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Austin Homeless Free for All Ordinance

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TKthunder2
TKthunder2

Do what San Antonio did.  Spend a couple million on a facility in Far East Austin that is equipped to receive the homeless and parter with local charities, church, community colleges and hospitals to

crash_davis
crash_davis

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/austins-homeless-residents-fear-whats-next-once-camping-ban-takes-effect/ Abigail Wilson is among those who just found out about the Prop B ban. She said sh

Red Five
Red Five

I realize hindsight is 20/20, but perhaps building a gigantic homeless shelter in the middle of downtown Austin wasn't the greatest idea ever. 

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

But most of them don't.

I passionately agree.  I realize it's a series of ever-shifting venn diagrams, but our city leadership (and us!) has got to get its fucking arms around the subsets of our homeless population.  

Who is frictionally homeless?  They kinda oscillate between couch surfing, living in car, and flat out 'homeless' 

Who is chronically homeless?  And why.  How long has it been?  How long have they been homeless in Austin?  How long have they been homeless overall (regardless of city)?

Who is literally in this "some people just prefer to live on the streets fucked up with no responsibility?"  Obviously, I think many folks over-estimate this number but it does exist, I'd say it's probably 10-20%.  

What are the primary and secondary causes of a person's homelessness situation?  Medical, mental health, veteran status, addiction issue, criminal issue, et. al.?  

Who has come here very recently perhaps to seek better services, handouts, quality of "street life", etc.?  

Who has left the Austin homeless population either for more semi-permanent living or even left town? 

As the camps shift around town in accordance with the camping ban, who is suffering most from it and who has actually benefited from it by perhaps utilizing the disruption as a means to obtain access to services or temporary housing?  Not good, bad, or indifferent but what has this upheaval (cruel as it may be) meant for frictional movement versus static movement?  

 

So all that to say...........after 5 goddamn years and 160 million dollars...........why do we not have any solid data on our homeless population?  Anybody wanna fucking figure that out?  I think we can be very impatient and cruel with this vulnerable population.  But I have signed off on way too much fucking money to have nothing to fucking show for at least a baseline assessment of who is homeless, why they're homeless, and how we can help them.  NOT A GODDAMN FUCKING THING.  NO FUCKING BASIC DATA! THINK ABOUT THAT FOR FUCK's SAKE!  This is fucking ridiculous.  It's not a goddamn fucking question of humanity.  It's a question of basic logic.  Before we throw another hundred million at this shit, maybe a basic chart might fucking help?     

ADLER IS JUST A LOCALIZED, PRETEND LEFTIST  VERSION OF TRUMP.  That's it.  That's all he is.  A small-time grifter.  You guys are fucking stupid you don't see it.  And if you do see it, you won't admit it because you're afraid in your ineffectual pussy progressive circles, you're afraid you'll be perceived as not caring. 

five fucking years in, we can't even triage our groups of homeless.  We just see them all, divide us into "don't care or care too much" groupings, and then start stroking checks to buy hotels and then vilify people who voted for the camping ban.  IT"S FUCKING INSANITY.  He's a cocksucking piece of human shit conman.  He's Trump in an even shittier suit.  HOW THE FUCK DO YOU NOT SEE THAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!    You're just as fucking naive as the people you mock while watching maddow.  FUCK ALL OF YOU

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Guest Lobo

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Posted
Posted

It was a sequence of locations not a descriptor comma.  

Some near 35 by campus, some off Lamar by West Campus/Pease Park, and some by the med school (red river and 35).  

Commas mean things in my head, doesn't always translate to written message boards.  My bad.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45735

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, Lobo said:

I passionately agree.  I realize it's a series of ever-shifting venn diagrams, but our city leadership (and us!) has got to get its fucking arms around the subsets of our homeless population.  

