Austin Homeless Free for All Ordinance

[ztejas 43,787]

6 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Wait, wut?

Comment from the petition. I liked "Aistin" and "exasperate"

 

[crash_davis 23,184]

or again, ban panhandling, use all this fucking money to hire more cops to enforce littering, panhandling and loitering laws and drive their asses from the city.  i'm tired of my property taxes rising every fucking year to pay for shitheads who are doing nothing to help themselves and are a constant drain to resources and tax dollars.  

[hayden_horn 11,374]

2 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

or again, ban panhandling, use all this fucking money to hire more cops to enforce littering, panhandling and loitering laws and drive their asses from the city.  i'm tired of my property taxes rising every fucking year to pay for shitheads who are doing nothing to help themselves and are a constant drain to resources and tax dollars.  

i'm leaning considerably more in this direction.

in the past, i have viewed most homeless people as mostly benign. some generic panhandling at street intersections with signs, etc, i never thought was a big deal. figure that people need to eat. but the more i see what happens around that sunrise church on manchaca, the more my mind changes. good for them for trying to do good by these people, but the whole area is just getting trashed out. it reminds me of downtown circa 5 - 8 years ago. i was meeting friends for a happy hour at casino, and jesus christ, it was harrowing making the walk from 11th street to 6th street on red river.

it is no longer a benign problem, in my opinion. i think it has gotten dangerous, for the public, but also for the homeless community. there are some real health/crime/trash problems all through the area. and i live at slaughter and manchaca, which is about as far south from ben white one can get, and we are seeing more and more homeless people transiting our little hood to get to some of the green spaces nearby. and with that comes the inevitable trash heaps. sucks.

[Rip76 4,987]

Are is there anything like this in Austin?  No necessarily geared toward gangs.

 

 

[drt 642]

Ya since our first was born we've stopped walking to Radio because that area is now dangerous.  Besides the feces, needles, intoxicated people there, there has also been a few sexual assualts, 1 stabbing, and at least one case of indecent exposure towards the elementary school that I can think off offhand. 

Our kiddo just turned 2, so it's been a pretty steep nosedive and we've been in the neighborhood around 5 years.  We were so pumped when Radio and El Chilito went in for the walkablity factor, but we just don't go to either unless driving.  Shit like this is why people leave for the burbs.

[bonnieblue 542]

9 minutes ago, drt said:

Ya since our first was born we've stopped walking to Radio because that area is now dangerous.  Besides the feces, needles, intoxicated people there, there has also been a few sexual assualts, 1 stabbing, and at least one case of indecent exposure towards the elementary school that I can think off offhand. 

Our kiddo just turned 2, so it's been a pretty steep nosedive and we've been in the neighborhood around 5 years.  We were so pumped when Radio and El Chilito went in for the walkablity factor, but we just don't go to either unless driving.  Shit like this is why people leave for the burbs.

Agreed. I feel ridiculous driving less than a mile over to Radio, but it's gotten a little intense.

[ztejas 43,787]

40 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

or again, ban panhandling, use all this fucking money to hire more cops to enforce littering, panhandling and loitering laws and drive their asses from the city.  i'm tired of my property taxes rising every fucking year to pay for shitheads who are doing nothing to help themselves and are a constant drain to resources and tax dollars.  

Dallas will take up this initiative with you, Austin. You drive them North - we'll drive them South - they can have Waco. 

[phdhorn 6,224]

4 hours ago, Smax said:

Got damn I have GOT to get me one of these!!  LOL!

[atomheartbevo 90,148]

That company is going to rack up a bunch of sales and wonder why.

[Deej 77,312]

1 hour ago, phdhorn said:

Got damn I have GOT to get me one of these!!  LOL!

I bought one. They have a car sticker, as well.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Deej

[MrBig 5,511]

3 hours ago, crash_davis said:

or again, ban panhandling, use all this fucking money to hire more cops to enforce littering, panhandling and loitering laws and drive their asses from the city.  i'm tired of my property taxes rising every fucking year to pay for shitheads who are doing nothing to help themselves and are a constant drain to resources and tax dollars.  

