The mayor of Alaska's largest city wants to give its homeless residents a one-way ticket out of town.
At a press conference this week, Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson (R) announced he intends for the city to pay for plane tickets to Los Angeles and other warm climates for homeless people who would otherwise spend the vast majority of their time outside in the life-threatening Alaskan winter.
Citing the ongoing shelter shortage, Bronson noted that last winter was the deadliest for the homeless in Anchorage's history, and this one isn't expected to be any milder.
“I have a moral imperative here, and that is to save lives, 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,” the mayor said.
No funding for the relocation program has been approved, but Bronson doesn't expect that to be a problem.
“I think a ticket this morning to Los Angeles is 286 bucks, it cost us $100 plus or minus a few dollars every day to house someone, and we don't have a place to put them in a large shelter this winter,” he added.
However, Democratic big-city mayors are increasingly frustrated by Republican officials sending thousands of migrants to liberal cities. According to the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles County faces a shortage of shelter beds.
The time for hospitality in Los Angeles and other “sanctuary” cities may be approaching an end, as the L.A. Times reports:
“Republicans want to tell a false story that Democratic-run cities are falling apart,” said Zach Seidl, a spokesman for Mayor Karen Bass. “But in reality, these ridiculous stunts just show the difference between leaders who confront crises by rolling up their sleeves to address issues and leaders who confront crises by rolling over to shift the problem.”
Los Angeles county has 43,000 shelter beds for the roughly 75,000 people experiencing homelessness in the region, according to county data.
When asked if the relocation program would be viewed as Anchorage sending its homelessness problem elsewhere, Bronson, who is Republican, said other cities had done the same, but he did not elaborate.
Bronson also expressed reluctance to send people outside of the state but said he had “far less than optimal options” after state lawmakers rebuffed a $25-million request to fund a large shelter in Anchorage, which has 40% of the state's population but 65% of its homeless people.
Half of this year's homeless deaths in Anchorage were reported after the George M. Sullivan Arena closed its doors as a mass shelter.
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From the sounds of things, the Anchorage Mayor is trying to be responsible AND thinking ahead. He is doing the humane thing and sending those homeless individuals to places they are unlikely to die from exposure to below zero temperatures. Good for him!
AWwwww ~ The POOR BABIES !!! How did they Get There in the 1st Place ???
They can get BACK the SAME Way !!!
We have pretty cold winters here in the Midwest where I live, too. I’d like to see my state ship all the homeless to blue states with warmer climates.
If liberals don’t like it, maybe they can put the homeless up in THEIR homes over the winter at their expense, and show us conservatives how much they care.
Southern Cal is nice and warm plus these refugees would have lots of veteran “DEAD BEATS” to show them the ropes. . . .
Can they not just get a job there?