July 31, 2013

Santa Monica, here we come, right back where we started from

A large fraction of homeless people -- especially the poor bastards you find sleeping under a bridge in Chicago in January -- are lunatics to be pitied. But, then there are the kind of homeless people you find hanging out at the blufftop park along Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica or under the amazing Moreton Bay Figtree in downtown Santa Barbara who are highly rational about their lifestyle choices. The creme de la creme of the Lifestyler homeless are the ones who have made it to Hawaii.

From The Daily Mail:
Hawaii sets aside $100,000 to offer its 17,000 homeless people one-way airfare back to their home states 
... A similar program was implemented in New York City in 2007 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other cities have used the tactic over the years. 
'These kinds of  programs have been used historically to ship homeless people out of town,' Michael Stoops, from the National Coalition for the Homeless told MSN. 'In the homelessness field it was once called greyhound therapy. Hawaii now goes a step higher with airplane therapy. Oftentimes local police departments run such programs offering the stark choices of going to a shelter, jail or hopping on a bus or plane home.'

62 comments:

Anonymous said...

Question: What about the native born homeless of hawaii? What about those who were born in HA and friankly, dont want to leave the state?

Then what? They're gonna be coerced and put on the plane anyway?

It's kind of misleading to think that the majority of that state's homless are all from the mainland. Hawaii must have some native born homeless, those who have 2-3 plus generations living on the islands.

I'm surprised the ACLU hasn't weighed in yet but its still early. This could get tricky.

Anonymous said...

Minneapolis, a bastion of progressivism, did something like this back in the 1990s; they bought homeless people one-way bus tickets to Denver.

Auntie Analogue said...


Are you kidding? This self-deportation nonsense doesn't work when illegal aliens are given free transportation back to where they came from! Just how well do our Best & Brightest elect expect it's going to work for domestic homeless who have the right to be anyplace they like within the U.S.?

Anonymous said...

Sleeping under the viaducts in Chicago is not easy. First of all there is the constant traffic noise not to mention the weather conditions. Most of these people, I suspect are in some ways mentally emotionally or socially retarded. It seems that they cannot properly take care of themselves. These are the people who should be given a one way plane ticket to Hawaii in order that they not freeze to death. Letz tell our congress liars to fund the immediate exportation of all homeless in America to Hawaii for humanitarian purposes.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
Question: What about the native born homeless of hawaii?
Yes, their called "Hawaiians" (the aboriginal race who were there before Cpt. Cook paid a visit) And yes, they don't want to leave, but hope that all the "haoles" do.

Anonymous said...

I've lived in Santa Barbara for the last seven years but have only seen a handful of homeless camping under that tree, despite being in the area a good amount since one of my favorite breweries is nearby. I can see how it could shelter a large number of homeless during a downpour, but that happens about twice a year here.

Generally homeless in Santa Barbara beg outside of The Habit (formerly Hamburger Habit) on State Street. That spot gets heavy foot traffic, and there is lots of discarded food. Unlike the pier, they don't have to compete with seagulls for food.

Most of the lifestyle homeless in SB county move to Isla Vista, the student ghetto adjacent to UC Santa Barbara. The university has bathrooms and showers, and IV has easy access to alcohol, drugs, blacked-out coeds etc.

Anonymous said...

Give them a one way ticket to Hyanissport

Spike Gomes said...

California Institutions have been shipping their mentally ill here since the early 90s, though it's tapered off quite a bit since 9/11. I myself have seen three homeless people suddenly show up in the campus area with LAX tags on their bags during my time at UH. A good proportion of the homeless here are not from here, I'd say about 30-40%. Some are mentally ill and others are just people who didn't realize the COL here being so high with such a tight job market, and don't have enough funds to make it back home. In fact in newspaper profiles, some people say they would return home if someone gave them a ticket, and churches here have actually provided tickets in the past to do so.

I support it, really. We've been a dumping ground for a lot of mainland problems, from the mentally ill of the West Coast, to the sickly and undereducated Marshallese and Micronesian immigrant communities leeching off the state health care and family welfare systems.

Dave Pinsen said...

An allusion to the Phantom Planet song.

Anonymous said...

South Park did a nice sendup of this. A zombie/homeless invasion is turned back by Cartman singing into a PA system about Santa Monica being the land of spare change. He's on board an armored bus driven slowly out of town with the homeless following behind.

Whitey Whiteman III said...

"Just how well do our Best & Brightest elect expect it's going to work for domestic homeless who have the right to be anyplace they like within the U.S.?"


