San Francisco and Humboldt County officials are trading barbs over Mayor London Breed’s plans to more aggressively promote a city program that funds the relocation of homeless people to other communities to which they have family or other ties.

During their meeting Tuesday, Humboldt County supervisors discussed sending a draft letter addressed to Breed questioning whether San Francisco is ensuring that the homeless it buses actually get housing and jobs.

“We are concerned that providing bus passes to other districts without verifying access to housing, family support or employment will not alleviate homelessness; it will simply relocate the person to another district,” the letter said.

The supervisors were responding to a recent report in the San Francisco Standard that found that Sacramento, Los Angeles and Humboldt counties will be the top three destinations for homeless people bused out of San Francisco as of September 2023.

“We don’t need to be a dumping ground,” Humboldt County Executive Rex Bohn said at the meeting. “The cost of providing for a homeless person who has nothing up here is high.”

Breed’s office believes the idea that San Francisco is dumping its homeless problems on the north side is exaggerated. People from Humboldt County have also been sent south, Breed said.

Last year, San Francisco helped five people move to Humboldt County, which in turn sent four people to the City by the Bay, according to data from both jurisdictions.

Humboldt County’s concerns center on a San Francisco program called Journey Home, which Breed launched in fall 2023 to help homeless people return to their home states or move to other cities in California where they have family, friends or a shared history. The city will cover the cost of bus, plane or train rides and provide a meal subsidy.

The program is a key part of Breed’s high-profile campaign to more aggressively clear out the massive tent encampments that have mushroomed across the city in recent years. The campaign, launched in July, is being spurred by a key U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 28 that gives local communities more legal power to ban homeless people from sleeping in public spaces.

In recent weeks, social workers, assisted by police officers, have been roaming the city, asking people to dismantle their tents, offering them treatment and shelter, and issuing summonses if they refuse help.

As part of the initiative, Breed issued an executive order on August 1 requiring social workers to offer free relocation assistance to homeless people who are not from San Francisco through Journey Home “before providing other city services, including housing and shelter.”

An estimated 8,300 people live homeless in San Francisco, about half of them sleeping in makeshift shelters in parks and on sidewalks, according to the city’s Office of Homelessness and Assisted Housing. About 40% of people living on the streets reported being non-San Francisco residents, according to the city’s 2024 homeless survey.

Humboldt County, about 300 miles to the north, also struggles with homelessness. While the number of homeless is much smaller—about 1,600 people are living without permanent housing—in a harsh rural area with far fewer resources, local authorities are struggling to meet the demand.

“It is not as if Humboldt has experienced an influx of homeless people sent to the county from San Francisco,” Christine Messinger, spokeswoman for the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in a statement.

“The reason is that the county and member agencies of the Humboldt Housing and Homelessness Coalition are already realizing that our resources to serve the people living here are stretched thin, and an influx of new people could impact those efforts.”

As part of its efforts to get people into housing, Humboldt County also operates a relocation assistance program. Last year, the county helped 142 people travel to locations across the country, Messinger said, including the four who moved to San Francisco. Nearly 100 others were denied assistance.

But supervisors who criticize San Francisco’s approach say Humboldt’s program is much more burdensome, requiring county staff to verify that participants have family, friends and job opportunities and to check in with people at the other end of their journey.

In contrast, Bohn said, San Francisco did not track people who moved to Humboldt County to ensure that they arrived safely and found employment and permanent housing.

“All you have to do is ask, ‘I want to go here,’ and you get a bus ticket and you can go. No more steps, nothing else,” said Bohn.

Moreover, he said, San Francisco essentially offers homeless people a choice between leaving the city or taking legal action.

“I don’t want to hurt San Francisco’s feelings,” he said. “But then again, I don’t care.”

Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Breed, dismissed the notion that San Francisco was moving homeless people out of the city without due diligence. He said Journey Home helps “reunite them with friends, families or communities where they previously lived.” Before people were bused to Humboldt, city staff spoke with family members or friends who said they “wanted them.”

And while he acknowledged that Humboldt County is one of the more popular Journey Home destinations, he said the numbers are low.

In addition to the five people sent to Humboldt County last year, six were sent to Sacramento, five to Los Angeles and 13 to other parts of the state, according to Cretan. Seven people were transferred to Nevada and nine to Oregon.

Cretan said he was not aware of any obligation on the part of city staff to provide care for Journey Home participants after they are relocated. But he added, “Sometimes you can’t find people. That’s the reality.”

Humboldt officials have put formalizing the draft letter to Breed on hold for now. Messinger said district officials would contact staff in San Francisco directly “to have further discussions before making a final decision on whether to send a letter to the mayor.”