Who is frictionally homeless?  They kinda oscillate between couch surfing, living in car, and flat out 'homeless' 

Who is chronically homeless?  And why.  How long has it been?  How long have they been homeless in Austin?  How long have they been homeless overall (regardless of city)?

Who is literally in this "some people just prefer to live on the streets fucked up with no responsibility?"  Obviously, I think many folks over-estimate this number but it does exist, I'd say it's probably 10-20%.  

What are the primary and secondary causes of a person's homelessness situation?  Medical, mental health, veteran status, addiction issue, criminal issue, et. al.?  

Who has come here very recently perhaps to seek better services, handouts, quality of "street life", etc.?  

Who has left the Austin homeless population either for more semi-permanent living or even left town? 

As the camps shift around town in accordance with the camping ban, who is suffering most from it and who has actually benefited from it by perhaps utilizing the disruption as a means to obtain access to services or temporary housing?  Not good, bad, or indifferent but what has this upheaval (cruel as it may be) meant for frictional movement versus static movement?  

 

So all that to say...........after 5 goddamn years and 160 million dollars...........why do we not have any solid data on our homeless population?  Anybody wanna fucking figure that out?  I think we can be very impatient and cruel with this vulnerable population.  But I have signed off on way too much fucking money to have nothing to fucking show for at least a baseline assessment of who is homeless, why they're homeless, and how we can help them.  NOT A GODDAMN FUCKING THING.  NO FUCKING BASIC DATA! THINK ABOUT THAT FOR FUCK's SAKE!  This is fucking ridiculous.  It's not a goddamn fucking question of humanity.  It's a question of basic logic.  Before we throw another hundred million at this shit, maybe a basic chart might fucking help?     

ADLER IS JUST A LOCALIZED, PRETEND LEFTIST  VERSION OF TRUMP.  That's it.  That's all he is.  A small-time grifter.  You guys are fucking stupid you don't see it.  And if you do see it, you won't admit it because you're afraid in your ineffectual pussy progressive circles, you're afraid you'll be perceived as not caring. 

five fucking years in, we can't even triage our groups of homeless.  We just see them all, divide us into "don't care or care too much" groupings, and then start stroking checks to buy hotels and then vilify people who voted for the camping ban.  IT"S FUCKING INSANITY.  He's a cocksucking piece of human shit conman.  He's Trump in an even shittier suit.  HOW THE FUCK DO YOU NOT SEE THAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!    You're just as fucking naive as the people you mock while watching maddow.  FUCK ALL OF YOU

Well that seemed uncalled for. 

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Guest Lobo

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Posted
Posted (edited)

Well, I've always been a strong closer.  

But yeah, my rants aside---anybody else find it weird we don't even have a working chart/model from which to figure out what "types of homeless" we have in Austin and how to help each group?  Not saying we need to break it down block-by-block, person-by-person, but it's insane and illegal and immoral that we don't have a rough breakdown.  Sorry folks, you know the ledge on to which I walked a couple years ago with regard to Trump and his "GOP"...but Adler is just a smaller time version of that with worse suits and better ties.  

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Bozo_Casanova

Bozo_Casanova 26553

Posted
Posted (edited)

@Lobo It’s funny how you say “we” like people who work with the homeless don’t have this info or know this stuff.  Of course they have a working model for how many people are in each category and what it takes to help. You don’t. They do. 

That’s the real mess this council made- to poison the well for people who actually know what they are talking about. 
 

Of course the upshot is that it doesn’t matter- I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: this city is one of the worst places to be homeless in America. The citizens of our town don’t give a fuck but like to pretend they do. That’s a toxic combination. Even if you, Todd and Donn, @Wally Pryor and whoever else had a handy chart with a clear explainer on it, it wouldn’t matter. They could mail it to everyone.
 