APD has to be more vigilant about panhandling and loitering instead of looking the other way.

A friend of mine is a cop in San Antonio and can’t stand all the panhandlers when he comes to town. SA doesn’t tolerate it the way Austin does.

He can’t resist the urge to roll down his window and yell at them to get the fuck away from the intersection. A lot of them look shocked because cops around here don’t tell them shit.

[PilotsError 2,338]

 

The reason cops don't mess with the homeless is so the problem can get worse and the public outcry will demand more money to hire more cops and give them more toys.  Job security for them.

At this point, the homeless are an occupying force.  

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, ask Chief Manley how well that strategy is working out?  We've been short 10-15% on officers for almost a decade.  My commission keeps getting told to keep public safety bond asks to a dull roar.  But more money for the homeless with little to no tracking metrics?  Abso-fucking-lutely!  You wouldn't believe some of the numbers we're tossing around for the next bond float on this.  Once the city hires the new 'Homeless Czar' (my title, not theirs-I have the official job posting here somewhere---which curiously admits that the city has "almost 3000 homess')... we'll get a finalized proposal.  

[alincoln 2,385]

In recent years, the federal courts have significantly limited the ability of law enforcement to address homelessness.  The Supreme Court has ruled that panhandling is protected by the First Amendment. The 9th Circuit issued a decision last year holding that laws prohibiting "public camping" constitute cruel and unusual punishment if there is insufficient shelter space in the area.  These decisions combined with a lack of prosecution of non-violent drug offenses have basically converted every large western U.S. city into Hamsterdam.  It's probably too late for Austin to do anything because the city will never get in front of the shelter limitations.  The Austin homeless population will continue to increase significantly unless/until the opiate crisis abates and politicians and judges prioritize the reduction of homeless populations.  You think it is bad now, wait five years after the next recession hits and politicians and judges continue to make the problem worse.  The SF human feces app will need an Austin extension sooner than later.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11,830]

16 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

That company is going to rack up a bunch of sales and wonder why.

What you did, I see it.

[MissingInAction 25,331]

16 hours ago, Deej said:

I bought one. They have a car sticker, as well.

Got a link?

[Deej 77,312]

https://txhumor.com/collections/decals/products/dont-california-my-texas-cartoon-decal

 

[Beau Vine 55,069]

On 6/12/2019 at 12:48 PM, ButtFumble said:

they could make a pretty kick ass reality show out of this.....just give all these fuckers live stream cams and pay them to keep them running all the time and operating.....call it Live Hobo or Bums Raw

lets go over to Elmo he is on the upper deck of I-35 with his pants down hanging his ass over the barrier wall shitting on cars on the lower level...hey two police crusiers just drove by and waved to him

hey hey can we cut to Jimbob.....he is at the 7-11 in Guadalupe he just bought a hotdog with lots of mustard, chili, cheese, and jalapenos  and shoved it up his ass bun and all

hey lets check back in on Smokie....yep he is still convulsing on 6th street in front of Midnight Cowboy...is that a police officer nudging him with his foot?

ok I am seeing something going on at the Murphy Oil down south....it looks like our friend Lamar has stripped naked and climbed in the Ice Round Ice box and is masturbating

is that Delton and Frank having a sword fight with double dong dildos in front of the porn store on south I-35.....yes it is lets watch this and see who wins looks like 3 officers are having a betting pool on the winner Delton has the 18" I think he will win

ok back to Smokie it looks like he has pissed himself and is having a "reverse" and is now laying in his own piss and vomit

hey hey back over to east 5th street it looks like Sharmaine was told by Earnie to suck his cock and it turns out that Sharmaine has the cock and Earnie is now sucking it behind the dumpster...look at those huge tits on Earnie

