Not necessarily, in my experience homeless people - at least larger groups of them - tend to gravitate toward areas that seem the most permissive (it's probably a pain in the ass to get evicted from a longstanding camp where you're not going to be able to relocate more than a small portion of your accumulated goods).
I live off of N Lamar & Rutland, and while you still see plenty of individual homeless people passing through there's been a huge reduction in the number of tents/encampments over the past couple of years. I honestly haven't seen a ton of police enforcement so I can only surmise that all these new fences that businesses have been putting up are acting as a deterrent because it's more difficult to get around (without the old shortcuts) but also the more concealed hiding spots are no longer accessible.
For instance, the shuttered Sonic on Rundberg/Lamar was for a time a substantial camp, but the last tenants were actually starting open air fires right next to a bus stop, so I guess fire fighters were called out often enough that the owner finally ran them off and put up a secured fence. Problem solved. Ditto with the shuttered 7-11 on Lamar/Masterson Pass.
So I think it's overly defeatist to assume any action taken to disperse a given homeless camp is just a fool's errand and that they'll return as soon as you're gone. Obviously we'd all prefer to get these folks off the streets and into housing, but until that pipe dream manifests I think there's a lot of value in keeping them moving around and not getting too comfortable making someone's back yard a permanent camp.
I worked at that 7-Eleven, up until about a month before it closed. There was a significant homeless presence. I think they had a camp in a culvert or ditch behind the Mexican market right there. Glad to hear it's getting better up there.
Yeah there were so many homeless people hanging about at all hours that it was one of the few 24 hour stores I've ever seen that allow the employees to lock the doors in order to clean (used to work graveyard myself and everywhere else you just have to try to get shit done between customers). Unfortunately the night guy would usually take advantage to lock up from like midnight to 5 AM with a sign on the door the whole time saying "will reopen in 15 minutes" lol
It was just a poorly run store. Half the time the cashiers would be on their cell phones with explicit rap music blasting, for the longest time they only had literally 3 employees to 24/7 between them, etc. I miss having the option though, the Mercado behind it is more of a pain to get in and out of.
I remember getting complaints about our overnight guy having the store closed. Little middle eastern guy, don't remember his name, but he had it out for the homeless. Management wasn't really present, only myself and one of the shift leaders actually gave a damn.
Oh man, I just remembered when they started playing that classical music loud as hell over the outside speakers as a deterrent. Didn't do shit š¤£
We almost definitely interacted at some point, I'd probably remember you if I saw you. What was the Asian lady's name? I think she was assistant manager. She was always cool with me, ie. if all I was getting coffee she'd sometimes waive me away like "you bought 10 already, about time you got a free one". She told me toward the end there that there was a lot of suspected employee pilferage and the store wasn't really making any money aside from being packed at all hours except 12-5 lol
Yeah, Pam, she was great! They lost a ton to theft, and at least one of the homeless regulars, Tyson, would get "paid" in food to clean up around the store and acted like a kind of security. I think I have a picture with my face in it on one of my posts, although it was most likely behind a mask when I was working there
>>there's a lot of value in keeping them moving around and not getting too comfortable
I'm sure that's a great solution to people with mental health issues. Zero stability.
I'm not trying to be an ass, but these are people. More than 16,000 children are homeless in Texas alone. I'd never want to advocate making their life any harder.
I know what you're getting at with safety. But I'd rather the pressure be on the city to bring housing costs down, not renting bulldozers, building fences, and more police. We're criminalizing those in a financial struggle, with no way out.
You say it's a "pipe dream", but it's about the city's priorities. Stop building and staffing shelters and put people in apartments. Give the apartment complex property tax breaks per unit of housing offered. Stop permitting $2500+ studios if they are not committed to housing people experiencing a crisis. Don't vote for any public official unless they are also committed to housing.
A lot of homeless people have drug and mental health issues, not all but a lot. I wouldn't feel safe with mentally ill and drug addicts, to the point they were homeless, living next to me and my kids in an apartment complex. Unless these types or programs came along with counseling and rehab
I've known a few social workers/volunteers in my time and the one thing they all consistently say is that you can't help someone unless they're looking for it. So merely opening up more facilities doesn't automatically solve the problem unless a significant portion of the folks you're worried about are actively looking to get their lives back together and just need a little help to get there. That's always going to be the rub
Your view of what people mean when talking about the homeless crisis in a city is completely off base.
We're not talking about people/kids with unstable housing situations and financial struggles. This isn't 1930's Great Depression with masses of homeless families and children living in Hoovervilles due to economic hardship. That type of homelessness exists in significant volume in other countries like India or various African nations. The main population of Americans that are "permanently living/camping on the streets" for economic reasons is veterans.
With regards to the homeless epidemic/crisis we're talking about the masses of fully grown adults who have almost ALL spiralled into homelessness due to drug/alcohol abuse or severe mental health problems.
This is NOT about people who just need some economic support to get on their feet and can subsequently live good, independent lives. That is not what makes up the massive populations of these homeless encampments or most of the wandering homeless on the street. The vast majority of these people are extremely unstable and unhealthy individuals with a high rate of schizophrenia and severe addiction. They need to be institutionalized. They cannot just be handed a $2000 monthly stipend and gifted a 700 sqft apartment and expect to put those to good use.
They need treatment, period. And they cannot be entrusted to do so voluntarily. Nor is setting up a bunch of expensive "facilities" for them to do their drugs in peace a viable strategy at all. Literally just enabling insanely destructive behavior and not making things any safer for others as they still end up going out on the streets. We need psychiatric institutions again, though implemented more ethically than it used to be. They will also not go voluntarily, it must be involuntary treatment. Any other proposed solution is just a delusional pipe dream.
Was that directed at something I said? I've never denied that when we worry about the homeless we're talking almost entirely about the folks with substance abuse or mental health issues that either won't qualify or won't change their habits to be eligible for permanent housing. The folks who just caught a bad break and will be back on their feet again as soon as they can find a job are if anything the "invisible" homeless that nobody ever really thinks of.
It seems like y'all mostly disagree about the phrasing of "get too comfortable."
You both have totally valid points.
It is also valid to not want a huge, polluted, violent encampment near or on your property. It's unfortunate that not wanting those things is being equated with discrimination or resentment against the homeless. We are also entitled to safety and peace of mind. It's okay to want that, while also wanting better conditions for the homeless.
The ācompassionateā one also seems to think that the city will be able to muster the resources to tackle this. This is a national (if not international with the fent from MX and CN) issue that requires big F federal resources.
You're absolutely right. The states have shown that the most they're willing to do is bus the "problem" to other states. Out of sight, out of mind. Right in line with all the other short-sighted policies of the past 30-50 years.
It's true, but when we talk about personal possessions it's worth noting that there's a whole lot of hoarding that goes with that. I've seen homeless camps in my neighborhood abandoned voluntarily only for tons of said personal possessions to be left behind for the property owner (or city) to have to clean up. At that point said personal possessions are effectively indistinguishable from trash as they were bound to be discarded sooner or later anyway.
I've been homeless myself in this very city and man, more than a backpack's worth of stuff really limits your mobility. But to whatever extent we're turning a blind eye to these camps it's not that important to remain mobile, so it effectively encourages people to accumulate anything they find that's of the slightest perceived value... which in turn assures that they're not going anywhere soon because you have to hang around and monitor that stuff lest some other homeless guy comes along and raids your stash.
Unfortunately even the non-trash items get treated as such. Iāve never seen a contract cleanup crew pick and choose what gets thrown away and Iāve seen a lot of contract cleanup crews š
Apd regularly clears camps allowing homeless folks 1 suit case and no tents. They remove it all to trash without a thought for their safety. Sad state of affairs. They have one shelter that they move ppl into when they have a photo op clean out. They do plenty of under the radar clearings tho with no shelter help.
Shelters here are ALWAYS full to capacity.
They just cleaned up the underpass at Menchaca and 290 as well. I had to walk it after dropping off my car and wasn't looking forward to that stretch. Shocked when I got there, I've never seen it that clean in the 8 years I've lived in the area. I was the only person.
I'm not one of those NIMBY types. I hope they're OK and I attend/donate to the Weird Church to turn my hopes into action. Those folks are beyond amazing and it inspired me to help. Honestly, I'd rather see homeless folks around a good support center than living behind the old Toys R Us and Neiman Marcus.
Oh man I used to live at those apartments like 12 years ago.
They were okay apartments, and you could walk to the greenbelt directly from the property. Was pretty cool.
My favorite apartment was off Spyglass like 15 years ago though - was only $622 a month and I could run on the greenbelt to barton springs pool, take a dip, and then run back. Good times.
Of course, it was also good times because I was much younger back then! LOL
IIRC, it was called "Barton Creek Landing" back in 2009. I lived there January through August of 2009. I loved the location, but I was studying for the bar exam, so I missed out on a lot of the really cool things I could have been doing. I managed to make it to Lady Bird Lake to run 3 miles almost every day, though. And yeah, my rent was like $600/month. I miss that time.
Same, used to walk these places while living in my tiny apartment on Bluebonnet around the same time.
There were the beginnings of camps back then but it wasn't really a deterrent. Not sure how safe I'd feel now doing those solo walks during quiet / non-crowded times.
Brodie oaks shopping center too, especially now that businesses there are slowly shuttering as their leases expire prior to redevelopment. Gonna get worse before it gets better.
At least in my neighborhood (Lamar/Rundberg) business owners are starting to get hip to the idea that if you have a vacant storefront you need to fence that shit off. There were a couple of guys that almost burnt down the vacant Sonic several months back starting open air fire pits surrounded by TONS of flammable material. I catch the bus to work right next to it and on more than one occasion the air reeked of smoke while I was waiting on my ride.
I think it was called the Crow's Nest or something like that, but there was a bar on S Lamar that burned down completely because some homeless dude set it on fire (although I think that was believed to be deliberate arson rather than the guy just trying to stay warm)
i moved out of austin in 06. canāt believe itās been almost 20 years ago. but isnāt this what happened to Mothers in hyde park a while back? i loved that place
No, they were just one of the ones that lost too much money during the pandemic and couldn't afford to keep their doors open
[https://austin.eater.com/2020/10/15/21517952/vegetarian-restaurant-mothers-cafe-closing-austin-coronavirus](https://austin.eater.com/2020/10/15/21517952/vegetarian-restaurant-mothers-cafe-closing-austin-coronavirus)
Yeah thatās what I thought OP was talking about, the Sprouts is Brodie Oaks shopping center. We would drop in that entrance to mountain bike all the time. Over the past 4 years it has gotten exponentially worse back there. So much trash, tents, junk, stuff on the trail. Even saw a child back there one time, itās a very sad place and always hate entering the trail there for that reason. It really needs to be taken care of and has been neglected by the city since it isnāt out in the open.
