So I was talking to an architect buddy this morning. Apparently he went to some seminar on affordable housing or some such recently and heard some stats from whatever body was doing the presentation. 2000ish chronically homeless in Austin, another 7-9000 temp homeless out on the streets on any given night was the number thrown around. For each one COA spends $220,000/year on police, ems, outreach, etc. If you put them in some sort of housing that drops to $90,000. Hence the current push to put them in beds by city council.
What he (and I) don't get is how you just put it one neighborhood. There is no way this will ever be equitable, but to just dump this one facility in South Austin is not only unfair, but a drop in the bucket to the scope of the problem. This facility is slated for 100 beds. ARCH is losing 60. Kitchen's response to this issue in our neighborhood has always been reactionary and minimalistic. This just continues the trend.
Meanwhile my neighborhood is getting less safe. It was actually promising how many new young families have moved in in the last 4 years. I expect them to migrate out if this moves in. We probably will too.