I just have something happening on South Congress....it looks like Rocky and his pit bull are fighting over which one gets to roll around first on a dead skunk in the street.......his pit bull has a serious nose bleed and part of his ear torn off now

[Armin Tamzarian 58]

2 hours ago, alincoln said:

The Supreme Court has ruled that panhandling is protected by the First Amendment.

i'd say that's an overly broad interpretation

Edited June 18, 2019 by Armin Tamzarian

[ztejas 43,787]

22 minutes ago, Armin Tamzarian said:

i'd say that's an overly broad interpretation

My thoughts as well. For example, where do they stand on grifting? Sting operations? Begging? Legal sexual favors? 

[alincoln 2,385]

The reaction of municipalities to the decision is what matters.  They generally have instructed LEOs to not enforce panhandling ordinances (even ordinances designed to comply with the SC ruling) so they don't have to deal with legal challenges funded by homeless advocates.

[Deej 77,312]

26 minutes ago, alincoln said:

The reaction of municipalities to the decision is what matters.  They generally have instructed LEOs to not enforce panhandling ordinances (even ordinances designed to comply with the SC ruling) so they don't have to deal with legal challenges funded by homeless advocates.

Those homeless advocates should start taking the homeless into their homes. I mean, if they really cared. 

[Wally Pryor 5,316]

21 hours ago, crash_davis said:

or again, ban panhandling, use all this fucking money to hire more cops to enforce littering, panhandling and loitering laws and drive their asses from the city.  i'm tired of my property taxes rising every fucking year to pay for shitheads who are doing nothing to help themselves and are a constant drain to resources and tax dollars.  

This City of Austin, our City of Austin, ban panhandling???  Just saw the Easter Bunny a bit ago.  I'll convey to him. 

The maniacal lunatics that run the city are driving it straight into the ground.   

[drt 642]

1 hour ago, Wally Pryor said:

The maniacal lunatics that run the city are driving it straight into the ground.   

This is my first significant interaction with the neighborhood associations that I’ve always heard such terrible things about. Holy shit it’s absurdity in human form. 

[Mappable 37]

The cops have been probably instructed not to do any enforcement against protected demographics like the homeless, immigrants, and low income drivers with paper plates and no insurance.

[Armin Tamzarian 58]

What do we expect police to *do*, exactly, when dealing with the homeless?

[Guest Lobo]

Good question.  You can't just ask them to "move along."  They hang out in the same half dozen clusters around downtown.  And just shift from one to the other.  Putting them in the middle of our entertainment district was beyond ludicrous, even for our city leadership.  I honestly don't give much of a shit, I'll help write up the next bond to meet their demands while still staying fiscally sound.  But it'll just go to waste, but hey---we waste more money on debt service on projects  that aren't even through planning commission  than we spend on homelessness, so what the hell?  

But we gotta stop two things:  The aggressive panhandling downtown, especially by the convention center and the hotels.  The guys that follow you a half block or more, that shout, that get too close to women.  That shit has got to stop before yesterday.  Even visitors from little shithole towns that have never seen a person darker than Edgar Winter know what a guy on a corner with a sign is.  They know you just don't engage and you're okay.  But these fucking guys that get on top of you and don't let up, that's not great Bob.  I know many of them are mentally ill or suffering through addictions, but tourists don't know or care.  That's our problem to address, not theirs.  Whenever I'm meeting folks at the convention center or downtown hotels, as soon as we walk outside---first thing I tell them to do is take off their badges/lanyards.  Do not walk around downtown with one of those on, it makes you a mark---whether it's the homeless or those assholes in red matching shirts on every fucking corner asking for some bullshit for the children.  Second thing we gotta stop is needles and feces.  Sometimes needles stuck in feces.  Sometimes feces shaped like needles.  I can live with the smell of a homeless guy near me on a hot August night.  What I can't deal with is simmering piles of shit outside the Fairmont on a hot August night.  

[TKthunder2 5,040]

16 minutes ago, Armin Tamzarian said:

What do we expect police to *do*, exactly, when dealing with the homeless?