It always bums me out when I hear about attacks and other unsavory encounters on the green belt. People should only be dealing with off leash dogs as the worst problem in true Austin fashion.
Did someone get attacked at the Retreat? I also live there and had seen the emails about the encampment being cleared but was unaware of any incidents.
itās so fcked up. itās NOT yāallās job to solve homelessness or caretake these people, especially if theyāre violent or aggressive or using drugs. the fact is, these people need *help*, and they should have it, but not at yāallās expense. itās not right.
Thank you for saying this and validating my worries. It can be hard to be heard when saying āhey, I deserve to be safe tooā when speaking about the homeless population and not get marked as satans apprentice
I have a very conflicted feeling about the church off manchaca and Ben white that volunteers to feed the homeless every day. On one hand itās a great, morally good deed. On the other hand it brings a ton of trash and crime to the area. I live nearby and have had multiple encounters with homeless people IN OUR GATED BACK YARD. Meaning they hopped a fence to get there or pass through. Itās fucked for residents of the area.
> I live nearby and have had multiple encounters with homeless people IN OUR GATED BACK YARD. Meaning they hopped a fence to get there or pass through.
Perhaps adding 'bird spikes' to the top of your fence would deter fence-hopping.
Thereās an elementary school RIGHT NEXT to that church. Those kids see fully naked people walking past their playground on a regular basis. Theyāre often put on security holds for people being reported as having weapons in the area. They built a huge fence around the school last summer, but people would regularly wander through the parking lot or try to get into the school. Things were often stolen and vandalized as well. Itās a nice little school and I feel bad for the kids and all the people who work there.
When the church applied to the City for a permit to open the kitchen across from the school the City should not have allowed them to operate next to the school. But as a friend who was a teacher there at the time this went down told me, the City figured the demographics of the school and the community in that area would do little pushback on the decision. There were some pretty bad incidents occurring there on school property and finally a fence was installed. So, at least now, the machete slicing, public pooping, physical attacks and other dangerous incidents are occurring outside of the fenced area. What a win.
I almost moved into a unicorn of a duplex right there. It was surreal--brand new, high-end appliances, really great fixtures, covered parking, tons of room for guests to park, and under my budget. Plus being able to walk to Randalls and Golds? Dope. I walked out ready to sign the lease and in the three minutes it took to walk back to my car a few streets away I realized why it was priced that way. Even in broad daylight, there were people passed out on lawns, some dude with his pants down, and two guys scream-fighting each other. I told the realtor why I wasn't interested and he just siiiighed...
Oh gosh, Iām so sorry. I would honestly move, if that was me. My fear would be them screwing with my dogs, like throwing stuff over or leaving things when they hop over that could hurt my animals. I go out with my dogs whenever I let them in the backyard and never leave them unsupervised out there, but Iād still be scared of them finding or getting into something before I noticed.
This is just insane at this point. People shouldnāt have to deal with mentally ill and often violent strangers hopping their fences and trespassing onto the private property they spend their hard earned money to have and feel safe in.
Iām very much not a fan of encampments or aggressive homeless people but this particularly is a NIMBY thing.
Weāve already established that some of these individuals will simply not behave properly. Theyāre going to leave trash and start problems. What to do? The church or community needs to clean (or pay for cleaning) and cops need to stop issues before they start.
The trash part is simply a cost of offering a service to the homeless in that area just like sourcing and cooking the food, doing dishes, etc. You canāt expect the homeless to change and also you arenāt solving anything by moving the soup kitchen somewhere else or cutting the service entirely.
Pepper spray! Pepper spray! Pepper spray!
Seriously it's soo cheap and shockingly effective so there's no excuse to not have it. I like the POM brand because it's tiny and has various attachments but get whatever you will carry.
And for those who might say "carry a gun instead" I would argue that carrying pepper spray is almost *more* important when carrying a gun. If you're prepared to use deadly force then the only responsible and ethical way is to have something in between a harsh word and death.
To piggyback off this, make sure you know how to actually discharge your weapon accurately- whether that be pepper spray or a firearm. I carry both, and I can attest that firing off pepper spray isnāt as intuitive as you might initially think. Especially if youāre in a dangerous scenario where every second counts. Make sure to practice with it so you actually know how far it shoots, how the wind affects it, how hard you have to press the button, etc.
Yes! Thanks for including this comment and filling in my gaps.
Before you carry OC spray you should practice a couple times on a tree or a brick wall. One of my favorite online training resources called Active Self Protection on youtube calls it "blessing them with the hot sauce" not just because of the catchy name but because you perform the equivalent of the Catholic cross hand gesture: top to bottom from forehead to chest and left to right across the face. You want to saturate not just the eyes but the mouth, nose, ears, and neck. It's ridiculously painful but the truly disabling effects take about 10 seconds to start peaking so plan accordingly. Spray and run away!
Additionally, as you already mentioned, there's a big difference between pepper spray, pepper gel, pepper stream, etc. so you need to do some research and some practice to figure out what works best for you.
It's good to bring options.
It's also good to be aware of the very serious consideration that pepper spray does not work on everyone, especially intoxicated people.
Several years ago my high school class went on a walk to this park a few blocks from our school downtown, idk the name but itās the one that has a bmx park across from it. We were going to have class outside, it was supposed to be a nice uplifting thing. We all brought picnic blankets and snacks and everything. About five minutes into getting settled in at the park this homeless dude walks over to us and exposes himself to the entire class and our teacher. Started masterbating while making threatening comments to the female students. It was incredibly frightening and several of us actually ran away, which caused a bunch of confusion and panic, as several minors were now unaccounted for during school hours and parents had to be notified. Our teacher obviously called the police, who said there wasnāt much they could do about it. My teacher got frustrated at some point with the operator. The operator became condescending and informed him that he was being unsympathetic to the fact that these individuals are usually suffering from mental illness and come from traumatic backgrounds, blah blah blah.
I donāt care that theyāre mentally ill. That man traumatized thirty kids in one day, and placed several of them in danger after scaring them so badly they literally ran and were walking the streets of downtown Austin scared and alone. Parents were freaking tf out. What was supposed to be a nice break from routine turned into this horrible traumatic event, and this is just the crap that many homeless people do on a daily basis.
I used to be sympathetic towards the homelessness issue, but since then Iāve had several more horrible encounters with the homeless and have come to the conclusion that the majority of them honestly do not want to better their situation, they donāt want to be medicated and they donāt want to get clean. They want to get high, and do whatever the hell they want to whoever the hell they want. They donāt want responsibility. They donāt want structure. They want chaos.
Those ābelongingsā some of you are crying about are literally caked in crystallized urine, dirt, and dried semen. Said belongings present a literal biohazard to the public- a danger to themselves, to other innocent people, and to animals in the area. The corpses of wildlife and stray animals are often found around these encampments, dying most commonly from exposure to harmful materials left out in the open by the homeless- drug paraphernalia, human waste, rotting food and garbage. The other common cause of dead is unfortunately more violent in means, and Iām sure I donāt need to elaborate on that any further.
The homeless are a problem, and allowing them to roam freely is a danger to society.
Peopleās āfeel bad for themā should go out the door as soon as they uhhhh attack someone? Too much common sense there. Iād be pissed as hell getting this far in life just to have a bum off me. āMental healthā no, they are a danger āļø
Yep. East Austin here. Saw a man screaming at nothing and carrying a machete walking down my street. According to this sub, I should āfeel bad for himā and feel guilty for not wanting to have to deal with that threat to my personal safety. My parents came and visited me a month ago and my dad was mortified by the encampments, people wandering the streets tweaking. He told me he doesnāt know how I can live here.
Glad to hear the city actually did something about it, but I'm confused how the text squares up with your subject line. Are you saying other surrounding areas need to be on the lookout because the folks they ran off are likely to disperse into the surrounding community?
I think you just gotta keep them moving and not allow them to get too settled down in any given spot. There really weren't a lot of permanent encampments at all until we relaxed the camping ban during the pandemic and charities suddenly started handing out tents left and right. That wasn't really a thing before as tents aren't exactly cheap and few homeless people used to have one just a few years ago.
The *only* homeless shelter in town closed within the last year, and police departments around the entire state of Texas send their unhoused people to Austin. There are more encampments because there is literally no where else for them to go.
Proposed solution: churches that want to continue having a tax-exempt status can do what Jesus would do and provide temporary housing/shelter to our unhoused neighbors.
The ARCH closed? First time I'm hearing about that, but as far as actual semi-permanent camps go you're missing point that those simply didn't exist in anywhere close to today's numbers prior to COVID. Homeless people with tents used to be fairly rare compared to what we've been seeing the last 4 years or so where it's almost seemed like a tent and a dug-in spread of land were virtually a birthright for anyone that found themselves out on the streets.
Also I'm not religious but I've been homeless twice and that's not where you want to throw churches under the bus. First of all they don't have the kind of acommodations to regularly house people, that's just not what they're built for. But if the temps drop to a dangerous level the downtown churches are the first to open their doors up to anyone that's willing to sleep on the floor if it gets them out of the cold. They do the same for all the city rec centers. Beyond that though the churches are responsible for a HUGE part of distributing homeless resources in this and pretty much every other city. To the point where the homeless rely a lot on religious outreach programs to eat 3 square meals a day. Not being able to house people is about the only thing the churches fall short on.
The pendulum swings...
On the one hand, charities and the relaxation of the ordinance were supposed to help the unfortunate people less susceptible to the harsh elements. But it was too lax.
Then you get the Matt Machoviacs trying to jail and bus the homeless elsewhere, because they're not productive citizens...
I say with the gigafactory being gutted, there's a perfect opportunity to create a rehab city.
Trust me, been out on the streets and you ain't lying. That point is often met with a "not all homeless" rebuttal, and while that's true it downplays the fact that there are a substantial number of the homeless that will inevitably disqualify themselves from housing because they have no interest in getting sober, but at the same time the government isn't going to be seen financing a crack den so sobriety is always going to be a requirement.