Perhaps counting on them being shiftless layabouts who will stay where you set them.

Or, maybe that they will lack the impulse control to save up for $500 plane tickets and $200 bus tickets when that can buy a lot of liquor.

Anonymous said...

1. It may work for Hawaii -- and only Hawaii and our other insular possessions -- because a return air ticket will be beyond the reach of most homeless.

2. Who wants to be the bourgeois tourist stuck sitting next to Fishy Guts Pete for five hours?

IHTG said...

Auntie: I think that's the joke.

Camlost said...

Atlanta did this before the 1996 Olympics, forcibly placing their homeless on buses and deporting them to places like Macon or Savannah 2-3 hours away.

George said...

Years ago an official in Hawaii got into a pissing contest over the homeless with city officials in Pittsburgh. The outcome? Pittsburgh gladly shipped of a large number of its homeless to Honolulu where they have been residing all these years.

Chicago said...

They might want the homeless to just go away but what's in it for them to take the offer? Why would they want to go back to places they left in the first place? They probably had reasons for migrating and for most of them anywhere they lay their head is home. It's likely easier to live outdoors in Hawaii than in Chicago with it's harsh winters. Some places have vagrancy laws with which the homeless are encouraged to keep on moving. Without something like that it's doubtful anything much will come of it. Come the financial collapse we'll all be headed for Hawaii to sleep on the beach.

Anonymous said...

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/category/236634/trayvon-martin-shooting

First saint-hood-lum.

Anonymous said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/in-missouri-race-complicates-a-transfer-to-better-schools.html?hp&_r=0

Conservatives love 'school reform' because they think public schools = liberal teacher's unions, but the only thing that 'school reform' does is shut down crappy black schools and send the blacks and their problems to white schools.

It's WAITING FOR SUPERFLY to buzz into your neighborhood.

Notice how the Jewish NYT frames the story in terms of MLK and Civil Rights movement.

Anonymous said...

An old story. If you are so unfortunate as to "ride the dog" across the US of A you will notice that at many of the Greyhound stations you will overhear a police officer trying to convince a vagrant to get on the bus to wherever, and then trying to come up with the fare.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeless_dumping

As a bonus unrelated article in the see also section of the Homeless dumping article:

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

"requires hospitals to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status "

Interesting how a free low grade National Health Service was created for wealthy people's domestic help, but not US citizens who have to have it provided at their employer's cost.



Anonymous said...

If this is okay, why is encouraging self-deportation of illegals such a crime against humanity?

On a related note, if you want to see what "rock bottom" looks like in America, check out this website with its photos and horrific stories about homeless drug addicted prostitutes in the Hunts Point section of New York City - http://arnade.tumblr.com/

Although the author often says that these homeless people defy stereotypes, I'd say about 95% of them fit the stereotype perfectly(I used to go there sometimes, so I'm not just relying on the web site). We're talking 3rd, and maybe even 4th generation heroin/crack addicted prostitutes and drug addicts living in Hunts Point(part of the south Bronx). Many of them have 5+ kids(all in foster care), with one I remember having 15. Just about all of them claim to be religious.

I can't help but feel sympathy, but realize that almost all of them are trapped and there is little society can do to help them under current laws and practices. Can't force people to get clean. Besides this, mental illness is generally co-morbid with drug addiction, especially among the extremely addicted, which is what I would call the addicts in Hunts Point. Some people are merely "addicted", and they live throughout New York City and throughout the country, but the kind of drug abuse in Hunts Point is like a unique species of extreme addiction, luring in extreme heroin addicts from all over the North East U.S, and sometimes beyond.

Although that website NEVER suggests it, this is probably the most pro-eugenics blog in the world, even if it promotes eugenics indirectly.

Anonymous said...

FWIW the Chicago and Aurora, IL played tag with the homeless using the Metra train system.

And this is approved discrimination, I see no disparate impact screechings from the crackpot black power types in the DOJ.

Power Child said...

I don't understand the logistics. Wouldn't there be massive security issues with giving plane tickets to thousands of homeless people?

And, how do you prove you're homeless? Wouldn't lots of enterprising young men go get all dirty, put on some old filthy yardwork clothes, act a little weird, and then score free tickets to wherever they want? The price of the one-way ticket back is surely less than the full round-trip.

Jim Bowery said...

