With one-way ticket help from New York City, Asheville fast becoming Bum City USA

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Feeding the homelessJason Sandford

In Asheville, we’ve worked hard to tackle our homeless problem. Our fair city adopted a 10-year plan to end homelessness, and we’ve got a number of programs to help folks down on their luck. There are charitable feedings of the homeless, like the one pictured above, which takes place on South French Broad. (I shot the photo Saturday morning.) There’s another one in Pritchard Park. We have several shelters, including the Western Carolina Rescure Mission, which is embarking on a big expansion.

The down side is that homeless people add to crime, drain our social services and can sometimes be a menacing presence on the streets of Ashvegas. We’ve heard rumors about homeless people getting shipped here because of our wonderful safety net of services. Now we have more confirmation.

The New York Times reported on July 28 that Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration in New York is buying one way tickets to send homeless people to points abroad, including Paris and North Carolina. And I have it on good authority that at least a couple of people with Bloomberg-paid tickets landed right here in Asheville.

From the NYT:

The Bloomberg administration, which has struggled with a seemingly intractable problem of homelessness for years, has paid for more than 550 families to leave the city since 2007, as a way of keeping them out of the expensive shelter system, which costs $36,000 a year per family. All it takes is for a relative elsewhere to agree to take the family in.

We’re already known as Beer City, USA. Now it looks as though we’re on the fast track to become Bum City, USA.

What’s the answer? I don’t know. But I don’t like the fact that other cities are busing their homeless people to Asheville. Right off the bat, I’d like to see our mayor, Mayor Terry Bellamy, (who is up for re-election this year) write a letter to Mayor Bloomberg explaining that maybe the Big Apple could learn a thing or two about dealing with the homeless. And oh, by the way, stop sending bums to Asheville!

News Channel 7 picked up on this story and wrote about it from a South Carolina point of view. So far, I haven’t see any Asheville media pick up on this. From Channel 7:

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. … 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.”

More links to this story at CBS News, NBC Augusta, and the New York Times City Room Blog.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

19 Comments

  1. tony September 30, 2010

    you call the homeless bums well some of the many homeless are but ill be damned if you think that homeless means bums because im currently living with family and even though im classified as homeless i aint no fucking bum and i dont ask you rich snob motherfuckers for shit and now because im a felon i cant find a job.so the answer to ashevilles homeless population would be to create more jobs for felons instead of hording all the money for yourselves.just because a person has a felony dosent neccesarily make him or her bad and thats another reason why theres so many homeless.in my eyes if a person has served his time he or she should be given another chance to get gainful employment and if there were more programs to help the homeless then we wqouldnt have this problem now would we so in closing remember homeless not hopeless and i dont think im better then anyone

    Reply
    1. Wes December 28, 2015

      Yea, great idea loser. Felons, come to Asheville! We have jobs for you!
      Wonderful way to bring nice new citizens to Ashville. Btw, these fucking bums don’t want jobs dumbass. Btw, no one has any sympathy for you ex con losers. You are in the situation you created. You are simply feeling the repercussions of your actions. You knew them before committing your crimes, yet still chose to commit them. You chose to be a loser.

      Reply
  2. Asheville Dweller August 9, 2009

    Yes thanks for other tax money to take care of those that don’t want to take care of themselves.

    Reply
  3. Jillian Wolf August 8, 2009

    Wow. I am STUNNED by the cold-hearted approach absolutely every one on this blog is taking to this very complicated problem. There seems to be a lack of verifiable information to begin with, and the vocabulary being used is nothing short of hateful. How many of you have been out of work in the last year? How many of you have ever missed meals enough to find free food appealing? How many of you have every worried about where you are going to sleep on any given night? How many of you have gone through any of that with children in tow? Shame on all of you for your total lack of empathy. Thanks to the kind hearts of so many others in Asheville, most of the homeless people here have shoes…you should try walking in them.

    Reply
  4. Asheville Dweller August 3, 2009

    Oooooh another Blam Bush statement, same tired old rhetoric, Forget the fact Asheville has been other cities dumping grounds for years. Remember Atlanta 96? anyone?

    Asheville gets what it sews, another strain on the system but there are those in Asheville that like spending other people’s money on other people with no problem.

    Reply
  5. eemilla August 3, 2009

    Dean, we have those boxes (Spare Change for Change), and they don’t seem to deter pan handling.

    Reply
  6. Chad Nesbitt August 3, 2009

    Great story Ash! I called the NY Mayors Office and they call this
    "Project Reconnect". They said they would call me back to tell me how many families were "reconnected" in Asheville since 2007.

    Reply
  7. UFC August 3, 2009

    Maybe the best way to get rid of the transient issue in Asheville is to hold weekly bum fights. The winner of each fight gets to stay another night. The loser gets shipped off to their home town.

    Reply
  8. Asheville – Paris Hilton of the South – Malt Liquor City USA!

