Dave Bronson, mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, wants to give homeless people in his region a one-way ticket to warmer climates before winter, a "desperate measure" as 29 people have died due to exposure in the past year, he said.
"We have something much of the lower 48 doesn't have; we have winter, and it gets cold here, and we really don't have a functioning shelters system," Bronson said Friday on Newsmax's "National Report."
"Here we are spending a great deal of money on housing, so we are successful in that. But at the end of the day, we need to move people out of a moral imperative, to allow anyone that wants to go to a warmer climate or, say, back to their home.
"I need to help these people if they want to make that decision, support that decision, because at the end of the day, the moral imperative is to keep people alive, and quite frankly, someone is better off ... warm and alive on the street in the lower 48 than they are dead on the street here in Anchorage due to exposure so, sure, desperate times, desperate measures."
Last year, eight people — a record for the city — died of exposure in Anchorage. The closure of a large arena earlier this year that served as a makeshift city shelter is sure to exacerbate the crisis in a place where winter temperatures regularly dip below zero.
If the program moves forward, people can choose to relocate to the lower 48 or somewhere else in Alaska where it might be warmer or where they have relatives.
With the pandemic, officials configured the roughly 6,000-seat Sullivan Arena to be a mass-care facility. It has served more than 500 homeless people in the winters until city officials decided to return it to its original purpose of hosting concerts and hockey games.
While some smaller shelters have opened, there is no large care facility in Anchorage, and homeless services are limited. Nine other smaller shelters provide 614 beds for the homeless.
Bronson's sudden proclamation comes at a time of political tension over the homelessness crisis between the Republican mayor and the liberal-leaning Anchorage Assembly.
Bronson said he isn't forcing anyone to leave.
"We would like no one to leave the state," he told Newsmax. "But when you're homeless, and we have no place to help you with no shelter, we have to resort to these kinds of measures."
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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