At the end of the day We the People of this city would have to see and help ugly, poor, disordered people, and sadly our actions say We would rather they not exist. Alan Graham is the exception. The rule is rape, violence, disease, and indifference. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Guest Lobo

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Sorry I used the wrong "we."  Fair point.  But you'd think after 5 years of asking for good data and demographic breakdowns on the homeless populations for purposes of affordable housing/homelessness bonds...I'd be given some decent piece of information.  Even some perfunctory "chart."  But nope, it's obfuscated at every turn and we both know why.  

Our city's paper got downgraded by one agency. It'll be downgraded by another one in early 2022.  It's due to, in small part but a part nonetheless, to shit like this.  We just dump a bunch of paper onto the muni market, start paying service on it, and then figure out what to actually spend it on later.  Homelessness services, housing acquisitions, and affordable housing platforms are a marked cause of that.  I'll be kicked off my commissioner role soon enough but I'll try my damndest to poke some holes in Casar and Adler's legacy on my way down.  They are beyond fraudulent.  They are stealing from the homeless people you're trying to say I don't give a shit about.  Let's figure out something to work on together because these two fucknuggets ain't doing shit but grifting and smiling.  

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45735

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, Lobo said:

I'll be kicked off my commissioner role soon enough but I'll try my damndest to poke some holes in Casar and Adler's legacy on my way down.  They are beyond fraudulent.  They are stealing from the homeless people you're trying to say I don't give a shit about.  Let's figure out something to work on together because these two fucknuggets ain't doing shit but grifting and smiling.  

Do you have the opportunity in your role to call them out for their grifting?  I really don’t know what you do, but if you’re on your way out anyway, can you air their bullshit to the masses?  At least in the public record somehow?

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Guest Lobo

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Posted (edited)

Yeah, I've got a little over a year left plus I'm usually having had a liquid lunch before the hearings.  So yeah, I'm planning on going out in a blaze of glory. 

The shit I have on Adler is minute, but amounts to a bit if people can hear it out for an hour.  Which, they won't.  But the way we sell paper and pay debt service when we have zero intention of spending it, so we can shuffle it to our main capital expenditures account before anybody notices, is criminal.  It's the reason we got one agency who took us down a level despite everyone in America thinking we are awash in dolla dolla bills yo.  We've been locked out of the books for the last year or so but they're opening them back up again for the 2021-22 bond election cycle.  So I suspect there'll be more bad news.  The shitty thing is, if we act honestly and forthright...all we'll do is cost our fellow citizens more money in interest payments while Casar and Adler get well in the meantime.  Adler's wife is in on it, his friends at title companies (mainly one) are in on it, and 3 of the sites that are earmarked for new homeless "relocation" are adjacent to places his ex-business partner (soon to be future business partner again, after office) is going to buy on the cheap before those camps are once again moved and he gets to buy back in at a lower cost basis.  He's a piece of shit but he ain't stupid.  We've going back into the books next month, I'll have more for y'all then.  

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5263

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

@Lobo It’s funny how you say “we” like people who work with the homeless don’t have this info or know this stuff.  Of course they have a working model for how many people are in each category and what it takes to help. You don’t. They do. 

That’s the real mess this council made- to poison the well for people who actually know what they are talking about. 
 

Of course the upshot is that it doesn’t matter- I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: this city is one of the worst places to be homeless in America. The citizens of our town don’t give a fuck but like to pretend they do. That’s a toxic combination. Even if you, Todd and Donn, @Wally Pryor and whoever else had a handy chart with a clear explainer on it, it wouldn’t matter. They could mail it to everyone.
 

At the end of the day We the People of this city would have to see and help ugly, poor, disordered people, and sadly our actions say We would rather they not exist. Alan Graham is the exception. The rule is rape, violence, disease, and indifference. 

