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Santa Monica business owner offering one-way flights to get homeless out of California
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A Santa Monica business owner has launched a grassroots initiative to address California’s growing homelessness crisis, stepping in where he says city and Los Angeles County leaders have failed to act.
Roughly three weeks ago, Santa Monica property owner John Alle and fellow business owners in the southern California city hatched a plan to help reduce homelessness on their streets, through a targeted and voluntary family reunification program. Their goal is to assist individuals who have been homeless for less than a year and are actively seeking help, by reuniting them with loved ones in their hometowns — where they’re more likely to get the support they need to succeed.
Through the nonprofit Alle co-founded, the Santa Monica Coalition, a small group of local donors personally fund travel expenses for these trips. They’ve also implemented an AI-powered hotline to efficiently handle the flood of incoming requests.
Since the program’s launch in June, the hotline has received over 500 calls, and they’ve completed the reunification process for eight people so far, according to Alle.
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Homeless encampments line the boardwalk on Venice Beach in Los Angeles. (Reuters)
“I think it’s a scalable solution that’ll work over and over because there’s motivation,” Alle told Fox News Digital. “And this is valuable as an asset when cities and counties are desperate for fixes right now and spending way too much with no results and missing funds.”
Alle shared videos of two people boarding trains and planes to their homes in Pennsylvania and Wyoming this week through the program. They talked about feeling unsafe living in California and wanting to reunite with their families.
Alle hopes to eventually transition the project to a nonprofit organization that is equally committed to the reunification model. He believes the simple strategy is going to have a bigger impact than “housing and other expensive, frankly, go-nowhere methods that are being tried and have been tried over the last three or four years” by the local government.
“The homelessness and the crime is increasing at the same rate as the increase in funding. And that’s not a good sign. It shows it’s not working,” he said.
Alle said the program isn’t intended to help everyone, but it is one step in the right direction.
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People and the homeless spend time in an area known for illegal drug use at the corner of Alvarado Street and Wilshire Blvd. in MacArthur Park, in the Westlake District on December 12, 2024. (Getty Images)
“There’s different levels of homelessness,” Alle said. “There’s mentally ill people who need drastic help, institutional help, that we’re not equipped to help. And there are drug addicts, alcohol addicted, that need help with special programs. Our program is focused on those that have been here for less than a year, and they’re motivated. They’re contacting us.”
Participation in the program is open to anyone who meets a few key criteria. Candidates must have identification to travel through the airport, and a family member or friend must commit to receiving them upon arrival. Alle’s team personally verifies these arrangements with family beforehand to confirm their willingness and capability. Each participant must also sign a waiver agreeing that they are going along with the program of their own accord.
Alle says the county and city’s solutions aren’t helping the situation and have made the tourist destination a hotbed for violent crime and homelessness.
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Santa Monica, California business owner says businesses are hurting and residents feel unsafe in the area due to rampant crime and homelessness. (iStock)
“Our city has been taken over by the mentally ill and addicted who desperately need help,” the Santa Monica Coalition says in a flyer on their website telling people to stay away from the city. “Sadly, many of them refuse shelter and services. The City Manager and City Leaders hide behind policy adoptions and limitations as their reasoning for not taking action towards resolving the human catastrophe at hand. Meanwhile, their lack of political will makes for everyone’s loss.”
Santa Monica residents and business owners who make up the nonprofit are calling on city leaders to take action on the city’s rising crime and homelessness.
“We’re really trying to push our city leaders, who have been ignoring the depravity on the streets, the crime, the theft, the homelessness that’s not being addressed,” Alle told Fox News Digital.
The coalition filed a lawsuit against the LA County Public Health Department, its director, Barbara Ferrer and the Venice Family Clinic, last year over the county’s needle distribution program to the homeless. Clean needles are handed out as part of the county’s “harm reduction” effort, which also includes the overdose-reversal drug Naloxone.
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A sign on a wall next to Langer’s Deli urges LA Mayor Karen Bass to resign in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California on May 1, 2025. John Alle says local businesses have urged Bass to keep city streetlights on at night to deter crime. (Getty Images)
The LA County Health Department released a statement in 2024 defending the harm-reduction efforts, saying they are “well demonstrated to reduce overdose deaths, reduce the public use of injectable drugs, reduce transmission of communicable diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis), increase access to substance use services, reduce the use of emergency medical services, and increase public safety.”
Gangs are also a huge problem for business owners and residents’ safety, Alle says. He shared photos of his properties vandalized by MS-13 and other cartels as recently as last week. But he says city officials have turned a blind eye to the problems plaguing Santa Monica.
“It’s gotten out of control,” Alle described the situation. “We’ve got cartels — MS-13 and the 18th street gang, very active in that area. We have crews every day painting up their tagging because if we don’t paint it over the next day, it becomes a competition and a source of friction among the other cartels over who controls the area.”
Gang graffiti on one of John Alle’s properties in LA. (The Santa Monica Coalition)
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health told Fox News Digital that a proposed judgment had been entered in favor of LA County and Ferrer last month in LA County Superior Court regarding the needle distribution lawsuit filed by Alle and the Santa Monica Coalition against county officials.
The Santa Monica City Council told Fox News Digital it already has a reunification program that it started in 2006.
