Trego's Mountain Ear

Thirty years ago, I read of a homeless guy, who tied in the labels of ex-con, druggie and mental health problems.  He was spending most of his time on buses – social workers in California would buy him a ticket to Miami, and when the Florida social workers realized he was in their state, they’d buy him a ticket to Los Angeles.  I think it was called “Greyhound Therapy.”  Here, back when Tom and Gene were our local deputies, the term was a “Tobacco Valley deportation.”  No official court action – just a ride in the cruiser’s back seat down toward Olney, and encouragement to seek the benefits of Whitefish or Kalispell.

I read that the mayor of Anchorage intends to solve his homeless problem with airplane tickets – he explained that it takes over a hundred dollars a day to look out for a homeless guy, and that a plane ticket to Los Angeles costs only $276.  There is an economic component to being your brother’s keeper – and shipping him out so some other brother can keep him is an alternative.

Greyhound Therapy – The American Prospect describes the situation within New Jersey:

“When Thomas Jones, a native of Asbury Park on the Jersey Shore, wanted to get clean and straighten out his life, service providers in his county gave him a one-way ticket to Trenton, 60 miles away. “In Asbury Park they didn’t have assistance-no shelter, no soup kitchen,” he said. “They just push you out to Trenton or Atlantic City.” Other homeless men recounted similar stories. When they got out of prison or lost their jobs and couldn’t keep up with the bills, they sought help. Instead, they were offered one-way bus rides to the Trenton or Atlantic City, home to the Trenton and Atlantic City Rescue Missions, the only two comprehensive shelters for adults without children in the southern half of the state.

The practice-shipping homeless people off to cities better-equipped to provide services-is common enough in southern New Jersey that it’s come to be known as “Greyhound Therapy.”

It’s difficult to quantify given that it’s not an official policy and there is no single offending agency, but homeless people and service providers alike report it is widespread. “Clients very often have recent medical exposure and the hospital doesn’t want to discharge them into homelessness so they tell them to go to Trenton,” says Mary Gay Abbott-Young, chief executive officer of the Trenton Rescue Mission. “The person shows up sometimes still wearing a hospital gown with a stack of prescriptions. We’ve had pre-paid taxis pull up.”

San Diego uses the term “Family Reunification.”  https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-bus-20180312-story.html

“From all appearances, Judy Bryant wanted out of San Diego.

For six years, the 48-year-old woman has been homeless there, and when she walked into an office at St. Vincent de Paul Village on a recent morning, she said she’d had enough of sleeping on concrete. She said she had spent the previous night on the back steps of a downtown apartment building.

Her daughter back home in North Carolina has a place for Bryant to stay if she can figure out how to get there, she said.

That’s where the Family Reunification Program comes in.

Run by the Downtown San Diego Partnership, it provides free bus tickets for homeless people to go live with relatives in other cities. If Bryant’s story checks out, she could be on board that night and back in North Carolina in three days.

“It’s a way for people to reconnect with their family support systems and start over,” said Alonso Vivas, executive director of the partnership’s Clean & Safe team, which runs the program.

Critics call relocation efforts such as this “Greyhound therapy” and say all they do is shuffle the homeless from one place to another. But the programs, cheaper than providing housing, are popular in cities all across America, and the one in San Diego is expanding.

After sending about 1,100 people to other places from early 2012 through mid- 2017, it’s bused out almost 600 in the last eight months.”

“The Sacramento Bee documented Brown’s story beginning in 2013. Subsequent investigations by the newspaper found that Rawson-Neal regularly discharged homeless patients using “Greyhound therapy,” sometimes to places where they had never been and had no ties.

During the long ride to Northern California, Brown had rationed the peanut butter crackers and Ensure nutritional supplements that a staff member at the mental hospital had given him, along with his discharge papers and a bus ticket to Sacramento. His food was gone, and he was nearly out of the medication to treat his array of mood disorders, including schizophrenia, depression and anxiety.

According to a state investigation, Brown spent 72 hours in the hospital’s observation unit before a doctor discharged him to a Greyhound bus to Sacramento. The discharge orders noted he should be given a three-day supply of Thorazine, Klonopin and Cymbalta to treat his schizophrenia, anxiety disorder and depression, plus “Ensure and snacks for a 15-hour bus ride.”

Brown wound up homeless in the capital city after arriving by bus. No prior arrangements had been made for his care or housing. He told police he was advised by the Nevada psychiatric hospital to “call 911” when he arrived in the capital city.

The Bee found that Brown’s experience was not an isolated one. The newspaper discovered that Rawson-Neal bused roughly 1,500 patients out of Nevada between 2008 and 2013, a third of them to California. Some of the patients, The Bee documented, became homeless and went missing after their bus trips. Some died tragically. Some committed serious crimes in their new cities.”

‘Greyhound Therapy’: Nevada Psychiatric Patients Bused to Different States Win Lawsuit

Greyhound Therapy – Diesel Therapy – Tobacco Valley Deportation.  I guess it’s an economically viable way to do social work.