(Headline USA) Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson proposed to buy the homeless in his city a one-way airplane ticket out of his town, Anchorage, Alaska.
Bronson’s airfare proposal caps a turbulent few years as Anchorage, like many cities in the American West, struggles to deal with a burgeoning homeless population.
The homeless have plagued the citizens of anchorage.
Danny Parish, who has lived in the Anchorage area for 29 years says he is moving because of the homeless. He reported the homeless harassing him, throwing vodka bottles in his yard, defecating and urinating in his driveway and poisoning his dog.
The geography of Anchorage produces significant dangers to homeless people in both the winter and summer.
Frigid temperatures stalk the homeless in the winter and bears infiltrate homeless encampments in the summer.
Despite these obvious and immediate dangers, new tent cities have sprung up across Anchorage this summer: on a slope facing the city’s historic railroad depot, on a busy road near the Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson and near soup kitchens and shelters downtown.
Bronson said he prefers to spend a few hundred dollars per person for a plane ticket rather than spending about $100 daily to shelter and feed them. He said he doesn’t care where they want to go; his job is to “make sure they don’t die on Anchorage streets.”
The mayor’s proposal, while focused on warmer cities, also would fund tickets to other Alaska locations for those who want them.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