“The city of Santa Monica has a longstanding reunification program administered by our Homelessness Prevention & Intervention (HPI) Division called Project Homecoming. Project Homecoming was launched in 2006 and has reunited over 3200 individuals who are experiencing homelessness within the city of Santa Monica with family and friends living elsewhere. Individuals are identified by our trusted and professional partners who perform outreach within the city of Santa Monica on a daily basis,” a spokesperson for the city said.
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POCATELLO, Idaho — Idaho agriculture officials are taking aggressive action after five Japanese beetles, a highly destructive invasive pest, were detected in Acequia near Rupert, according to information provided by the Idaho Farm Bureau Foundation.
The Idaho Farm Bureau Federation reports the Japanese beetle, a non-native insect that feeds on more than 300 species of agricultural and ornamental plants, poses a significant threat to Idaho agriculture. In response to the discovery, the Idaho State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) has deployed about 800 traps in the Rupert area to determine the extent of the infestation.
“We take an aggressive approach to make sure we don’t see those numbers boom before we can actually handle the situation,” said Vene Stewart, an ISDA pest survey and detection specialist helping lead eradication efforts.
Stewart said Japanese beetles are not selective feeders.
“They eat about 300 different types of flowering plants. Pretty much anything that flowers, they would love to demolish,” Stewart said.
The ISDA is also conducting eradication efforts in Caldwell and Pocatello. Last year, the department detected 160 Japanese beetles in Caldwell and 12 in Pocatello. Residents in those areas, as well as Acequia, may notice the yellow traps used to monitor the pest’s presence.
“We will be treating all three of those areas this year,” Stewart said.
Caldwell, like Acequia, is located in a major agricultural region. About 700 traps have been placed throughout the Caldwell area.
“The Caldwell infestation isn’t moving at all,” Stewart said. “In fact, where we are finding the beetles is getting to be a smaller and smaller area. You like to see that.”
The department has also placed approximately 550 traps in the Pocatello area.
Stewart said eradication efforts require ongoing monitoring and treatment.
“It’s unfortunately not something that we can just treat one time and assume everything’s going to be (OK) the following year,” she said. “It’s something we’re going to have to keep up on.”
According to a recent University of Idaho study, agriculture accounts for one in every nine jobs in Idaho, 17% of total sales and 12% of the state’s gross domestic product.
ISDA officials have worked to eliminate Japanese beetles wherever they appear in Idaho. About 15 years ago, large numbers of the beetles were detected in the Boise area. Officials say the state’s eradication campaign there resulted in no detections in Boise for several years. According to ISDA officials, the effort became the largest documented Japanese beetle eradication in U.S. history.
“We definitely want to protect our agriculture, especially in Caldwell where it is such an agriculture-(rich) area,” Stewart said. “It’s definitely important to the residents and the farmers out there to make sure that we keep our eye on it and make some progress.”
Stewart said the department’s eradication efforts have received support from farmers, local residents and city officials.
Adult Japanese beetles are about a half-inch long with metallic green bodies and copper-colored wing covers. The insects can skeletonize leaves and leave holes in plants while feeding.
Officials warn that if the beetle were to establish a permanent presence in Idaho, it could lead to reduced crop production, increased pesticide use and potential market restrictions through quarantine measures.
Native to Japan, the beetle was first detected in the United States in 1916 and is now found throughout most states east of the Mississippi River.
Although Idaho has preventative measures in place to reduce the risk of introduction from infested states, ISDA officials believe the beetles still arrive by hitchhiking with people moving from affected areas.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Conservation groups are pushing back against a new state mapping tool that identifies federal lands potentially available for development in Nevada.
The governor’s office, in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management Nevada, unveiled the interactive map this week to make it easier to find federal land that may be available for development throughout the state and in the Las Vegas Valley.
“It is shocking to look at the map and see how many lands could potentially be sold off,” said Olivia Tanager, executive director of the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter.
Tanager said she was surprised at how many federal lands were identified for disposal when she first looked at the map.
“Places like Red Rock and Sloan Canyon in Southern Nevada are what draw people to live in Southern Nevada. We cannot continue to develop right up onto the boundaries or perhaps even in these precious places,” Tanager said.
The conservation group says the mapping tool is the latest effort to treat Nevada’s public lands as a real estate inventory rather than a shared public resource.
“We know that a lot of these areas are environmentally sensitive. We know that there are endangered species on these lands,” Tanager said.
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Housing concerns
Lawmakers have proposed using federal lands to create more affordable housing. Several areas at the edges of the Vegas Valley have been identified for potential development on the mapping tool. Tanager said she does not see that as a viable solution.
“The areas on the outskirts or far outside of existing urban areas are wholly inappropriate for affordable housing. Housing that is located that far away from services will never be truly affordable,” Tanager said. “As folks have to live further and further away from resources like schools and grocery stores, transportation costs go up substantially.”
The conservation group says the valley should fill in open lots and build upward within the existing urban core instead of building outward.
“We know that sprawl and developing on the outskirts of the valley worsens air quality as well from increased transportation,” Tanager said. “We know that sprawl is incredibly water-intensive. The further out you build, the harder it is to recapture that water.”
The Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter says treating federal lands as disposable assets could set a dangerous precedent that accelerates privatization efforts and undermines the principle that public lands should remain in public hands for future generations.
Approximately 85% of Nevada’s total land area is owned by the federal government.
The state says the tool is designed to bolster information sharing about federal lands. The mapping tool is available here.
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