    Reply
  9. JustWords August 3, 2009

    Wikipedia refers to the word "BUM" as a slang term for a homeless person, beggar or a "forgotten man." Look it up MON & ‘thoughtful would be helpful.’ The ‘bums’ of Asheville have a hand out, will harass people downtown and just completely want to leech off anyone and everyone. They do nothing for the local economy and serve zero purpose. Transients….BUMS….all the same…I will head downtown right now, take 3 to the bus station and pay their ticket out of here. Gladly. Anywhere they want to go. Except Paris. Lovely city. How about Crawford Texas? George W Bush’s fault anyway. Let him reap what he has sown.

    Reply
  10. Zanna,

    Why ship them to cities where there is work? These people (or the majority of them,) DO NOT WANT TO WORK! Just as Overlooking the park said, they choose to feed off of the system.

    The sad thing is that most striving, fighting to make a buck citizens now have a cushion to land on if they fail. Yes they too can go stand in the soup line and have someone else feed them.

    If you haven’t volunteered in one of these lines, or even if you have….you have no idea of the number of people that come through these lines that are not even homeless! They are just there for the free food!

    Reply
  11. Michael Muller August 2, 2009

    Paris? Where do I sign up?

    Reply
  12. Zanna August 2, 2009

    I’m just wondering if it wouldn’t be better to send the homeless to places where they conceivably could find work? It seems like there might be *jobs* in NYC. What are they supposed to do to get back on their feet in a place where the local economy is almost entirely healthcare and hospitality industry, and rents are just as high or higher than back home? I don’t think there are enough crappy low paid restaurant jobs here for the full time residents much less imported folks in trouble. This seems like one of the *worst* places to recover from a hard time, unless you simply plan on living off the soup kitchens forever.

    Reply
  13. Adam August 2, 2009

    Newser-

    Maybe you missed the big hullabaloo the past few weeks whereupon a large national poll was conducted, with Portland and Asheville vying for that very title. We didn’t take the top title, but only because Portland snuck by us at the very last minute. So we decided to take the Beer City USA title for the East Coast.

    It IS true, believe it or not…

    Reply
  14. newser August 2, 2009

    in case you haven’t noticed….asheville has been the dumping ground for "bums" from new york city for decades now……mostly these bums are failed "artistes" who think they are cooler, hipper and better than the rest of us, even if they are middle aged or beyond. i can think of quite a few such refugees who have "fled the fast track of nyc" ….give me a break. i vote to keep sending ’em here by greyhound bus…they will blend in perfectly.

    so…..asheville is "beer city usa" ??? …. LOL! since when? maybe milwaukee or st louis, but not this mountain metropolis. no way.

    Reply
  15. Overlooking the park. August 2, 2009

    First, lets get the story right.

    These ARE NOT HOMELESS they are TRANSIENTS that will never contribute anything to society by their own choice to live off the system.

    Until we start calling them transients nothing will be done.

    As for the veterans that are also transients. Ship them to the nearest VA or Military base so that the government finally sees what the heck is going on.

    Reply
  16. Dean August 2, 2009

    This is not a new phenomena; during the Atlanta Olympics, homelss folks where sent to Asheville, one way. Atlanta wanted to look spiff for the world press. We got their homeless.

    It was reported long ago in the NY Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution too.

    Athens, GA has a novel way to deal with homeless panhandling: boxes on the street for donations. It really cuts down on "…hey man can you spare…" kind of situaitons.

    Reply
  17. A thoughtful look at whether providing more and better homeless services stimulates greater need and demand for such services would be helpful, but this ….

    You have it on good authority that "at least a couple of people" landed here from NY, so now we’re on a fast track to become Bum City, and we should write a letter to the NY mayor? It’s good that we’ve thought this through carefully.

    If you have people who came to Asheville under pretense that a relative here would take them in (either the homeless persons’ or NY officials’ pretense), and now they are bumming handouts on Asheville’s streets, that would be information. It would be a news story, maybe a very good one. But then, that would take reporting, not blogging.

    If these two people you’ve heard about actually do have family here and are now living with them, then they’re not really bums any more, are they? (At least not bums as far as the public is concerned, regardless of how the family may feel.) Aren’t they just Asheville residents living with family, like many others who came here without having everything set up, many of whom now fit in with everybody else?

    By the way, since you help to shape public opinion, it would help us to know if you make any distinction between homeless people and bums. Do these two populations just overlap, or are they exactly the same group — the homeless and bums. Thanks.

    Reply
  18. mon August 2, 2009

    why are you referring to homeless people as bums?

    shipping homeless people to other cities is a practice that has been happening for a a long long time and there are many areas that are targeted…not just asheville.

    I spent most of my career working with the "homeless," with bums as you call them. As a group the homeless are as diverse a population as any other.

    society as a whole has to start seeing people as worth saving. this is a larger battle than telling NYC what to do.

    Reply

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