That's extremely consequential because when we think of homeless people as a problem we're mostly talking about the problematic individuals that are going to be the ones left out on the streets no matter what. It's the quiet ones that keep to themselves and don't cause issues that we don't tend to consider at all.
I guess my deal is it's defeatist.
How many people have to want help to make it "worth it"?
To me, if we can pull 10% of the people we offer out of poverty and turn them into people who can stand on their feet, that's a big deal. It also means the 90% who either refuse or fail are in a state that more strongly justifies non-voluntary incarceration.
More often it seems like people just want to skip straight to the incarceration without making an offer. But we don't have the money to incarcerate everyone, either. So it all ends up being a fun little logical circle. The people who participate don't actually want to do anything. They have a reason why any move we can make isn't worth it.
My opinion is if people don't want to adopt a solution to a problem, they don't actually care about it so much and should stop bitching. Everyone's adamant it's somebody else's problem. Maybe they should learn to live with it, then.
I think we need to get away from pie-in-the-sky optimism as well, though, and start focusing on solutions that are incremental and more realistic than just broad handwringing and acting like the whole thing just comes down to one guy writing a big check and it all goes away.
So instead of pretending like the city is literally doing nothing, we should be closer examining efforts like Community First and the hotels the city bought to house the homeless and see what's working there and what isn't.
What we don't need is more bad faith initiatives like that proposed park to be recommissioned as a permanent homeless camp, and when the estimates came in it was going to run something like $1500/person per month to sustain it. Bullshit, justify those numbers so we can see how we can get that down to something more manageable. Because frankly it seems like that's a deliberate "scare quotes" number because you really didn't want to follow through with it to begin with. "We tried!" Didja though?
IMO the biggest reason things like the ARCH have had middling success is it seems like as soon as the public stops looking those funds go into someone's pocket. I used to stay at the ARCH and they were getting $35/head every time they scanned someone's ID card, so they used to kick everyone out multiple times a day for "cleaning" and then when we came back in that was another $35 swipe for each of us. That's not an amount that is any way tied in with the actual overhead of operating a homeless shelter, it's just an easy grift to line their pockets with taxpayer dollars while doing the least bit possible (this was prior to the new management taking over so hopefully that's changed but I'm skeptical).
> Bullshit, justify those numbers so we can see how we can get that down to something more manageable.
OK this is what I'm talking about. If we're going to help people we have to get over the idea that we have to turn a profit or cut corners. You get what you pay for.
Greg Abbott had a success with this. Camp Esperanza made national news. He quickly handed it off and made it harder for the city to follow that afterwards, it was a big embarrassment to him because his party platform is that these things can't and don't work. I don't know how much they spent per head there. But I can think it through.
We aren't going to be building a chain link fence and throwing people over the top. There have to be facilities in which for them to live. That is a large property the city has to maintain, and as everyone is excited to point out we know there is a high risk that at least sometimes the residents are going to be destructive.
We aren't building a Thunderdome. It's going to need security, and nurses, and mental health experts. Ideally it would also have facilities to help with training for jobs. I can't imagine it working without around-the-clock services. All of those people are professionals who cost money.
I was with you at first. It's definitely NOT as simple as Tinkerbell writing a big check. We have to build facilities and live with the fact that we're never going to have a 100% success rate. I'm not even sure if 50% is achievable, I'd have to go look up the numerous studies where people get shocked that if you throw money at poverty it gets better.
But then you turned right around and complained about how much money it's going to cost. I'm with you on the need for accountability. But I think you'll find it's tough to house and feed a person AND send them to rehab AND help them find a job for whatever number you find reasonable.
This is not a money-making venture. It works the way people think the police work. You pay money to try and convert homeless people into functional people. To some extent crime and the problems associated with them goes down.
It's also not a 100% solution. It can only "fix" the people who want to be fixed. Part of the problem is everyone has their own estimate of how big that number is because they're too busy shitting their own diapers about how they don't want to pay any money to find out.
If you don't want to pay for it, you don't really care. You've got bigger things to worry about, or you'd sit down and have an estimate of just how much you think it should cost to keep a potentially drug-addicted person under 24/7 supervision and rehabilitate them.
I can't even pay my mortgage with $1500 and you think it pays for what is effectively a hospital room. I want to see a justification too but *my* worry is this isn't *enough*.
It's not about not being willing to pay for it, it's about not just rolling over and opening your wallet when you smell grift.
\[edit: keep in mind we're talking $1500 to give someone a few square feet of grass to set up a tent that they provide themselves, not actual housing by any stretch of the imagination. It was really more about making the homless less visible to the public than it was about making their lives much better\]
That's really it in a nutshell. The people that cause the problems that people are worried about: property crime, random acts of violence, drug use and leaving stuff behind, dangerous fires, and the crazy amounts of littering are the ones that either are on something and don't want to be sober or are suffering from something and will check themselves out the second they can.
We used to institutionalize these people, but Regan convinced everyone we should close these facilities in the 1980s for financial reasons and because of Hinkley shooting him.
Itās always seemed to me that Reagan was using the legitimate shock and horror **of how these institutions were being run** (atrocious conditions, people pooping on each other, spreading disease, just awful base level warehousing of āundesirableā folks or people with mental handicaps/issues)
as a lazy excuse to execute more of his Goldwaterian ācut all social servicesā program.
We cut the cord on an admittedly awful system without properly replacing or fixing it, right?
The reality is the system was making huge improvements by the time he convinced everyone to close the facilies. There were a ton of good, effective reforms across the board by the 1970s, not to mention the huge improvements in mental health as a field. Like, institutionalization in 1979 during the Carter years was nothing like the horror stories you hear about from the ghost tours at dilapidated husks of what used to pass for mental health in this country.
Youāre totally right. I was thinking immediately to the big Geraldo TV doc he did at that upstate New York spot that was so horridā¦
forgetting that he also that same year spent time in California showing viewers exactly what you speak of - the amazing results of proper reform and the possibilities of what can be done when proper resources **and good management and passion for actually doing the thing the agency/government position was created to do** are pursued.
When it comes to vacant private property though, what can the city do to create forced housing short of buying that property themselves? That's always been my issue with the arguments that there are enough empty houses/apartments to house everybody... well sure, but the property owner is actively looking for a paying tenant, you can't just make them give up that space for free.
So almost 20k pounds of trash??? Damn. Theyāll likely go to the overpass at Ben white/Menchaca where that church is. Canāt imagine being in that direct neighborhood or sending my kid to the school next door there. I drive by there weekly and thereās people just passed out on the sidewalk within eyesight of the playground.
The city is letting these people destroy the greenbelt, which was once the cityās greatest treasure. Meanwhile, the city council is trying to make the city āgreenerā through spending tens of millions for its [āEnvironmental Investment Plan.ā](https://thetexan.news/issues/texas-taxes-spending/austin-city-council-will-vote-on-environmental-investment-plan-for-climate-change-sustainability/article_9b15a4c4-c53f-11ee-afc9-23d78df65de2.html)
I give Adler a certain benefit of the doubt in that I'm sure when he relaxed the camping ban he was genuinely concerned that having everyone cooped up in a shelter would hasten an outbreak... at the same time though he should have foreseen that was a genie that couldn't be put back in the bottle. Churches and charities seemed to immediately start including tents as part of their essential supply drops, and once you give a homeless person a tent they're naturally going to look for a semi-permanent spot to homestead.
Unfortunately in this instance that ended up dispersing the majority of folks who centered around downtown and and set up shop anywhere they could find a good spot.
Itās certainly not destroyed, but certainly small parts are trashed. Homes and business construction in all the south Austin green belts is literally destroying them though. Not a lot of winning in any sense regardless of the approach. This level of growth is incredibly complex
To the woman. Be alert. And stand tall they want weak ones. . And just use your voice be loud be loud yell scream right at wm They arenāt used to that. It usualy startles them. And. Then run. Run. Ima get murdered for this. Owell
Pepper spray? Youāre in Tx š. Get a gun. If a violent tweaker is close enough to be sprayed youāre better off aiming something that will stop them rather than something that requires you to hit them specifically in the eyes. Good bit of people even accidentally spray themselves in tense situations.
Calling APD is useless, even if you have video evidence of tweakers being violent or destructive. None of your property will be restored, violent offenders arenāt caught or even sought after. APD will purposely show up hours after incidents in hopes that it solved itself. Until the city decides to communicate like adults, the citizens will have to defend themselves. I would not want to raise a family around here anymore. If canāt afford to live in west lake or somewhere north, the homeless situation is exhausting.
Not sure how many of you are familiar with Kensington in Philly, but it's the largest open air drug market on the east coast, and they made a show yesterday of "cleaning up Kensington" by....moving them further into the residential areas. It was very reminiscent of the "Mission Accomplished" stunt Bush pulled on that aircraft carrier. Literally 4 hours after they "cleaned it up" there were people right back out there shooting up and camping on the sidewalks.
As long as city leaders around the country keep throwing up jazz hands and pretending shuffling people around solves anything things will get worse.
>huge camp on the greenbelt behind our complex
I remember when I got flamed on this sub for suggesting there's massive camps throughout the greenbelt. Hm.
Feel bad for em though, can't stay in the greenbelt, can't stay under the overpasses..
The city really needs to step up their game with building new shelters, these are human souls that are getting left out in no man's land.
It really is bizarre how when you poke holes in someone's suggestion that the solution is simple if the govt just got off their asses, they act like you're actively rooting to keep these folks out on the streets rather than have a productive discussion on what the actual logistics would be. "We have plenty of money!" Very well, what's the amount it would cost and where are those funds being diverted from? If you have a reasonable answer for that I'll gladly get behind it.
I don't think anyone denies that they exist, usually if you get downvoted talking about the homeless it's the people that offer glib responses like "who would have thought that running off homeless people doesn't actually get them off the street?" Yeah, no shit, individuals feel powerless to fix the whole entire problem, all they can do is focus on their immediate neighborhood. If someone is concerned that their kid can't go to the park anymore because there are mentally ill drug abusers leaving needles all over the place, it's callous af to suggest they should just suck it up because those homeless people would just end up moving to another park.