Don't ever lump me into a sentence with Todd Jeffery.  I've said it on this thread and I'll say it again - the day won't come soon enough when his larynx gets sliced into pieces.  He seems to hate the homeless.   I simply hate public camping.   I'm more than happy to see my tax dollars go toward helping out those in need, as there are a bunch that need it. That in itself is a separate discussion.   I'm not more than happy to see my tax dollars  frivolously melting away in an unaudited pot overseen by the tribe of lunatics running this city.   Very few people in Austin are heartless bastards who hate the homeless and don't want to see them helped.    But there are many who do  hate the city leaders masquerading as champions for the homeless when they are simply trying to line their pockets with money designed to help them.

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Bozo_Casanova

Bozo_Casanova 26553

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Wally Pryor said:

Don't ever lump me into a sentence with Todd Jeffery. I've said it on this thread and I'll say it again - the day won't come soon enough when his larynx gets sliced into pieces.  He seems to hate the homeless.   I simply hate public camping.   I'm more than happy to see my tax dollars go toward helping out those in need, as there are a bunch that need it. That in itself is a separate discussion.   I'm not more than happy to see my tax dollars  frivolously melting away in an unaudited pot overseen by the tribe of lunatics running this city.   Very few people in Austin are heartless bastards who hate the homeless and don't want to see them helped.    But there are many who do  hate the city leaders masquerading as champions for the homeless when they are simply trying to line their pockets with money designed to help them.

 

I apologize, and that's a fair perspective. But that touches on what I was getting at - I could have lumped myself into that list as well. It doesn't matter that "very few people in Austin are heartless." Of course we as individuals like the idea of lifting people out of despair. But as a community, collectively, we simply refuse to do the work. And homelessness is not unique. It's also our problem with affordability, it's also our problem with transit and sprawl, it's also our problem with economic segregation and inequality, it's also the problem with our schools, etc. We don't do anything. This city is a bad place to be homeless for the same reason it's a bad place to be a public school child or somebody who makes $60k/yr working for the state: this place isn't here for them. 

We study. We dialogue. We argue, we appoint commissions. But almost none of them get anything accomplished, because none of those things can produce what the people of this community really want: a time machine back to the golden past when the world was young, beer was cheap, and everyone was beautiful. 

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David Dennison

David Dennison 18946

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Wally Pryor said:

Don't ever lump me into a sentence with Todd Jeffery.  I've said it on this thread and I'll say it again - the day won't come soon enough when his larynx gets sliced into pieces.  He seems to hate the homeless.   I simply hate public camping.   I'm more than happy to see my tax dollars go toward helping out those in need, as there are a bunch that need it. That in itself is a separate discussion.   I'm not more than happy to see my tax dollars  frivolously melting away in an unaudited pot overseen by the tribe of lunatics running this city.   Very few people in Austin are heartless bastards who hate the homeless and don't want to see them helped.    But there are many who do  hate the city leaders masquerading as champions for the homeless when they are simply trying to line their pockets with money designed to help them.

Perhaps, but most Austin homeowners do not want to see low income housing built anywhere near their neighborhoods. They favor helping the homeless as long as it happens somewhere else.

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dcar00

dcar00 14365

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Posted

I have to admit I didn't think they would get to 183. this article says they picked 4 spots for the HEAL thing.  Looks like that may be it for a while.  Oak Knoll was a disaster with a small intersection and tons of tents comparatively and a liquor store 50 yards away.

apparently they had cops in the neighborhood to prevent them from just going towards the canyons/school/park areas.

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/homeless/austin-homeless-heal-initiative-highway-183-oak-knoll-relocation/269-d09e5261-6b52-42c0-a550-a3dcf16fa6e7

still tents at other 183 intersections but seems some folks are moving on their own knowing the end is near.

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hornian

hornian 5223

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, dcar00 said:

I have to admit I didn't think they would get to 183. this article says they picked 4 spots for the HEAL thing.  Looks like that may be it for a while.  Oak Knoll was a disaster with a small intersection and tons of tents comparatively and a liquor store 50 yards away.

apparently they had cops in the neighborhood to prevent them from just going towards the canyons/school/park areas.