Catch and Release (in Seattle)

[crash_davis 23,184]

we can spend another 1000 pages talking about homelessness, the root causes, and how to maybe fix it.  but i think everyone agrees it's not a local level issue.  it's not san francisco, los angeles, austin, NYC, or any big cities' problem to deal with exclusively.  it's a national problem.

the issue is that the nation is split.  it's almost perfectly split between the city urban centers & some suburbs vs the rural and least populated states and areas.  states in the midwest and less populace states don't have the raging homeless problem that the major cities do.  honestly, who the fuck wants to be homeless in omaha, nebraska or bumfuck, kansas.  as such, the people and representatives from those states probably don't care or even know how large the homeless issue is.  getting them on board with any national program is not going to happen.

so cities like austin are going to have to try to address the issue by themselves, which is to say that they aren't and can't.  i don't want to pay the taxes for austin to have enough funding to appropriately address the issue.  and miraculously if austin succeeded, then no good deed would go unpunished.  the other cities and areas would just send more of their homeless to austin.  FUCK that.

so short of that, kick these homeless fuckers out.  drive their asses to bumfuck midwest state.  maybe only then can we as a nation address the issue.

[Guest Lobo]

I agree it's a localized symptom with national causes.  But my god, if the Feds can't figure out to help a hurricane ravaged gulf coast covering a half dozen states---how the fuck do they know that a homeless center between Red River drugs and 6th street booze is a bad idea?  We're not gonna block-grant our way out of this either, nothing like an unfunded mandate coming down the pike.  But to your point, how do we couple federal efforts to help veterans and addicts and the mentally ill and job training/medical care for all the above altogether with actual real-time physical services like beds and meals and LEO engagement when crimes are being committed by this population?  Ours is especially challenging because almost all of them are densified in our CBD.  Many cities (not all) with large homeless populations don't have that issue.  They are clustered outside the CBD near other resources.  

With the next bond coming, and when you include the non-profit dedication to this issue in our town which is robust---we'll be close to about $15,000/person in addressing the homeless problem.  I know there's other layers to that, it's not clean math---but that should give you some idea of what we're throwing at the problem that is only getting worse.  The good news though is that the Feds and the State and the County have money and platforms and experts there to address underlying issues like veteran's challenges, mental illness, and addiction, and sex workers.  But our Council doesn't listen to that.  They are going to try and bond float our way into solving those issues instead of meaningful partnerships with other governments, non-profits, and private enterprise like DAA (although, they are somewhat in the fold, so maybe a bad example).  Fucking-A, the Salvation Army just finished an overhaul to fit in more families.  Now those parents are scared shitless because their kids are 15 yards away from an overflowing ARCH Center, a drug haven in Red River, and an alley of literally nothing but human shit and drug accessories.  Watch the naivety with which we float this next bond.  Just watch.  

[Orange&White 5,560]

14 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Watch the naivety with which we float this next bond.  Just watch.  

Don't worry. It can be the most ludicrously ridiculous proposal, worded in the most roundabout, backward ass wording, and the Austin voters will line up in droves to approve it without even knowing the repercussions of it.

[The Royal We 3,072]

53 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Fucking-A, the Salvation Army just finished an overhaul to fit in more families.  Now those parents are scared shitless because their kids are 15 yards away from an overflowing ARCH Center, a drug haven in Red River, and an alley of literally nothing but human shit and drug accessories. 

This makes me sad.  I volunteered at that Salvation Army during my time at UT and they were doing some great things for moms with kids that really needed help.  Those kids were always pretty excited to see us coming in to help them with homework or just play games with them for a few hours.  It what world did they think it was a good idea to cram the ARCH center next to that?

[Deej 77,312]

Import booze from the DR. Distribute to homeless. 

[crash_davis 23,184]

13 minutes ago, Deej said:

Import booze from the DR. Distribute to homeless. 

you are executive material.