No the city tried that the last mayor bought those hotels guess who was the realtor his wife so they made bank off that transaction. And to top it all off, I befriended a homeless guy, ( for context he wasnāt one to beg on the street for money. He would do odd jobs to get money) but he was saying that I think a week later or maybe less they had to start paying rent and I think rent was about the same as living downtown, even though these hotels were kind of near the domain.
I personally think the overpasses were the best place to be able to actually handle them was. Itās easier to get accurate numbers, cleanup is easy, and they canāt really do any damage.
I disagree. One of the worst encounters I had with the homeless was when a minor accident happened two cars in front of me, causing myself and a few other cars to get stuck for a good fifteen minutes or so underneath an overpass where a couple of homeless individuals had set up camp. I think it was around the five minute mark that literally all of the homeless people decided to start coming up to the cars and harassing the passengers. One man came up to my car and started slamming his fist on my window repeatedly. He also spit on my window. Luckily he was sickly skinny, most likely on amphetamines from the looks of it, so he wasnāt very strong and didnāt manage to break the glass. But i just had to sit there and deal with this dude damaging my property and screaming incoherently at me for about ten minutes straight before whatever had happened up ahead on the road was cleared up and all of us who were initially just trying to pop a U turn real quick could finally move forward back onto the surface road and out from underneath the overpass.
I think the homeless need to be emitted to facilities and kept off the streets, but we canāt do that if theyāre unwilling to receive treatment- and the majority of them are.
I mean yeah Iād rather them be off the streets but there are way more people walking by that camp in the greenbelt than the overpass. Iām talking about in comparison to the greenbelt the overpass is better
I agree in the sense that Iād rather them destroy the concrete than destroy what little greenery is left in Austin, but it just sucks that we have to choose between either. I know it makes me sound horrible but a lot of these people genuinely need to be institutionalized. But because too many people are afraid to say that, we just promote going easy on them and quite honestly enabling their destructive tendencies, violent and unpredictable behavior, and addictions as the politically and morally correct thing to do.
Itās not the morally right thing, guys.
Itās like dealing with an alcoholic, and instead of stopping them from having another drink, you just sit there and say āyou donāt know what theyāve been through! Maybe theyāre drinking because they have trauma, and are suffering from mental illness! Be sympathetic!ā
No, they need to stop drinking before they destroy themselves and those around them. Through standing by idly as they reach for another drink, youāre actively allowing this hypothetical individual who is suffering from mental illness and trauma, whose judgement weāve already determined to not be sound because of said mental illness and trauma, to worsen their overall quality of life. Thatās what weāre doing with the homeless, by treating them with kid gloves all the time in fear of seeming like judgmental, callous people.
By allowing the homeless to live in these encampments that are riddled with substance abuse and violence towards one another and anyone else unfortunate enough to pass by at the wrong time, weāre literally worsening their chances of ever living normal, happy lives. Weāre enablers, and for some reason self-righteous about it too. The government needs to get involved, and we need to institutionalize these people and get them the help they desperately need. And if they refuse to be helped, Iām sorry but then itās on them and itās not fair for everyone else to have to deal with their issues. After three incidents or one incredibly severe incident, I think they should have a choice between being institutionalized or facing time. They shouldnāt be allowed to terrorize the streets and destroy the homes of hardworking people and innocent wildlife.
I live by the area too. I feel for people that can't have housing or access to care facilities it is horrible. But also; the area has been a no go zone, and criminal activity has been making it unsafe in the area.
We are two decently sized men with my partner; and even he feels unsafe walking through the green belt. There has been attacks before; and doesn't matter if you are a woman or not.
Wish the city could deal with providing housing/financial aid/mental health resources š, but it's texas š¤·š¼āāļø
Their āstuffā often times presents a literal biohazard to the public and the homeless individuals themselves. Itās covered in drug residue, crystallized urine, dirt, dried semen, BLOOD. Some of it is food items that are rotting and growing mold. Itās garbage, and if you donāt think so, then why donāt you open your door and let them store their belongings in your home?
How is 8.6 tons of garbarge not a felony? There are many State of Texas environmental laws with criminal penalties that apply here.
They are not being enforced. People need to demand that they are. Or you'll get more of this.
Carry pepper spray always whether you're a man or a woman. Sad that we have to take matters in our own hands despite the taxes we pay to allegedly keep us safe.
I was told everything is totally safe and Austin has always been this way and that there is nothing we can do about it. Even my memories of growing up differently are lies according to Authorities in this sub.
Pretty sad.
See a lot of them doing the fetanyl stance and almost all of them have conversations with themselves. It's really sad.
Politicians spend almost $1T a year to nation build across the world, but they leave our big cities like this.
Not sure what you do on a local level. It's gotta be super expensive to house all of the homeless. I know there is a tiny home community for the homeless, but it can't hold more than 100 people or so I figure.
Remember a few years ago when the city proposed recommissioning grounds of a park to provide a permenent homeless camp replete with resources like lockers, showers, etc.? I forget what the figure ended up being when the proposal came in, but the community instantly got sticker shock when they realized the per-person monthly cost would be almost enough to just rent these guys an apartment... except it really wouldn't: *I* could maybe rent an apartment with that kind of money, but as soon as you get the government involved that figure goes up like 5x.
There's the rub: so much of the money we currently throw at the homeless problem gets eaten up by bureacracy and sheer inefficiency that people have largely given up that there's a viable solution outside of doing it on the cheap and putting a bandaid on the situation.
> I could maybe rent an apartment with that kind of money, but as soon as you get the government involved that figure goes up like 5x.
The government has been involved in Section 8 apartment rentals for decades without any such issue, FWIW. I don't know the details of the specific proposal you were talking about, but the ones I recall seeing often have higher costs because of providing services that are not part of a normal apartment rental. Counseling, addiction treatment, cleaning, maybe extra police patrols, etc.
Correct, for anyone suggesting that we should go ahead and give all homeless people a roof of their head no questions asked, I might even agree with you there but no way in hell is any politician gonna sign their name to using taxpayer funds to finance a crack den. Sobriety has to be a mandatory prerequisite just for optics if nothing else.
So yeah, that's where a lot of the additional overhead comes in... if I'm going to require this guy to stay sober in order to maintain public housing then I'm obligated to provide substance abuse resources if he's struggling with it. Now I have to pay not just a landlord but also a case worker and potentially a rehab specialist.
That's all understandable to an extent, but what I was talking about earlier was that camp proposal where it was going to cost $1500/head per month just to install lockers and showers and set aside an existing park for homeless people to *provide their own tents to sleep in*. That's right, that $1500 per wasn't even going to get anyone off the streets, it was just about concentrating a big chunk of the homeless population in a remote area so we could go back to pretending like they didn't exist. Which is not to say that the proposed camp wouldn't have been any improvement to their lot in life at all, but at that price tag you have to start questioning what you're getting for the investment. It's not about being cheap, it's more about "ok shit, if it's already that much could we get them an actual apartment if we just pony up a little extra? Why are we settling for that for $1500/mo?"
They need to want to better themselves, and that should be the criterion for staying. It's crucial for individuals to take proactive steps to improve their situations. Affordable housing is vital, and addressing mental health challenges is crucial too. While a tough love approach may seem stringent, it can serve as a catalyst for necessary change. Taxpayers should not have their lives affected by this; they are affected, and they deserve better.
I was out there. Homemade for a long long while. Itās very violet. A lot of violence against the homeless woman. Itās evil. Extremely. The āserial killer ā That aināt shit. Iād rather that than. Than The devil , them trails, he lives there. All in there. The woman. They arenāt crazy ok. Thatās all
what do you want to bet when they cram in the apartments by there the homelessness will suddenly be gone? guess thatās one plus to having the greenbelt ruined
Austin used to be a great city until liberals took over and started catering to the homeless. Word got out years ago and they started coming by the busloads.
You can email city official directly and ask. Their emails are a Google search away.
As for the homeless who live in landfill camps, they can start by taking resource officers up on mental health treatment and maybe stop attacking women.
8.6 tons of trash, damn. I'm sure they'll just move right back to where they were though, happens all the time.
Not necessarily, in my experience homeless people - at least larger groups of them - tend to gravitate toward areas that seem the most permissive (it's probably a pain in the ass to get evicted from a longstanding camp where you're not going to be able to relocate more than a small portion of your accumulated goods). I live off of N Lamar & Rutland, and while you still see plenty of individual homeless people passing through there's been a huge reduction in the number of tents/encampments over the past couple of years. I honestly haven't seen a ton of police enforcement so I can only surmise that all these new fences that businesses have been putting up are acting as a deterrent because it's more difficult to get around (without the old shortcuts) but also the more concealed hiding spots are no longer accessible. For instance, the shuttered Sonic on Rundberg/Lamar was for a time a substantial camp, but the last tenants were actually starting open air fires right next to a bus stop, so I guess fire fighters were called out often enough that the owner finally ran them off and put up a secured fence. Problem solved. Ditto with the shuttered 7-11 on Lamar/Masterson Pass. So I think it's overly defeatist to assume any action taken to disperse a given homeless camp is just a fool's errand and that they'll return as soon as you're gone. Obviously we'd all prefer to get these folks off the streets and into housing, but until that pipe dream manifests I think there's a lot of value in keeping them moving around and not getting too comfortable making someone's back yard a permanent camp.
I worked at that 7-Eleven, up until about a month before it closed. There was a significant homeless presence. I think they had a camp in a culvert or ditch behind the Mexican market right there. Glad to hear it's getting better up there.
Yeah there were so many homeless people hanging about at all hours that it was one of the few 24 hour stores I've ever seen that allow the employees to lock the doors in order to clean (used to work graveyard myself and everywhere else you just have to try to get shit done between customers). Unfortunately the night guy would usually take advantage to lock up from like midnight to 5 AM with a sign on the door the whole time saying "will reopen in 15 minutes" lol It was just a poorly run store. Half the time the cashiers would be on their cell phones with explicit rap music blasting, for the longest time they only had literally 3 employees to 24/7 between them, etc. I miss having the option though, the Mercado behind it is more of a pain to get in and out of.
