After placing 7,000 people in shelters and housing programs earlier this year, Fort Lauderdale is considering an alternative solution to homelessness -- buying those without a roof over their heads a one-way bus ticket out of the city, The Palm Beach Post reports.

Proponents of the Homeless Reunification Program, which aims to take people off of the streets and into the arms of family members, say that spending thousands of dollars on bus tickets is a more efficient long-term option to spending money on shelters.

"We're not pushing them out," Mayor Jack Seiler told The Palm Beach Post. "If somebody has a network of support, a group of family and friends that will provide for them back home, that's probably a good place for them to be."

Funding for the one-way bus ticket program in St. Petersburg, Fla., recently doubled, The St. Petersburg Times reports. Last week alone, three times as many homeless people were shipped out of the city as compared with a typical month last year.

Those who oppose the transportation program simply see it as a way to redistribute the problem, not a way to fix it.

G.W. Rolle, a homeless advocate, told The St. Petersburg Times that he talked to several homeless people who took the free ticket, but had nowhere to go once the bus stopped.

"It doesn't solve the problem," Rolle told the news outlet . "It just moves it around."

Some major cities have expanded the program to include plane tickets.

New York will pay to reunite those living on the streets with family living as far away as Johannesburg, Paris and San Juan, according to The New York Times.

The Big Apple spends $500,000 on its program each year, with accommodations arranged by the Department of Homeless Services. Of the 550 families helped each year, about 100 of those are flown back to Florida, the same state that's looking to replicate the busing model.

"We want to divert as many families as we can that need assistance," Vida Chavez-Downes, director of the Resource Room, told The New York Times. "We have paid for visas, we've gone down to the consulate, we've provided letters, we've paid for passports for people to go. Anyone who comes through our door."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2011/12/20/fort-lauderdale-considers_n_1160734.html

We need to find out why and what of this issue. We are suppose to be our Brothers' Keeper. Teach those, How to be successful. Take some time and find out, Why they are the way, that they are. Everyone wants to complain, get together with like minded people and come up with, a solution, that can BETTER one another. It has to start at many levels.....City Fathers, Businesses, Citizens of the area, etc. How far do you want to push. How about embracing and teach. I am in, on that process.

The problem escalated when the Avalon towers started taking in Section 8s and the derelicts have inveded the Downtown. Now the blight is tricking all the way down to the Pelham Road are where we have the middle school and elementary school where my son attends.
The real problem is a greedy corrupt divisive mayor who hoards all the resources for his cronies on the north end. You dont see any derelicts on Quaker ridge road do you? You dont see colt 45 bottles and used condomes strewn all ove Ward, Davis, and Albert Leonard schools do you?

Wow, imagine the nerve of troubled, homeless people messing up the aesthetics of your expensive neighborhood! How about working to solve the larger problems?

Maybe if you actually read the artice and the comments you will see that the problem is not in the "expensive neighborhoods" in New Rochelle where the overpriviledged, greedy and corrupt Jews in the North End seem to avoid al the pitfalls of living in New Rochelle that us in the south end have to endure. Its Bramsons cronies that concentrated all of the human garbage into one part of town and cut the police forces down to where they can no longer be contained.

Awesome! All that and an antisemite, too! Shame on you.

Its not the asthetics were concerned about since Downtown is already a shithole (thanks Bramson for cutting the police force and hoarding all the citys resources for your pals on the north end) The problem is PERSONAL SAFETY for us and our CHILDREN since most of the derelicts hand around the library and in the library green where children play. The larger problem is that the shelters and flop houses around Union Ave and Lockwood Ave are overflowing and the City is in bed with too many liberal groups in order to curb the problem. The surrounding shitholes Mount Vermin, Yonkers and Port Chester are sying "not it" when these bums come to thier town.

Until we can solve the larger problems (build more shelters away from the Downtown, restore funding to existing shelters), they need to be rounded up. Last time I checked, vagrancy is a crime and so is harassment.

Stop and Frisk should help the situation. Youd be amazed what you would find on these derelicts. And dont try to bring up porfiling. These shitbags come in all colors.

Well in the past two days, two 11 year olds were molested in t he library and a 25 year old was sexually assaulted on North Ave. Since Bramson and his cronies have apparently forsaken us, I guess we have to start packing if we wnat to go to the train or take our kids to the library.

These awful monroe college maniacs should not be living here. Friends were staying at the radisson hotel had to leave cause monroe students were harassing them. Then their awful security guards came and harassed my friends some more. Enough was enough, we will never recommend that hotel again.

The Habitat for Humanity office and thier dilapidated 2nd hand store are a cancer to the downtown by attracting the derelicts from the New Rochelle HFA and the rest of the flop houses. You have drug addicts and sex offenders going in and out of the office looking for a handout or loitering in front of the RE-Store that makes Sanford and Son look like Tiffany's. I Support Habitat but they need to relocate to an industrial area and out of the downtown area where children and families walk the same streets.

if you pay 4,600 for a loft apartment you are a financial genius. Harassment is another issue altogether. this is a clearinghouse page for unrelated gripes?

This is from 2012 & last commented on 5+ year ago - it needs a new ticket if it’s still a problem.