The ACLU won't weigh in on Hawaii because guys like Larry Ellison don't want them to weigh in. Its sort of like the reason the Sierra Club, now that the nation of settler's boomer fertility destruction is a fiat accompli, stopped weighing in on over-population and is, indeed, supporting mass immigration through inaction regarding its primary mission. Hawaii is now a refuge for fleeing capital to collect shiksas and economic rent on the way to Asia now that the nation of settlers has been raped and is being irreversibly brain-damaged by mass immigration to the US mainland. You don't want the victim coming-to and testifying against let along coming after you for revenge.

Anonymous said...

'Pro' sounds positive and 'anti' sounds negative, which is why the Jews and the 'left' frame debates in terms of struggling against 'anti-immigration sentiment' or 'anti-gay' positions.

So, we need to add 'anti' to the positions on the 'left'.

Label 'open borders' types as 'anti-legality' or 'anti-citizen'.

Label proponents of 'gay marriage' as 'anti-real-marriage' or 'anti-normality'.

Anonymous said...

i can see it somewhat working in NY with kids who came to 'pursue their dreams'

David said...

Pick up enuf change on the islands, get a free plane ticket to vacation wherever you call yr "hometown," then use the change to fly back. Rinse and repeat. Beats working for a living.

I may try this myself....

Anonymous said...

I remember back to the early 90s when someone associated with Gov. John Engler (MI) responded to concerns over closing many of the state mental hospitals, suggesting that they (the ill) should just move to California. I am sure such things occur all over the country with great regularity.

David said...

OT:

Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Feds

Don't enter the street numbers in CAPTCHA, below. Just enter the word. It still works. Blogger/Google is confirming street numbers this way.

Lisa said...

They'll take a free plane ride and go tour another part of the country (wherever they claim is their hometown) then they'll find their way back.

rightsaidfred said...

Kind of like how Mexico gave their low achievers a list of welfare programs in the US and directions to the border.

Anonymous said...

My city did a survey of its homeless people and about half said they were homeless by choice. If this is typical, every city has an incurable problem. If the homeless can survive on taxpayer-funded shelters and food banks and don't want to re-enter society, the only thing you can do is cut them off entirely. No shelters, food banks, nothing.

The homeless have made my downtown library an awful place to visit, which has to keep a cop there all the time to haul out the drunks sleeping in the aisles of the kid's section, eject the disruptive types who get a kick out of yelling abuse at other patrons, and deal who those looking at porn on the net, etc.

The library has also developed what I like to call the 'lone ethnic male syndrome.' There's always a lone ethnic male of one sort or another, permanently placed out in front of the main doors and yapping on his Obamaphone. When one disappears, another promptly arrives to fill the vacuum now that the territory has been vacated, and they're never there to read the books. What they want is attention, and they deliberately position themselves so that everyone can't fail to notice them or to pass close by them to enter. White people move away from the doors when they want to talk on the phone because they want privacy for their conversations.

Carlos said...

In California, all the cities seem to have sent their homeless to San Francisco.

Gringo said...

If that program had been in place 40 years ago, then maybe that black person who harassed Obama's grandmother at the bus stop wouldn't have been around to harass her. Then we wouldn't have heard Obama's talking about his grandmother being a "typical white person." Then again, maybe Obama would have found/invented another incident to show that his grandmother was just another "typical white person."

Anonymous said...

It's about time the South came up with the New Freedom Bus.

Southern whites should put up posters in black neighborhoods that say, "We southern whites don't treat you Negroes too well, so we wanna make it up by providing all these Freedom Buses for you Negroes to migrate up North where all them blue state white liberals will love you and shower with free everything that you Negroes are so deserving of."

Anonymous said...

My father volunteered at a very popular homeless shelter for decades. The shelter (and probably the local's handouts) were so highly regarded that homeless showed up from all over the country. He said that they came in basically two types: 1) People who should have been in an asylum and 2) people who wanted to do exactly what they were doing. There were no more-or-less normal people who stayed homeless due to circumstance, bad luck, whatever.

Paul Mendez said...

Since states do not have border control checkpoints, this makes no sense nationally.

But INTERNATIONALLY, it makes a lot of sense. It would make financial sense to pay immigrants below a certain age $50,000 or more to return to their place of birth in exchange for being permanently banned from ever returning to the US.

The British National Party has had this policy in its platform for years.

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

Santa Barbara is filled with various spectacular trees, but that one is really something. I'm not sure I knew that origin story.

The homeless in Santa Barbara are a blight, although last night I did buy a neat Fiesta poster from a friendly transient who swore that he was trying to get back home to somewhere in northern California. Yeah, I'm a sucker. Probably stolen goods.