[Orange&White 5,560]

23 minutes ago, Deej said:

Import booze from the DR. Distribute to homeless. 

Park a truckload of K2 in front of the arch.

[Deej 77,312]

I think we tried that, but EMS kept taking them to the hospital. 

[Trey3216 15,382]

1 hour ago, Deej said:

Import booze from the DR. Distribute to homeless. 

Mix that with the 16.5 tons of cocaine they found at the Port of Philly today.   Should finish the job, and maybe finish it throughout the state 

[Armybrat 41,047]

2 hours ago, The Royal We said:

This makes me sad.  I volunteered at that Salvation Army during my time at UT and they were doing some great things for moms with kids that really needed help.  Those kids were always pretty excited to see us coming in to help them with homework or just play games with them for a few hours.  It what world did they think it was a good idea to cram the ARCH center next to that?

IIRC, there was a lot of opposition from downtown businesses towards the location of the Salvation Army in that area to begin with.

And the morons behind the present location of the ARCH, well they probably don’t want it in their own neighborhood either.

[Deej 77,312]

3 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

And the morons behind the present location of the ARCH, well they probably don’t want it in their own neighborhood either.

That's why it's downtown. 

[Guest Lobo]

City council at least now admits putting it there in the middle of our tourism/convention areas which are also lined with alcohol and drugs and predators wasn’t a great idea.  Finally.  

So what is their plan?   To get you to approve a convention center expansion with more hotels and visitors before they tell you what will happen with the ARCh and/or newly proposed CBD homeless resources/assets.  Pretty damn smart.  They also baked in a massive premium on that rush purchase off Banister.  But they had a schedule of public input that would last for weeks knowing that would never matter.  And compare the donor list of Ann Kitchen with the people involved in that overpriced transaction.  She’s gonna be your next mayor you fucking children.  

[Deej 77,312]

City council should propose partnering with UT to turn Lions into a homeless campground. Homeless would be disappeared within a week.

[workswithseed 2,135]

Maybe Austin should make an arena that release a bunch of homeless against each other. The last one to live gets to live free for the rest of his life.

[Deej 77,312]

Why would they agree to that? Austin is already letting them live free for the rest of their lives.

[Murfdogg21 4,493]

How expensive is it to hand out 3,000 PB&J sandwiches laced with morphine and arsenic? Good night you sweet Princes of Austin, you Kings of the Hill Country!

[David Dennison 19,149]

25 minutes ago, Murfdogg21 said:

How expensive is it to hand out 3,000 PB&J sandwiches laced with morphine and arsenic? Good night you sweet Princes of Austin, you Kings of the Hill Country!

And the homeless women and children? Do we murder them, too?

[BottleRocket 655]

City council should propose partnering with UT to turn Lions into a homeless campground. Homeless would be disappeared within a week.

I said that to my wife yesterday... put them in muni.

[Lhorn 5,045]

1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

And the homeless women and children? Do we murder them, too?

Children...no.  Put them into foster care.  With a stable environment and an education they stand a very good chance of becoming stable, productive members of society.

As for the rest....hey, they gave it a shot.  Somethings things don't work out.  It's PB&J time!  To discriminate based on sex just seems wrong to me.  Sorry.  That's just how I was raised.  

[David Dennison 19,149]

14 minutes ago, Lhorn said:

Children...no.  Put them into foster care.  With a stable environment and an education they stand a very good chance of becoming stable, productive members of society.

As for the rest....hey, they gave it a shot.  Somethings things don't work out.  It's PB&J time!  To discriminate based on sex just seems wrong to me.  Sorry.  That's just how I was raised.  

A modest proposal.

[Trey3216 15,382]

1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

And the homeless women and children? Do we murder them, too?

We wife the women to China since they are lacking women, the children we adopt to Sweden’s parents.  

Edited June 19, 2019 by Trey3216

[atomheartbevo 90,148]

We need to hire this guy to build a shitload of underground homes east of Austin.