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/homeless/austin-homeless-heal-initiative-highway-183-oak-knoll-relocation/269-d09e5261-6b52-42c0-a550-a3dcf16fa6e7

still tents at other 183 intersections but seems some folks are moving on their own knowing the end is near.

Yeah, Spicewood/McNeil and 183 still shitty. One exit up. 

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dcar00

dcar00 14365

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, hornian said:

Yeah, Spicewood/McNeil and 183 still shitty. One exit up. 

the other day there was some burned out tahoe next to tents at that intersection.  It kept getting moved around. not sure if it is still there.

there seemed to be some stuff going on at Braker and 183 today.  fire truck and cop cars.  not sure if it was a clean up situation though.

Alter had said on her website that they were hearing mostly about Oak Knoll and 183 so maybe that is why it got put on the list of 4.  Also, they had a homeless guy stab someone at the Academy a while back so that may have had something to do with picking that location.  The motel near there always has some drug or other criminal shit going on as well.

We'll see if they keep at it.

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dcar00

dcar00 14365

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Perhaps, but most Austin homeowners do not want to see low income housing built anywhere near their neighborhoods. They favor helping the homeless as long as it happens somewhere else.

I still don't understand why they don't take some of those apartment complexes near Far West/Mopac or other areas and just raze them and build 6 or 7 story complexes.

Or take 7 or 8 stories in the downtown high rises(maybe the W) and make them homeless/low income. 

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DonkeyCigars

DonkeyCigars 143

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, dcar00 said:

I still don't understand why they don't take some of those apartment complexes near Far West/Mopac or other areas and just raze them and build 6 or 7 story complexes.

Or take 7 or 8 stories in the downtown high rises(maybe the W) and make them homeless/low income. 

Imagine having gone to UT and lived in Jester, a high rise full of insane, low-income, transitional people (and some with drug and booze addictions) and having barely survived the wild shenanigans as you cheated death...and then wanting to create a Jester but for adults with all these same issues, but times a billion.

The building wouldn't survive a year.

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5263

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Posted

City audit on homeless spending...."There is no complete inventory of agreements and associated spending for the City’s homelessness assistance efforts, and we could not determine the number of these agreements due to limitations with available data."

What a surprise.  

 

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/homeless/city-of-austin-homelessness-spending-audit/269-97133aae-7187-4383-b582-b5edaf4f5957

 

 

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Guest Lobo

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Posted
Posted
On 9/2/2021 at 8:45 AM, Biff Tannen said:

Shit, my company is just forcing everyone to come back to the office.  We got a big ass brand new building and by god, people are going to use it!

Where's your new building out of curiosity?  

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TexasBeta

TexasBeta 1266

Posted
Posted
On 9/2/2021 at 1:29 AM, DonkeyCigars said:

Imagine having gone to UT and lived in Jester, a high rise full of insane, low-income, transitional people (and some with drug and booze addictions) and having barely survived the wild shenanigans as you cheated death...and then wanting to create a Jester but for adults with all these same issues, but times a billion.

The building wouldn't survive a year.

Could we install cameras and live stream it? Maybe charge for watching it.. Like a "homeless survivor"... That could generate the fees needed to fund these programs... Or... maybe just bring back the Roman Colosseum, complete with lions and entertain the masses w/ the current homeless population? *kidding.. kind of 

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TexasBeta

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Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Wally Pryor said:

City audit on homeless spending...."There is no complete inventory of agreements and associated spending for the City’s homelessness assistance efforts, and we could not determine the number of these agreements due to limitations with available data."

What a surprise.  

 

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/homeless/city-of-austin-homelessness-spending-audit/269-97133aae-7187-4383-b582-b5edaf4f5957

 

 

I heard on the radio that the spend was north of $148 Millions... Surely that can't be correct? How much does a bus ticket cost?