But, I have a friend who is a tech for the local EMS company. He absolutely loathes the homeless because of the number of calls which are wasted on them.

Anonymous said...

"New Photos From Inside Oregon's Monstrous $68-Million Football Facility"

http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-oregon-football-facility-pictures-2013-8?op=1

anony-mouse said...

Only 17000 Americans have figured out how to become a bum in Hawaii?

I'm very disappointed.

Anonymous said...

100,000 for 17,000 people.

Plane tickets from Hawaii cost $5.88?

What website are they using?

Anonymous said...

Fuck yeah! I know Hawaii is a liberal state but they got this one right. If I spend a fortune to go there for a vacation I don't want to share the beaches with lousy bums and smelly hippies.

Jamesarr

NOTA said...

It's disturbing how much of practical good governance of a community amounts to figuring out how to get the least valuable, least desirable people to move on down the road to the next town or neighborhood. This applies to homeless people, gangbangers, sex offenders, druggies, welfare moms of the n kids by n+1 fathers variety, crazies, drunks, etc.

Ways of arranging things in a community that make it more hospitable to those people tend to make the community less pleasant to live in--suddenly, the public parks aren't safe to let your kids play in, families going to the library have to dodge the homeless guys panhandling aggressively outside, you have more police and jail expenses, your local hospital goes into the red covering the expenses of uninsured patients, etc. And ways of arranging things that lead to fewer of those people sticking around in the community lead to less of those bad things.

Now, at one level, this is really awful. I mean, mostly those are our fellow citizens who just got lousy rolls of the genetic dice, or made really shitty choices that piled up and wrecked them, or both. Even the overt criminals, once they're out of jail, ought to have somewhere to go. But I sure don't want them all showing up in my community, or even very many of them.

Long ago, I lived in a town with a 5 cent can tax/refund. I gather this really did a lot to decrease littering. But the mechanism by which it did that was to bring lots and lots of homeless people into the town, who could make enough picking up cans and bottles and turning them in for a deposit that they could afford whatever expenses they had--food, booze, drugs, whatever. On one level, this was kind-of admirable--all these homeless people were actually doing something valuable for the community and managing to make a bit of money at it. But of course, this also drew in more homeless people, and they supplemented their can-collecting income with aggressive panhandling, in-between bouts of screaming back at the little voices or passing out drunk in the local parks. I'm still not sure whether this was a bad policy or a good one, to be honest, though I'm just as happy the place I live now doesn't have the same policy.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

According to the Heather MacDonald article a few years ago about Haight-Ashbury's alfresco set they even count as a non-taxpaying political constituency out there--hard to figure that one, other than that society has gone insane

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

btw Ventura (next county over) has a big similar tree across from the mission and last time I didn't see any bums there. Maybe they were on vacation in Hawaii

Anonymous said...

OT: NY Times article written by UC Berkeley admissions officer on the inner-workings of the "holistic" admission process at the UCs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/lifting-the-veil-on-the-holistic-process-at-the-university-of-california-berkeley.html?pagewanted=all

Seems just about as coherent as holistic medicine.

Anonymous said...

"100,000 for 17,000 people.
Plane tickets from Hawaii cost $5.88?
What website are they using?"

They'll pass out free surf boards.

Prof. Woland said...

My idea is to offer free barge cruses to Hawaii for the bums and then scuttle them half way there.

Gringo said...

Anonymous @8/1/13, 1:38 p.m.
It's about time the South came up with the New Freedom Bus.
Southern whites should put up posters in black neighborhoods that say, "We southern whites don't treat you Negroes too well, so we wanna make it up by providing all these Freedom Buses for you Negroes to migrate up North..


You are behind the times. The New Great Migration, where blacks leave the North to return to the South, has been going on for almost 30 years. There are more jobs in the South, and family is often still there.

Anonymous said...

Interesting article in the daily mail wrt the comments - it's about Stephen Lawrence's mother being made a baroness. There is only one green-arrowed comment. I'm not sure how much censorship is going on there, but it's interesting that they are only letting supportive comments through but they are all getting red arrowed.

My guess is that they are censoring comments that state that surely all the mothers whose sons were victims of blacks murderers over the years deserve peerages as well. Nevertheless, the readers are responding by red arrowing the PC congratulatory comments. I've never seen anything like it.

If we are to throw off the mental shackles of political correctness, I imagine that the reaction would look something like this.

Capt. Wi Tu Lo said...