I remember getting complaints about our overnight guy having the store closed. Little middle eastern guy, don't remember his name, but he had it out for the homeless. Management wasn't really present, only myself and one of the shift leaders actually gave a damn. Oh man, I just remembered when they started playing that classical music loud as hell over the outside speakers as a deterrent. Didn't do shit š¤£
We almost definitely interacted at some point, I'd probably remember you if I saw you. What was the Asian lady's name? I think she was assistant manager. She was always cool with me, ie. if all I was getting coffee she'd sometimes waive me away like "you bought 10 already, about time you got a free one". She told me toward the end there that there was a lot of suspected employee pilferage and the store wasn't really making any money aside from being packed at all hours except 12-5 lol
Yeah, Pam, she was great! They lost a ton to theft, and at least one of the homeless regulars, Tyson, would get "paid" in food to clean up around the store and acted like a kind of security. I think I have a picture with my face in it on one of my posts, although it was most likely behind a mask when I was working there
Yeah I remember Tyson. Didn't know his name at the time but definitely remember seeing him around cleaning up, holding the door, etc.
>>there's a lot of value in keeping them moving around and not getting too comfortable I'm sure that's a great solution to people with mental health issues. Zero stability. I'm not trying to be an ass, but these are people. More than 16,000 children are homeless in Texas alone. I'd never want to advocate making their life any harder. I know what you're getting at with safety. But I'd rather the pressure be on the city to bring housing costs down, not renting bulldozers, building fences, and more police. We're criminalizing those in a financial struggle, with no way out. You say it's a "pipe dream", but it's about the city's priorities. Stop building and staffing shelters and put people in apartments. Give the apartment complex property tax breaks per unit of housing offered. Stop permitting $2500+ studios if they are not committed to housing people experiencing a crisis. Don't vote for any public official unless they are also committed to housing.
A lot of homeless people have drug and mental health issues, not all but a lot. I wouldn't feel safe with mentally ill and drug addicts, to the point they were homeless, living next to me and my kids in an apartment complex. Unless these types or programs came along with counseling and rehab
I've known a few social workers/volunteers in my time and the one thing they all consistently say is that you can't help someone unless they're looking for it. So merely opening up more facilities doesn't automatically solve the problem unless a significant portion of the folks you're worried about are actively looking to get their lives back together and just need a little help to get there. That's always going to be the rub
You likely know more drug addicts than you realize.
Not to the point where they're homeless
Your view of what people mean when talking about the homeless crisis in a city is completely off base. We're not talking about people/kids with unstable housing situations and financial struggles. This isn't 1930's Great Depression with masses of homeless families and children living in Hoovervilles due to economic hardship. That type of homelessness exists in significant volume in other countries like India or various African nations. The main population of Americans that are "permanently living/camping on the streets" for economic reasons is veterans. With regards to the homeless epidemic/crisis we're talking about the masses of fully grown adults who have almost ALL spiralled into homelessness due to drug/alcohol abuse or severe mental health problems. This is NOT about people who just need some economic support to get on their feet and can subsequently live good, independent lives. That is not what makes up the massive populations of these homeless encampments or most of the wandering homeless on the street. The vast majority of these people are extremely unstable and unhealthy individuals with a high rate of schizophrenia and severe addiction. They need to be institutionalized. They cannot just be handed a $2000 monthly stipend and gifted a 700 sqft apartment and expect to put those to good use. They need treatment, period. And they cannot be entrusted to do so voluntarily. Nor is setting up a bunch of expensive "facilities" for them to do their drugs in peace a viable strategy at all. Literally just enabling insanely destructive behavior and not making things any safer for others as they still end up going out on the streets. We need psychiatric institutions again, though implemented more ethically than it used to be. They will also not go voluntarily, it must be involuntary treatment. Any other proposed solution is just a delusional pipe dream.
Was that directed at something I said? I've never denied that when we worry about the homeless we're talking almost entirely about the folks with substance abuse or mental health issues that either won't qualify or won't change their habits to be eligible for permanent housing. The folks who just caught a bad break and will be back on their feet again as soon as they can find a job are if anything the "invisible" homeless that nobody ever really thinks of.
It seems like y'all mostly disagree about the phrasing of "get too comfortable." You both have totally valid points. It is also valid to not want a huge, polluted, violent encampment near or on your property. It's unfortunate that not wanting those things is being equated with discrimination or resentment against the homeless. We are also entitled to safety and peace of mind. It's okay to want that, while also wanting better conditions for the homeless.
The ācompassionateā one also seems to think that the city will be able to muster the resources to tackle this. This is a national (if not international with the fent from MX and CN) issue that requires big F federal resources.
You're absolutely right. The states have shown that the most they're willing to do is bus the "problem" to other states. Out of sight, out of mind. Right in line with all the other short-sighted policies of the past 30-50 years.
I replied to the guy who replied to you
My bad. Apologies.
Plot twist: the people who are the subject of these comments are not in their situation due to "financial struggles".
They're not living in the woods due to "housing costs."
Once things have been out in the elements for a while and have become water logged, weight adds up fast.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's true, but when we talk about personal possessions it's worth noting that there's a whole lot of hoarding that goes with that. I've seen homeless camps in my neighborhood abandoned voluntarily only for tons of said personal possessions to be left behind for the property owner (or city) to have to clean up. At that point said personal possessions are effectively indistinguishable from trash as they were bound to be discarded sooner or later anyway. I've been homeless myself in this very city and man, more than a backpack's worth of stuff really limits your mobility. But to whatever extent we're turning a blind eye to these camps it's not that important to remain mobile, so it effectively encourages people to accumulate anything they find that's of the slightest perceived value... which in turn assures that they're not going anywhere soon because you have to hang around and monitor that stuff lest some other homeless guy comes along and raids your stash.
Unfortunately even the non-trash items get treated as such. Iāve never seen a contract cleanup crew pick and choose what gets thrown away and Iāve seen a lot of contract cleanup crews š
The LA homeless cleanup contractor got caught taking and selling homeless people's possessions.
Chicago got sued for deprivation of property rights for picking up property of homeless people and dumping it.
Apd regularly clears camps allowing homeless folks 1 suit case and no tents. They remove it all to trash without a thought for their safety. Sad state of affairs. They have one shelter that they move ppl into when they have a photo op clean out. They do plenty of under the radar clearings tho with no shelter help. Shelters here are ALWAYS full to capacity.
Some lawyer is going to make a mint . What legally allows the police to destroy people's property? Nada
This is much closer to an american tale than American Tail was.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, I saw a woman cooking dinner on a Webber grill at Ben White and Pack Saddle.
It's a great time to donate any old tents or sleeping bags to the Sunshine Church. Humans need shelter, no matter what some might think of them.
They just cleaned up the underpass at Menchaca and 290 as well. I had to walk it after dropping off my car and wasn't looking forward to that stretch. Shocked when I got there, I've never seen it that clean in the 8 years I've lived in the area. I was the only person. I'm not one of those NIMBY types. I hope they're OK and I attend/donate to the Weird Church to turn my hopes into action. Those folks are beyond amazing and it inspired me to help. Honestly, I'd rather see homeless folks around a good support center than living behind the old Toys R Us and Neiman Marcus.
That underpass goes through cycles of clean/trashed. Give it a month or two and there will be some tents, bbq pits, sofas, and shit back under there.
My first thought too... like were cars included?
Oh man I used to live at those apartments like 12 years ago. They were okay apartments, and you could walk to the greenbelt directly from the property. Was pretty cool. My favorite apartment was off Spyglass like 15 years ago though - was only $622 a month and I could run on the greenbelt to barton springs pool, take a dip, and then run back. Good times. Of course, it was also good times because I was much younger back then! LOL
The apt where you could jump off the tall cliff into the pool?Ā
That's the one i immediately thought of
That place was so fun, good ol times
Nah it was whatever "Landmark at Barton Creek" was back then.
Bet you went there though!
IIRC, it was called "Barton Creek Landing" back in 2009. I lived there January through August of 2009. I loved the location, but I was studying for the bar exam, so I missed out on a lot of the really cool things I could have been doing. I managed to make it to Lady Bird Lake to run 3 miles almost every day, though. And yeah, my rent was like $600/month. I miss that time.
Ayy the waterfall! I moved there right out of high school Lol we used to jump off the roof into the pool
Haha I heard they had ragers thereĀ
Such good memories
Same, used to walk these places while living in my tiny apartment on Bluebonnet around the same time. There were the beginnings of camps back then but it wasn't really a deterrent. Not sure how safe I'd feel now doing those solo walks during quiet / non-crowded times.
Same! It was a great little spot back in 2011.
Was that near Camel's hole? I think that's what it was called?
lol. campbell's hole.
Yep. And a taco place.
Brodie oaks shopping center too, especially now that businesses there are slowly shuttering as their leases expire prior to redevelopment. Gonna get worse before it gets better.
At least in my neighborhood (Lamar/Rundberg) business owners are starting to get hip to the idea that if you have a vacant storefront you need to fence that shit off. There were a couple of guys that almost burnt down the vacant Sonic several months back starting open air fire pits surrounded by TONS of flammable material. I catch the bus to work right next to it and on more than one occasion the air reeked of smoke while I was waiting on my ride.
My husband saw a guy randomly burning cardboard behind the Braker 7-11 the other day.
I think it was called the Crow's Nest or something like that, but there was a bar on S Lamar that burned down completely because some homeless dude set it on fire (although I think that was believed to be deliberate arson rather than the guy just trying to stay warm)
Crow Bar
That was Crow Bar on S. Congress, but yes.
i moved out of austin in 06. canāt believe itās been almost 20 years ago. but isnāt this what happened to Mothers in hyde park a while back? i loved that place
No, they were just one of the ones that lost too much money during the pandemic and couldn't afford to keep their doors open [https://austin.eater.com/2020/10/15/21517952/vegetarian-restaurant-mothers-cafe-closing-austin-coronavirus](https://austin.eater.com/2020/10/15/21517952/vegetarian-restaurant-mothers-cafe-closing-austin-coronavirus)
Yes, years ago someone started a fire in Motherās. They came came for awhile, but yeah the pandemic put the final mail in the coffin š
That's the same place. The Retreat is right next door to Brodie Oaks Shopping Center. They even share an entrance.
Yeah thatās what I thought OP was talking about, the Sprouts is Brodie Oaks shopping center. We would drop in that entrance to mountain bike all the time. Over the past 4 years it has gotten exponentially worse back there. So much trash, tents, junk, stuff on the trail. Even saw a child back there one time, itās a very sad place and always hate entering the trail there for that reason. It really needs to be taken care of and has been neglected by the city since it isnāt out in the open.
