Santa Monica business owner offering one-way tickets out of town for homeless people
Fed up with the escalating homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, one man is taking an unconventional but heartfelt approach: buying one-way plane tickets to help people on the streets reconnect with family and friends.
John Alle, a real estate advisory business owner and co-founder of the Santa Monica Coalition, launched a no-questions-asked program last week offering free flights home to unhoused people in LA with ID and someone waiting at their destination.
After a Fox 11 story aired Thursday, Alle said a woman from a San Diego shelter reached out, along with about 25 others.
'We're going to get her a flight on July 3 to Wyoming,' Alle told The Independent on Friday. 'She's been trying to use her disability income to book a flight to see her family there, but she doesn't have enough income to do that and pay her bills for the month.'
Funded by Alle and Santa Monica Coalition donors, the program offers flights and, when needed, bus or train rides to unhoused people, despite LA's billion-dollar spending to address homelessness.
'We're trying to send people home on a bus to Oregon on Monday and Tuesday,' Alle said.
The business owner is frustrated by what he claims are slow, ineffective government efforts.
'The most frustrating part is just to see people that you know have the means to do something and make a difference, but they're trying to go towards another solution that benefits them financially,' Alle said.
Alle and his team came up with the ticket home idea by researching how other countries address homelessness. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government addressed urban homelessness by relocating people to their hometowns, offering temporary shelters, and clearing them from city streets.
'We started thinking creatively in terms of what we would be able to do to create an immediate impact. Otherwise, we just have people lying around in front of City Hall,' Alle said.
While any unhoused person in LA can utilize the program, Alle said they focus on helping women who are subject to becoming victims of crimes and people who have lived on the streets for less than two years, as they have the best chance of reintegrating into society.
'I think if you've been out there more than five or six years, you're pretty much a lifer at that point,' Alle said. 'It's really tough to get people to want to come back inside when they've been out there so long, especially when they've been beaten down by so many elements of what's going on outside.'
If you or someone you know is interested in the homeless relocation program, call (213) 652‑7463.
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