Dave Bronson wants to save homeless people from cold death, he says. The Mayor of Anchorage wants to give free plane tickets to people living on the streets. This should enable them to move to their families within the state borders or to warmer regions of the country. If that’s what they want, he emphasizes.
With nearly 300,000 residents, Anchorage is Alaska’s largest city and home to nearly 40 percent of the state’s total population. According to the mayor, however, nearly two-thirds of all homeless people in Alaska live in his city, making the problem state-wide.
“I’m not going to be responsible for people freezing to death on the street,” says Bronson. According to him, never before have so many people frozen to death on the streets of Anchorage as in the past year. During the pandemic, an event hall was converted into an emergency shelter for the homeless, but it is no longer available for this purpose. This is now bringing the other facilities to their capacity limits. According to Bronson, no agreement has yet been reached on the details of new housing and supply counters.
However, the situation is urgent. In winter, temperatures in Anchorage regularly fall below minus 20 degrees Celsius. It is almost impossible to survive on the road in these weather conditions. The estimated 750 homeless people currently in Anchorage are doomed to die during the cold months. The free flight tickets are therefore a cheap solution to an acute problem. The mayor told the Anchorage Daily News that he has “one moral right, and that is to save lives.” And if that means giving people “a few hundred bucks to go where they want to go,” then he’ll do it.
According to the city’s homelessness commissioner, a plane ticket costs about the same as staying in a homeless shelter for six to 10 days. How Bronson will fund the project is still unclear. But criticism is already coming from the ranks of the city council. A significant proportion of the homeless are Alaska Natives, the chairman criticized the newspaper. “This is her place. There is no other place for her.”
However, the mayor’s idea is not entirely new. The Christian organization “Salvation Army” or “Salvation Army” had already bought flight tickets for the homeless last year after the city had closed the emergency accommodation in the event hall.
Quellen: Anchorage Daily News, “Alaska Public Media”