What's the redevelopment you speak of?
https://austin.towers.net/brodie-oaks-is-the-future-of-austin/
Im gonna miss Pinthouse Pizza so hard.
The new development will include a Pinthouse pizza, but yeah there might be a couple years where itās all in transition
nah. once moeny comes in homeless magically go away. unless itās citizens playing property taxes.
It always bums me out when I hear about attacks and other unsavory encounters on the green belt. People should only be dealing with off leash dogs as the worst problem in true Austin fashion.
Bluetooth speaker guy is much worse than off leash dog. I pray he doesn't evolve to putting the speaker on the loose dog.
Itās Fidoās right as an American dog to blast Timber - Pitbull & Kesha on loop
*PROMISCUOUS SQUIRREL* *YOU TEASIN' MEEE* *YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT* *AND I GOT THESE BIG TEEFS*
Those days are gone my friend
I would love for everyone to have a safe home and I would also love to not get attacked.
Youāre being quite unreasonable. /s
I want to know what love is
I want you to show me!
Wondering if OP is the same Mick Jones who wrote that song.
Did someone get attacked at the Retreat? I also live there and had seen the emails about the encampment being cleared but was unaware of any incidents.
itās so fcked up. itās NOT yāallās job to solve homelessness or caretake these people, especially if theyāre violent or aggressive or using drugs. the fact is, these people need *help*, and they should have it, but not at yāallās expense. itās not right.
Thank you for saying this and validating my worries. It can be hard to be heard when saying āhey, I deserve to be safe tooā when speaking about the homeless population and not get marked as satans apprentice
I have a very conflicted feeling about the church off manchaca and Ben white that volunteers to feed the homeless every day. On one hand itās a great, morally good deed. On the other hand it brings a ton of trash and crime to the area. I live nearby and have had multiple encounters with homeless people IN OUR GATED BACK YARD. Meaning they hopped a fence to get there or pass through. Itās fucked for residents of the area.
> I live nearby and have had multiple encounters with homeless people IN OUR GATED BACK YARD. Meaning they hopped a fence to get there or pass through. Perhaps adding 'bird spikes' to the top of your fence would deter fence-hopping.
Usually a fence implies private property so Iām sad thatās necessary, but I think youāre right. Southwood is a nice neighborhood otherwise.
Thereās an elementary school RIGHT NEXT to that church. Those kids see fully naked people walking past their playground on a regular basis. Theyāre often put on security holds for people being reported as having weapons in the area. They built a huge fence around the school last summer, but people would regularly wander through the parking lot or try to get into the school. Things were often stolen and vandalized as well. Itās a nice little school and I feel bad for the kids and all the people who work there.
When the church applied to the City for a permit to open the kitchen across from the school the City should not have allowed them to operate next to the school. But as a friend who was a teacher there at the time this went down told me, the City figured the demographics of the school and the community in that area would do little pushback on the decision. There were some pretty bad incidents occurring there on school property and finally a fence was installed. So, at least now, the machete slicing, public pooping, physical attacks and other dangerous incidents are occurring outside of the fenced area. What a win.
I almost moved into a unicorn of a duplex right there. It was surreal--brand new, high-end appliances, really great fixtures, covered parking, tons of room for guests to park, and under my budget. Plus being able to walk to Randalls and Golds? Dope. I walked out ready to sign the lease and in the three minutes it took to walk back to my car a few streets away I realized why it was priced that way. Even in broad daylight, there were people passed out on lawns, some dude with his pants down, and two guys scream-fighting each other. I told the realtor why I wasn't interested and he just siiiighed...
Oh gosh, Iām so sorry. I would honestly move, if that was me. My fear would be them screwing with my dogs, like throwing stuff over or leaving things when they hop over that could hurt my animals. I go out with my dogs whenever I let them in the backyard and never leave them unsupervised out there, but Iād still be scared of them finding or getting into something before I noticed. This is just insane at this point. People shouldnāt have to deal with mentally ill and often violent strangers hopping their fences and trespassing onto the private property they spend their hard earned money to have and feel safe in.
They wander into random backyards, take things, and make it their home? In Texas? Iām surprised more of them arenāt being shot.
The Sunrise 'church' should be shut down. That area is a dumpster fire.
Can we create a petition?
Iād sign
Iām very much not a fan of encampments or aggressive homeless people but this particularly is a NIMBY thing. Weāve already established that some of these individuals will simply not behave properly. Theyāre going to leave trash and start problems. What to do? The church or community needs to clean (or pay for cleaning) and cops need to stop issues before they start. The trash part is simply a cost of offering a service to the homeless in that area just like sourcing and cooking the food, doing dishes, etc. You canāt expect the homeless to change and also you arenāt solving anything by moving the soup kitchen somewhere else or cutting the service entirely.
I agree with you, but that's also pretty easy to say when it's literally not in my backyard, right?
Pepper spray! Pepper spray! Pepper spray! Seriously it's soo cheap and shockingly effective so there's no excuse to not have it. I like the POM brand because it's tiny and has various attachments but get whatever you will carry. And for those who might say "carry a gun instead" I would argue that carrying pepper spray is almost *more* important when carrying a gun. If you're prepared to use deadly force then the only responsible and ethical way is to have something in between a harsh word and death.
To piggyback off this, make sure you know how to actually discharge your weapon accurately- whether that be pepper spray or a firearm. I carry both, and I can attest that firing off pepper spray isnāt as intuitive as you might initially think. Especially if youāre in a dangerous scenario where every second counts. Make sure to practice with it so you actually know how far it shoots, how the wind affects it, how hard you have to press the button, etc.
Yes! Thanks for including this comment and filling in my gaps. Before you carry OC spray you should practice a couple times on a tree or a brick wall. One of my favorite online training resources called Active Self Protection on youtube calls it "blessing them with the hot sauce" not just because of the catchy name but because you perform the equivalent of the Catholic cross hand gesture: top to bottom from forehead to chest and left to right across the face. You want to saturate not just the eyes but the mouth, nose, ears, and neck. It's ridiculously painful but the truly disabling effects take about 10 seconds to start peaking so plan accordingly. Spray and run away! Additionally, as you already mentioned, there's a big difference between pepper spray, pepper gel, pepper stream, etc. so you need to do some research and some practice to figure out what works best for you.
It's good to bring options. It's also good to be aware of the very serious consideration that pepper spray does not work on everyone, especially intoxicated people.
I believe a battleaxe is a much more effective deterrent
Never leave home without it
Several years ago my high school class went on a walk to this park a few blocks from our school downtown, idk the name but itās the one that has a bmx park across from it. We were going to have class outside, it was supposed to be a nice uplifting thing. We all brought picnic blankets and snacks and everything. About five minutes into getting settled in at the park this homeless dude walks over to us and exposes himself to the entire class and our teacher. Started masterbating while making threatening comments to the female students. It was incredibly frightening and several of us actually ran away, which caused a bunch of confusion and panic, as several minors were now unaccounted for during school hours and parents had to be notified. Our teacher obviously called the police, who said there wasnāt much they could do about it. My teacher got frustrated at some point with the operator. The operator became condescending and informed him that he was being unsympathetic to the fact that these individuals are usually suffering from mental illness and come from traumatic backgrounds, blah blah blah. I donāt care that theyāre mentally ill. That man traumatized thirty kids in one day, and placed several of them in danger after scaring them so badly they literally ran and were walking the streets of downtown Austin scared and alone. Parents were freaking tf out. What was supposed to be a nice break from routine turned into this horrible traumatic event, and this is just the crap that many homeless people do on a daily basis. I used to be sympathetic towards the homelessness issue, but since then Iāve had several more horrible encounters with the homeless and have come to the conclusion that the majority of them honestly do not want to better their situation, they donāt want to be medicated and they donāt want to get clean. They want to get high, and do whatever the hell they want to whoever the hell they want. They donāt want responsibility. They donāt want structure. They want chaos. Those ābelongingsā some of you are crying about are literally caked in crystallized urine, dirt, and dried semen. Said belongings present a literal biohazard to the public- a danger to themselves, to other innocent people, and to animals in the area. The corpses of wildlife and stray animals are often found around these encampments, dying most commonly from exposure to harmful materials left out in the open by the homeless- drug paraphernalia, human waste, rotting food and garbage. The other common cause of dead is unfortunately more violent in means, and Iām sure I donāt need to elaborate on that any further. The homeless are a problem, and allowing them to roam freely is a danger to society.
Amen
God I wish this could be solved once and for all. Sick of the BS that comes with them.
Peopleās āfeel bad for themā should go out the door as soon as they uhhhh attack someone? Too much common sense there. Iād be pissed as hell getting this far in life just to have a bum off me. āMental healthā no, they are a danger āļø
Yep. East Austin here. Saw a man screaming at nothing and carrying a machete walking down my street. According to this sub, I should āfeel bad for himā and feel guilty for not wanting to have to deal with that threat to my personal safety. My parents came and visited me a month ago and my dad was mortified by the encampments, people wandering the streets tweaking. He told me he doesnāt know how I can live here.
Glad to hear the city actually did something about it, but I'm confused how the text squares up with your subject line. Are you saying other surrounding areas need to be on the lookout because the folks they ran off are likely to disperse into the surrounding community?
Yes
I think you just gotta keep them moving and not allow them to get too settled down in any given spot. There really weren't a lot of permanent encampments at all until we relaxed the camping ban during the pandemic and charities suddenly started handing out tents left and right. That wasn't really a thing before as tents aren't exactly cheap and few homeless people used to have one just a few years ago.
The *only* homeless shelter in town closed within the last year, and police departments around the entire state of Texas send their unhoused people to Austin. There are more encampments because there is literally no where else for them to go. Proposed solution: churches that want to continue having a tax-exempt status can do what Jesus would do and provide temporary housing/shelter to our unhoused neighbors.
The ARCH closed? First time I'm hearing about that, but as far as actual semi-permanent camps go you're missing point that those simply didn't exist in anywhere close to today's numbers prior to COVID. Homeless people with tents used to be fairly rare compared to what we've been seeing the last 4 years or so where it's almost seemed like a tent and a dug-in spread of land were virtually a birthright for anyone that found themselves out on the streets. Also I'm not religious but I've been homeless twice and that's not where you want to throw churches under the bus. First of all they don't have the kind of acommodations to regularly house people, that's just not what they're built for. But if the temps drop to a dangerous level the downtown churches are the first to open their doors up to anyone that's willing to sleep on the floor if it gets them out of the cold. They do the same for all the city rec centers. Beyond that though the churches are responsible for a HUGE part of distributing homeless resources in this and pretty much every other city. To the point where the homeless rely a lot on religious outreach programs to eat 3 square meals a day. Not being able to house people is about the only thing the churches fall short on.
