to Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
City officials say none of the relocated families have returned to city shelters.
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"Most people when they think of the homeless, they think of the street person under the bridge; but that only represents only ten to twenty percent of all the homeless in our community. By far, more homeless are families,” says Bruce Forbes, Special Projects Coordinator for SHARE, Sunbelt Human Advancement Resources. Its families like that which New York City is paying to fly to South Carolina and 24 other states, and five continents - mostly to Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. The only catch is that they have to have family here who will take them in. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says, “Whether we're transferring the problem elsewhere, I don’t know… We can either do this program or pay an enormous amount of money daily to provide housing.”

The program has been underway since 2007, and the Greenville area has received 31 families since then says Michael Chesser, Executive Director of the Upstate Homeless Coalition. Ken Kelly, Vice President of Adult Ministries with Miracle Hill Ministries has no problem with it. "It seems like a valuable initiative to put people in touch with resources to help them get out of the cycle of homelessness," says Kelly. Forbes agrees saying, “They are showing an 88% success rate. Only 12% of the families are going back into the shelters… I think they are actually solving a problem."

But Chesser says New York City is just transferring a problem, not solving it. "Even if they say that we did not coerce these folks, it's still wrong of them to give up their responsibility to send them to someone else, whether it is to another family, or parent, or state.” In regardsto New York City’s claim that it costs $36,000 a year to house a family in four in a shelter in New York verses the approximately $10,000 Chesser says it costs to house them here, Chesser say, "I think it's absolutely absurd."

He says it’s a problem that needs to be dealt with. "I’m pretty certain...that the families who come down here are not able to sustain a livelihood for any length of time." However, he says there is no way to know. Chesser says they have no way to track whether families which have come from New York go back into a homeless shelter in the Upstate. New York City officials say none of the relocated families have returned to city shelters there.