Gringo: In the case of that Anonymous 1:38 who's unaware of the last 70 years of U.S. demographic direction it probably owes to being one of the local Pacific Rim readers here, otherwise getting his info from Xinhua and comic books about MLK Jr. in a Gundam suit (commenter's definitely a he). Note the odd capitalization and stilted/slapdash phrasing.

Feh said...

"The homeless have made my downtown library an awful place to visit,"

Where I live, the library is RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a homeless shelter. So there is always a crowd of bums congregating outside the library, as well as inside using the bathrooms and generally stinking up the place.

"It would make financial sense to pay immigrants below a certain age $50,000 or more to return to their place of birth in exchange for being permanently banned from ever returning to the US."

Permanently banned? If we couldn't enforce our border and deny them entry the first time around, why would we be able to do so after we'd kicked them out "permanently"?

Anonymous said...

"He said that they came in basically two types: 1) People who should have been in an asylum"

If we put those people in an asylum then the civil rights industry will for disparate impact.

Anonymous said...

NOTA, you needed to live in a city with a measurable Asian population. Elderly Asians on bikes take care of the can redemption in my town, though their rummaging through the trash is sometimes noisy at 5 in the morning. It's too much like work for our homeless.

We need tougher homeless in the US. When I was in Montreal a few years ago the temperature hit -35 on Saturday night. It was a less-than-balmy -25 the next when the girl and I went to take the subway a few blocks from the hotel, and there were 3 homeless guys and their accouterments lounging outside the station. I tossed each of them a Loonie just for toughness.

Ex Submarine Officer said...

"If I spend a fortune to go there for a vacation I don't want to share the beaches with lousy bums and smelly hippies."

Beaches with lousy bums and smelly hippies is integral to Polynesia, always has been.

Sheila said...

While working on some family genealogy (it's become an intellectually stimulating exercise, not an emotionally charged one at all), I came across a few obituaries for an uncle (I'd thought he was great when I was little, and realized what an arrogant bastard he was after I matured). He was a psychologist, and apparently one of his "proudest achievements" was helping to de-institutionalize the mentally ill. May he burn in hell for eternity.

One of his sons, a doctor, was apparently a key advocate for Obamacare. May he burn as well when his time comes. I know one can't choose one's relatives, but I can and have cut myself off from all blood relations except for my elderly mother - and I maintain contact with her only out of biblical principles. Once she's gone, I'm free, genetics be damned.

Marc B said...

I make it a point to walk by that seaside park atop the cliffs whenever I'm in Santa Monica just to watch the homeless bums smoke their brains out right next to the no smoking sign in the middle of the day. It does not look like a park where the tax-paying Santa Monica residents be welcome having a family picnic.

corvinus said...

My father volunteered at a very popular homeless shelter for decades. The shelter (and probably the local's handouts) were so highly regarded that homeless showed up from all over the country. He said that they came in basically two types: 1) People who should have been in an asylum and 2) people who wanted to do exactly what they were doing. There were no more-or-less normal people who stayed homeless due to circumstance, bad luck, whatever.

I wonder if this is innate and Europe's gypsies developed from a group of homeless people.

Anonymous said...

A little off topic here but did Enterprise zones in California encourage illegal immigration. Brown got rid of the enterprise zones and most enterprise zones were in heavily Hispanic cities like Los Angeles and Santa Ana, some were in a district of San Fran which didn't have a heavily Hispanic population. The ex-mayor of La was against getting rid of them since LA gave the most tax credits for business in the enterprise zone. Not all the jobs went to illegals but some did, in Santa Ana there are food processing companies that might have started because of the tax credit and the company advertised for a bilingual worker for quality control which means many workers don't speak English. A lot of fast food in both La and Santa Ana got tax credits when they hired someone. Jack Kemp that favored enterprise zones for blacks and Hispanics was lax on immigration.

Anonymous said...

http://www.timesofisrael.com/russian-speakers-who-want-to-immigrate-could-need-dna-test/

Anonymous said...

AIPAC of food

Anonymous said...

Why not build a whole new city specifically for homeless people, far away from any other habitations? Include free housing, free food, free drugs, free heat and water. And free transport to (but not from) Bum City. And of course no rules, no regulations, no cops, no social workers, no teachers, no missionaries, no forced haircuts, etc.

I'd be willing to pay tax money for this if it would work, and segregate the homeless for everyone else. But it's not likely to work.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a job for the Hawaii Air National Guard. One C-17 a week would be a good start. I remember being stationed there when they passed a law forbidding the homeless to have shopping carts. You'd see police shaking down these homeless dudes but then what are they going to do? They can't put the cart in the cruiser.