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Guest Lobo

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If you combine the City's expenditures, the portion of the affordable housing bond and its corresponding debt service, and what Travis County just announced they were going to spend in the next budget cycle...the number approaches $300mm.  Granted that's spread over a few years, but that's $100,000/homeless person and $0 if it goes to social work/mental illness/addiction treatment/triage services/or job training.  

But if you don't agree to kick in more, you're a heartless asshole! 

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5263

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Posted

A partnership between the city and community leaders expects to spend $515 million over the next three years to address Austin's homelessness crisis, and it has commitments in place for about $400 million of that goal, according to the city's top homelessness official and consortium leaders.

The funds are part of an ambitious plan crafted by the Summit to Address Unsheltered Homelessness, a consortium of elected officials and other local leaders, with a goal of finding housing for 3,000 currently unsheltered people over the course of three years.

That leaves a gap of $115 million, Dianna Grey, the city's homeless strategy officer, said in a report to the Austin City Council. 

About $16 million of the $400 million that has already been allocated or committed is from the private sector.  The city accounts for $210 million of the committed dollars, with that total including $106 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. Additional funding for the summit's effort includes $57 million from Travis County, $92 million from the state government, $22 million from Austin's housing authority and $4 million from Ending Community Homelessness Coalition's federal funding.

 

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Guest Lobo

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Posted

Uh, $172,000/person?  

$515mm for 2022, 2023, and 2024?

When we've already spent $285 million over the last 3 years.  

So $800mm over 6 years to house 3,000 people?  And none of it appears earmarked for mental health, addiction counseling, or job training?  

I mean, come the fuck on Progressive Austin...I know publicly to 'out-progressive' your friend who voluntarily lived in a homeless camp for a week, you have to say something like, "Oh, it's about time we're finally getting serious about the homeless situation and their needs!"  But come the fuck on...you can at least be honest with yourself and Adler/Casar on Surlyhorns.  How much longer can you delude yourself into thinking, "Hey, maybe that guy screaming at parking meters while shaking uncontrollably needs something else besides a $200,000 condo.  Nah, we'll just get him the condo."  

How is that humane?  How is that progressive?  How is that compassionate?  

Also, that this is revealed during the heated Prop-A debate is awfully telling if you think about it.  

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MissingInAction

MissingInAction 25183

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 9/23/2021 at 2:01 PM, Lobo said:

If you combine the City's expenditures, the portion of the affordable housing bond and its corresponding debt service, and what Travis County just announced they were going to spend in the next budget cycle...the number approaches $300mm.  Granted that's spread over a few years, but that's $100,000/homeless person and $0 if it goes to social work/mental illness/addiction treatment/triage services/or job training.  

But if you don't agree to kick in more, you're a heartless asshole! 

Maybe I should be a homeless person.

Instead of building or buying shit lets give each homeless wretch a cash payment of 117k and see what happens.

Edited by MissingInAction
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ChickenSandwich

ChickenSandwich 9852

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Lobo said:

Uh, $172,000/person?  

$515mm for 2022, 2023, and 2024?

When we've already spent $285 million over the last 3 years.  

So $800mm over 6 years to house 3,000 people?  And none of it appears earmarked for mental health, addiction counseling, or job training?  

I mean, come the fuck on Progressive Austin...I know publicly to 'out-progressive' your friend who voluntarily lived in a homeless camp for a week, you have to say something like, "Oh, it's about time we're finally getting serious about the homeless situation and their needs!"  But come the fuck on...you can at least be honest with yourself and Adler/Casar on Surlyhorns.  How much longer can you delude yourself into thinking, "Hey, maybe that guy screaming at parking meters while shaking uncontrollably needs something else besides a $200,000 condo.  Nah, we'll just get him the condo."  

How is that humane?  How is that progressive?  How is that compassionate?  

Also, that this is revealed during the heated Prop-A debate is awfully telling if you think about it.  

You left out the $125,000,000 ARCH part 2 facility they call a public library downtown.

