When most people think of long-distance trips, the four main viable transportation options are cars, planes, trains, and buses. In terms of the latter option, the Greyhound company is often the top contender for use. The popular bus company, however, has also been used to relocate specific demographics for decades—so much so that a term has been created to address the phenomenon: Greyhound Therapy.
The term Greyhound Therapy refers to authorities, either mental health or governmental, providing individuals with ‘free’ one-way tickets to transport them from one jurisdiction to another, often one thought to be better resourced and equipped to handle these so-called “troubled” . Some cities that offer these tickets, such as Key West, Florida, go as far as banning individuals from returning to their location of origin upon acceptance of the relocation . The term Greyhound Therapy originally, however, referred specifically to the solution some mental health facilities used in the mid-20th century to rid themselves of psychiatric patients, but in modern times has been adopted by some to refer to how cities and states handle their unhoused .
As cities across the country grew, so did their unhoused populations. This growth created material constraints for cities and states and often created economically and politically charged environments. As a result, Greyhound Therapy in practice took on different monikers (such as patient dumping and homeless dumping) but became formally adopted in municipal and state policy. In San Francisco, for example, the practice of Greyhound Therapy serves as the foundation of the city’s program. Meanwhile in New York City’s relocation program, the city pays to relocate an unhoused individual not just to other mainland cities with large unhoused populations, but also to Puerto Rico or to other foreign entirely.
The existence of these programs is meant to, ideally, aid in relocating people to areas where they have a support system and to alleviate the economic and resource strain experienced by growing cities with large unhoused populations, as these programs are a cost-effective and simpler way to address immediate political and fiscal . These programs have been criticized, however, for not having proper checks in place to ensure the relocated individual is safe and accounted for and instead have been accused of increasing the likelihood of a person returning to the streets. In addition, many have argued that such programs merely transfer the issue to another city or state rather than actually addressing the underlying causes of .
Okay, so what? Why do I bring this up?
In recent news, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis boarded around fifty migrants and sent them to one of the wealthiest areas in Massachusetts: Martha’s . Many across the country were struck by the move, a blatant and highly visual example of forced relocation, and were quick to use the situation to push partisan talking points. But forced relocation is a common political tactic in the West. In the US alone, Native populations were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, Japanese Americans were forcibly placed in internment camps, and unhoused and mentally ill individuals, as discussed at the beginning of this article, are at times forcibly relocated to locations unfamiliar to them.
While the prior stated examples were all legally authorized and even supported, enough cannot be said about the impact such actions have on the human beings involved. It is easy to move things from one location to another, but human beings (no matter their legal status and circumstance) are not things to merely transport and dump in a new location. While much can be said about how governments should craft humane policy to address migrants, the unhoused, the disabled, and other groups deemed troublesome enough to remove from public view and consciousness, one thing must always be paramount in how these discussions and those we have on a day to day, are had. At the center of it all are human beings that deserve respect and dignity. Failure to place this fact at the core of such conversations has and will continue to have deadly consequences.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of 老司机传媒. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, 老司机传媒 or the Seventh-day Adventist church.