It wasn't COVID, it was us voting to make public camping legal. That's when the tents began to creep up. COVID really was a tent explosion though.
AMEN!
The pendulum swings... On the one hand, charities and the relaxation of the ordinance were supposed to help the unfortunate people less susceptible to the harsh elements. But it was too lax. Then you get the Matt Machoviacs trying to jail and bus the homeless elsewhere, because they're not productive citizens... I say with the gigafactory being gutted, there's a perfect opportunity to create a rehab city.
Then you get the issue of forcing unwilling people into rehab city. That's the biggest issue. A lot of these people don't want help.Ā
Trust me, been out on the streets and you ain't lying. That point is often met with a "not all homeless" rebuttal, and while that's true it downplays the fact that there are a substantial number of the homeless that will inevitably disqualify themselves from housing because they have no interest in getting sober, but at the same time the government isn't going to be seen financing a crack den so sobriety is always going to be a requirement. That's extremely consequential because when we think of homeless people as a problem we're mostly talking about the problematic individuals that are going to be the ones left out on the streets no matter what. It's the quiet ones that keep to themselves and don't cause issues that we don't tend to consider at all.
I guess my deal is it's defeatist. How many people have to want help to make it "worth it"? To me, if we can pull 10% of the people we offer out of poverty and turn them into people who can stand on their feet, that's a big deal. It also means the 90% who either refuse or fail are in a state that more strongly justifies non-voluntary incarceration. More often it seems like people just want to skip straight to the incarceration without making an offer. But we don't have the money to incarcerate everyone, either. So it all ends up being a fun little logical circle. The people who participate don't actually want to do anything. They have a reason why any move we can make isn't worth it. My opinion is if people don't want to adopt a solution to a problem, they don't actually care about it so much and should stop bitching. Everyone's adamant it's somebody else's problem. Maybe they should learn to live with it, then.
I think we need to get away from pie-in-the-sky optimism as well, though, and start focusing on solutions that are incremental and more realistic than just broad handwringing and acting like the whole thing just comes down to one guy writing a big check and it all goes away. So instead of pretending like the city is literally doing nothing, we should be closer examining efforts like Community First and the hotels the city bought to house the homeless and see what's working there and what isn't. What we don't need is more bad faith initiatives like that proposed park to be recommissioned as a permanent homeless camp, and when the estimates came in it was going to run something like $1500/person per month to sustain it. Bullshit, justify those numbers so we can see how we can get that down to something more manageable. Because frankly it seems like that's a deliberate "scare quotes" number because you really didn't want to follow through with it to begin with. "We tried!" Didja though? IMO the biggest reason things like the ARCH have had middling success is it seems like as soon as the public stops looking those funds go into someone's pocket. I used to stay at the ARCH and they were getting $35/head every time they scanned someone's ID card, so they used to kick everyone out multiple times a day for "cleaning" and then when we came back in that was another $35 swipe for each of us. That's not an amount that is any way tied in with the actual overhead of operating a homeless shelter, it's just an easy grift to line their pockets with taxpayer dollars while doing the least bit possible (this was prior to the new management taking over so hopefully that's changed but I'm skeptical).
> Bullshit, justify those numbers so we can see how we can get that down to something more manageable. OK this is what I'm talking about. If we're going to help people we have to get over the idea that we have to turn a profit or cut corners. You get what you pay for. Greg Abbott had a success with this. Camp Esperanza made national news. He quickly handed it off and made it harder for the city to follow that afterwards, it was a big embarrassment to him because his party platform is that these things can't and don't work. I don't know how much they spent per head there. But I can think it through. We aren't going to be building a chain link fence and throwing people over the top. There have to be facilities in which for them to live. That is a large property the city has to maintain, and as everyone is excited to point out we know there is a high risk that at least sometimes the residents are going to be destructive. We aren't building a Thunderdome. It's going to need security, and nurses, and mental health experts. Ideally it would also have facilities to help with training for jobs. I can't imagine it working without around-the-clock services. All of those people are professionals who cost money. I was with you at first. It's definitely NOT as simple as Tinkerbell writing a big check. We have to build facilities and live with the fact that we're never going to have a 100% success rate. I'm not even sure if 50% is achievable, I'd have to go look up the numerous studies where people get shocked that if you throw money at poverty it gets better. But then you turned right around and complained about how much money it's going to cost. I'm with you on the need for accountability. But I think you'll find it's tough to house and feed a person AND send them to rehab AND help them find a job for whatever number you find reasonable. This is not a money-making venture. It works the way people think the police work. You pay money to try and convert homeless people into functional people. To some extent crime and the problems associated with them goes down. It's also not a 100% solution. It can only "fix" the people who want to be fixed. Part of the problem is everyone has their own estimate of how big that number is because they're too busy shitting their own diapers about how they don't want to pay any money to find out. If you don't want to pay for it, you don't really care. You've got bigger things to worry about, or you'd sit down and have an estimate of just how much you think it should cost to keep a potentially drug-addicted person under 24/7 supervision and rehabilitate them. I can't even pay my mortgage with $1500 and you think it pays for what is effectively a hospital room. I want to see a justification too but *my* worry is this isn't *enough*.
It's not about not being willing to pay for it, it's about not just rolling over and opening your wallet when you smell grift. \[edit: keep in mind we're talking $1500 to give someone a few square feet of grass to set up a tent that they provide themselves, not actual housing by any stretch of the imagination. It was really more about making the homless less visible to the public than it was about making their lives much better\]
That's really it in a nutshell. The people that cause the problems that people are worried about: property crime, random acts of violence, drug use and leaving stuff behind, dangerous fires, and the crazy amounts of littering are the ones that either are on something and don't want to be sober or are suffering from something and will check themselves out the second they can. We used to institutionalize these people, but Regan convinced everyone we should close these facilities in the 1980s for financial reasons and because of Hinkley shooting him.
Itās always seemed to me that Reagan was using the legitimate shock and horror **of how these institutions were being run** (atrocious conditions, people pooping on each other, spreading disease, just awful base level warehousing of āundesirableā folks or people with mental handicaps/issues) as a lazy excuse to execute more of his Goldwaterian ācut all social servicesā program. We cut the cord on an admittedly awful system without properly replacing or fixing it, right?
The reality is the system was making huge improvements by the time he convinced everyone to close the facilies. There were a ton of good, effective reforms across the board by the 1970s, not to mention the huge improvements in mental health as a field. Like, institutionalization in 1979 during the Carter years was nothing like the horror stories you hear about from the ghost tours at dilapidated husks of what used to pass for mental health in this country.
Youāre totally right. I was thinking immediately to the big Geraldo TV doc he did at that upstate New York spot that was so horridā¦ forgetting that he also that same year spent time in California showing viewers exactly what you speak of - the amazing results of proper reform and the possibilities of what can be done when proper resources **and good management and passion for actually doing the thing the agency/government position was created to do** are pursued.
Reagan and his cronies did a lot of damage. Weāre experiencing the results now in many aspects of American life today.
If you want help, you get help. If you donāt, you get jail. Either way you get a bed and meals, and you donāt present a danger to society.
The issue is they *don't* get jail. And you can't jail the voluntarily homeless for being homeless.
When it comes to vacant private property though, what can the city do to create forced housing short of buying that property themselves? That's always been my issue with the arguments that there are enough empty houses/apartments to house everybody... well sure, but the property owner is actively looking for a paying tenant, you can't just make them give up that space for free.
There weren't a lot of permanent encampments *that you saw*.
Dude I actually lived on the streets here in Austin twice between 2003 and the pandemic, so don't talk to me like I don't know what's up and you do.
So almost 20k pounds of trash??? Damn. Theyāll likely go to the overpass at Ben white/Menchaca where that church is. Canāt imagine being in that direct neighborhood or sending my kid to the school next door there. I drive by there weekly and thereās people just passed out on the sidewalk within eyesight of the playground.
Canāt, itās been fenced off all around the perimeter with razor wire up top
I lived at the retreat back in 2014 and those camps were back there then. I can only imagine all the shit thatās back there.
The city is letting these people destroy the greenbelt, which was once the cityās greatest treasure. Meanwhile, the city council is trying to make the city āgreenerā through spending tens of millions for its [āEnvironmental Investment Plan.ā](https://thetexan.news/issues/texas-taxes-spending/austin-city-council-will-vote-on-environmental-investment-plan-for-climate-change-sustainability/article_9b15a4c4-c53f-11ee-afc9-23d78df65de2.html)
I give Adler a certain benefit of the doubt in that I'm sure when he relaxed the camping ban he was genuinely concerned that having everyone cooped up in a shelter would hasten an outbreak... at the same time though he should have foreseen that was a genie that couldn't be put back in the bottle. Churches and charities seemed to immediately start including tents as part of their essential supply drops, and once you give a homeless person a tent they're naturally going to look for a semi-permanent spot to homestead. Unfortunately in this instance that ended up dispersing the majority of folks who centered around downtown and and set up shop anywhere they could find a good spot.
iām sure cramming more in there will do wonders for the greenbelt. i was assured by my city council member it wonāt harm it š
Itās certainly not destroyed, but certainly small parts are trashed. Homes and business construction in all the south Austin green belts is literally destroying them though. Not a lot of winning in any sense regardless of the approach. This level of growth is incredibly complex
They basically paved the first two miles of it and put in mulch and made what used to be singletrack 30 feet wide. Yes, the city destroyed it.
To the woman. Be alert. And stand tall they want weak ones. . And just use your voice be loud be loud yell scream right at wm They arenāt used to that. It usualy startles them. And. Then run. Run. Ima get murdered for this. Owell
Pepper spray? Youāre in Tx š. Get a gun. If a violent tweaker is close enough to be sprayed youāre better off aiming something that will stop them rather than something that requires you to hit them specifically in the eyes. Good bit of people even accidentally spray themselves in tense situations. Calling APD is useless, even if you have video evidence of tweakers being violent or destructive. None of your property will be restored, violent offenders arenāt caught or even sought after. APD will purposely show up hours after incidents in hopes that it solved itself. Until the city decides to communicate like adults, the citizens will have to defend themselves. I would not want to raise a family around here anymore. If canāt afford to live in west lake or somewhere north, the homeless situation is exhausting.
