New York City Is a Budget Traveler's Best Friend
Interested in trading New York City for, say, Paris, but don't have the cash to buy a plane ticket? No problem! Pretend you're homeless and the City of New York will gladly pay for it:
The Bloomberg administration, which has struggled with a seemingly intractable problem of homelessness for years, has paid for more than 550 families to leave the city since 2007 ...
... The city, which spends $500,000 a year on the program, employs a local travel agency, Austin Travel, to book one-way tickets for domestic trips. Department of Homeless Services employees do all the planning for international travel ... One set of parents agreed to move to France with their three children to be with the mother's family. The $6,332 travel cost included five plane tickets to Paris and five train tickets to the town of Granville, in the northwest.
To qualify, you'll need to demonstrate you have a relative willing to take you in. Fortunately, there's a Paris version of Craigslist, so you should be able to connect with someone willing to make a trade of some sort.