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Guest Lobo

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Posted
Posted

Here’s a fun exercise,

ask a member of Council what metrics/requirements must be met, for the purposes of being granted housing benefits by the city, To constitute “homelessness”.  
 

172k dollars says they can’t answer correctly

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David Dennison

David Dennison 18946

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

Maybe I should be a homeless person.

Instead of building or buying shit lets give each homeless wretch a cash payment of 117k and see what happens.

Not that much, but we should give them cash. Actually, the government should give everyone cash. It's going to have to eventually anyway.

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5263

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Posted

They've never really went away along Ben White. Under Manchaca, yes. But it's still looks like garbage up and down Ben White.

Enjoy the Town Lake trails. 

 

Tent encampments have returned to downtown Austin's Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike trail, renewing questions about whether city officials have a workable plan to enforce the ban on camping along the city's crown jewel recreational area and redirect occupants into shelters.

The lack of enforcement was viewed by some voters as reason to approve the return of the camping ban under Proposition B in the May election. Heidi Anderson, executive director of the Trail Foundation — a nonprofit that in October entered into a contract with the city to take over control of the trail — said earlier this year that donations to the foundation had dried up from members who had become upset with the state of the trail.

 

The presence of tents also coincided with increased litter in and along the banks of Lady Bird Lake — a problem the city attributed in part to scaled-back cleanup services during the pandemic.

The tent problem seemed headed toward resolution in August when city staff assigned to address Austin's homelessness crisis selected an area along the trail on West Cesar Chavez Street to move tent residents into a hotel. About 60 people were relocated. The hotel functions as a shelter under the council's housing plan, which is dubbed HEAL, for Housing-Focused Encampment Assistance Link.

But tents have made their way back to the trail, this time clustered on the eastern-most end near South Pleasant Valley Road. In a recent trip around the trail, the American-Statesman counted roughly 40 tents or temporary living structures, with all but a handful in that specific area, and several positioned along the banks of Lady Bird Lake. It represented an increase from earlier in the year when roughly a half-dozen tents were in the area.

The city says it is aware of the tents and that the parks and recreation department evaluated the location and documented "substantial growth" since October. The number of 3-1-1 calls related to homeless encampments or people experiencing homelessness on parkland has increased through the year, from an average of about 30 calls per week to more than 100 calls per week, the city said.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/12/27/austin-tx-camping-ban-downtown-enforcement/8982662002/

 

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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Gee, I didn't see this coming.  

If you attend any City Council primary race event...simply ask, "How much has been spent over the last 4 years on homelessness housing (including bonds, grants, and general capital fund expenditures) just by the City of Austin?  And what, EXACTLY, do we have to show for it?  

By my count, just on homeless housing, in the last 3+ years (about to be 4 by election time)...we will be at around $120mm.  WIth almost no results to show for it.  

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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Every time somebody starts to graph the data...invariably...one side shouts "It's misleading...because spending more money only attracts more homeless from other cities."  And the other side shouts, "It's misleading...because money spent on the front end for housing doesn't accurately reflect how many come out of homelessness on the back end!"  

In the meantime, we're spending literal pennies on the dollars (and I mean no more than a quarter) on underlying conditions of homelessness in Austin.  That's the read driver about why the numbers aren't going down.  You have an infrastructure in place that helps treat that 2/3rds of the homelessness population that can be saved in a sensible amount of time with addiction treatment, mental health services, job training, temporary housing, and ongoing outreach/outpatient services...you can absorb a couple thousand each year into Austin and have them back on their feet within a year.  But grab tens of millions each year, spend it all and more, wait and see if anybody else shows up, bake that increase into your next bond/budget ask, and let the cycle continue...not sure that's a terribly effective policy.  But here we are...not even Casar himself can answer how much we've spent on this in the last 3-4 years.  Shit, I dunno and I have a fiduciary responsibilty to report our 3 rating agencies.  

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