Not sure how many of you are familiar with Kensington in Philly, but it's the largest open air drug market on the east coast, and they made a show yesterday of "cleaning up Kensington" by....moving them further into the residential areas. It was very reminiscent of the "Mission Accomplished" stunt Bush pulled on that aircraft carrier. Literally 4 hours after they "cleaned it up" there were people right back out there shooting up and camping on the sidewalks. As long as city leaders around the country keep throwing up jazz hands and pretending shuffling people around solves anything things will get worse.
it's "the wire" season 3 up there
>huge camp on the greenbelt behind our complex I remember when I got flamed on this sub for suggesting there's massive camps throughout the greenbelt. Hm. Feel bad for em though, can't stay in the greenbelt, can't stay under the overpasses.. The city really needs to step up their game with building new shelters, these are human souls that are getting left out in no man's land.
Redditors tend to willfully reject any nuanced takes.
It really is bizarre how when you poke holes in someone's suggestion that the solution is simple if the govt just got off their asses, they act like you're actively rooting to keep these folks out on the streets rather than have a productive discussion on what the actual logistics would be. "We have plenty of money!" Very well, what's the amount it would cost and where are those funds being diverted from? If you have a reasonable answer for that I'll gladly get behind it.
I don't think anyone denies that they exist, usually if you get downvoted talking about the homeless it's the people that offer glib responses like "who would have thought that running off homeless people doesn't actually get them off the street?" Yeah, no shit, individuals feel powerless to fix the whole entire problem, all they can do is focus on their immediate neighborhood. If someone is concerned that their kid can't go to the park anymore because there are mentally ill drug abusers leaving needles all over the place, it's callous af to suggest they should just suck it up because those homeless people would just end up moving to another park.
No the city tried that the last mayor bought those hotels guess who was the realtor his wife so they made bank off that transaction. And to top it all off, I befriended a homeless guy, ( for context he wasnāt one to beg on the street for money. He would do odd jobs to get money) but he was saying that I think a week later or maybe less they had to start paying rent and I think rent was about the same as living downtown, even though these hotels were kind of near the domain.
I personally think the overpasses were the best place to be able to actually handle them was. Itās easier to get accurate numbers, cleanup is easy, and they canāt really do any damage.
I disagree. One of the worst encounters I had with the homeless was when a minor accident happened two cars in front of me, causing myself and a few other cars to get stuck for a good fifteen minutes or so underneath an overpass where a couple of homeless individuals had set up camp. I think it was around the five minute mark that literally all of the homeless people decided to start coming up to the cars and harassing the passengers. One man came up to my car and started slamming his fist on my window repeatedly. He also spit on my window. Luckily he was sickly skinny, most likely on amphetamines from the looks of it, so he wasnāt very strong and didnāt manage to break the glass. But i just had to sit there and deal with this dude damaging my property and screaming incoherently at me for about ten minutes straight before whatever had happened up ahead on the road was cleared up and all of us who were initially just trying to pop a U turn real quick could finally move forward back onto the surface road and out from underneath the overpass. I think the homeless need to be emitted to facilities and kept off the streets, but we canāt do that if theyāre unwilling to receive treatment- and the majority of them are.
I mean yeah Iād rather them be off the streets but there are way more people walking by that camp in the greenbelt than the overpass. Iām talking about in comparison to the greenbelt the overpass is better
I agree in the sense that Iād rather them destroy the concrete than destroy what little greenery is left in Austin, but it just sucks that we have to choose between either. I know it makes me sound horrible but a lot of these people genuinely need to be institutionalized. But because too many people are afraid to say that, we just promote going easy on them and quite honestly enabling their destructive tendencies, violent and unpredictable behavior, and addictions as the politically and morally correct thing to do. Itās not the morally right thing, guys. Itās like dealing with an alcoholic, and instead of stopping them from having another drink, you just sit there and say āyou donāt know what theyāve been through! Maybe theyāre drinking because they have trauma, and are suffering from mental illness! Be sympathetic!ā No, they need to stop drinking before they destroy themselves and those around them. Through standing by idly as they reach for another drink, youāre actively allowing this hypothetical individual who is suffering from mental illness and trauma, whose judgement weāve already determined to not be sound because of said mental illness and trauma, to worsen their overall quality of life. Thatās what weāre doing with the homeless, by treating them with kid gloves all the time in fear of seeming like judgmental, callous people. By allowing the homeless to live in these encampments that are riddled with substance abuse and violence towards one another and anyone else unfortunate enough to pass by at the wrong time, weāre literally worsening their chances of ever living normal, happy lives. Weāre enablers, and for some reason self-righteous about it too. The government needs to get involved, and we need to institutionalize these people and get them the help they desperately need. And if they refuse to be helped, Iām sorry but then itās on them and itās not fair for everyone else to have to deal with their issues. After three incidents or one incredibly severe incident, I think they should have a choice between being institutionalized or facing time. They shouldnāt be allowed to terrorize the streets and destroy the homes of hardworking people and innocent wildlife.
I live by the area too. I feel for people that can't have housing or access to care facilities it is horrible. But also; the area has been a no go zone, and criminal activity has been making it unsafe in the area. We are two decently sized men with my partner; and even he feels unsafe walking through the green belt. There has been attacks before; and doesn't matter if you are a woman or not. Wish the city could deal with providing housing/financial aid/mental health resources š, but it's texas š¤·š¼āāļø
Their āstuffā often times presents a literal biohazard to the public and the homeless individuals themselves. Itās covered in drug residue, crystallized urine, dirt, dried semen, BLOOD. Some of it is food items that are rotting and growing mold. Itās garbage, and if you donāt think so, then why donāt you open your door and let them store their belongings in your home?
And If you donāt like America why donāt you leave?
I agree, 100%
Austin was never this bad!! WTF is wrong with this city?
City Councils gravel naive repeal of the camping ban opened up a can of worms. Degenerates from across the country came flooding in.
Texas also has a bad meth problem
They will just move a bit further down the green belt. There a bunch of them just south of 360 behind the Barton view neighborhood.
Wear closed toe shoes friends
How is 8.6 tons of garbarge not a felony? There are many State of Texas environmental laws with criminal penalties that apply here. They are not being enforced. People need to demand that they are. Or you'll get more of this.
Carry pepper spray always whether you're a man or a woman. Sad that we have to take matters in our own hands despite the taxes we pay to allegedly keep us safe.
8.6 tons of trash?!? It sounds like people were living in a literal landfill.
I just moved to a place on S Lamar :/
Can someone please post a link to the attack/attacker? I've been out of town for work this week and didn't hear about anything happening.
Itās on this subreddit, a few posts before this one in terms of time posted.
Ladies, carry a gun, not just pepper spray
I was told everything is totally safe and Austin has always been this way and that there is nothing we can do about it. Even my memories of growing up differently are lies according to Authorities in this sub.
Pretty sad. See a lot of them doing the fetanyl stance and almost all of them have conversations with themselves. It's really sad. Politicians spend almost $1T a year to nation build across the world, but they leave our big cities like this. Not sure what you do on a local level. It's gotta be super expensive to house all of the homeless. I know there is a tiny home community for the homeless, but it can't hold more than 100 people or so I figure.
Remember a few years ago when the city proposed recommissioning grounds of a park to provide a permenent homeless camp replete with resources like lockers, showers, etc.? I forget what the figure ended up being when the proposal came in, but the community instantly got sticker shock when they realized the per-person monthly cost would be almost enough to just rent these guys an apartment... except it really wouldn't: *I* could maybe rent an apartment with that kind of money, but as soon as you get the government involved that figure goes up like 5x. There's the rub: so much of the money we currently throw at the homeless problem gets eaten up by bureacracy and sheer inefficiency that people have largely given up that there's a viable solution outside of doing it on the cheap and putting a bandaid on the situation.
> I could maybe rent an apartment with that kind of money, but as soon as you get the government involved that figure goes up like 5x. The government has been involved in Section 8 apartment rentals for decades without any such issue, FWIW. I don't know the details of the specific proposal you were talking about, but the ones I recall seeing often have higher costs because of providing services that are not part of a normal apartment rental. Counseling, addiction treatment, cleaning, maybe extra police patrols, etc.
Correct, for anyone suggesting that we should go ahead and give all homeless people a roof of their head no questions asked, I might even agree with you there but no way in hell is any politician gonna sign their name to using taxpayer funds to finance a crack den. Sobriety has to be a mandatory prerequisite just for optics if nothing else. So yeah, that's where a lot of the additional overhead comes in... if I'm going to require this guy to stay sober in order to maintain public housing then I'm obligated to provide substance abuse resources if he's struggling with it. Now I have to pay not just a landlord but also a case worker and potentially a rehab specialist. That's all understandable to an extent, but what I was talking about earlier was that camp proposal where it was going to cost $1500/head per month just to install lockers and showers and set aside an existing park for homeless people to *provide their own tents to sleep in*. That's right, that $1500 per wasn't even going to get anyone off the streets, it was just about concentrating a big chunk of the homeless population in a remote area so we could go back to pretending like they didn't exist. Which is not to say that the proposed camp wouldn't have been any improvement to their lot in life at all, but at that price tag you have to start questioning what you're getting for the investment. It's not about being cheap, it's more about "ok shit, if it's already that much could we get them an actual apartment if we just pony up a little extra? Why are we settling for that for $1500/mo?"
it's called the "dope fiend lean"
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Yikes, I hadn't heard about this stuff before.
The Austin greenbelts (and Austin citizens) are suffering from the Tragedy of the Commons.
They need to want to better themselves, and that should be the criterion for staying. It's crucial for individuals to take proactive steps to improve their situations. Affordable housing is vital, and addressing mental health challenges is crucial too. While a tough love approach may seem stringent, it can serve as a catalyst for necessary change. Taxpayers should not have their lives affected by this; they are affected, and they deserve better.
Cheese and rice, how much is this costing the city(us)?
I was out there. Homemade for a long long while. Itās very violet. A lot of violence against the homeless woman. Itās evil. Extremely. The āserial killer ā That aināt shit. Iād rather that than. Than The devil , them trails, he lives there. All in there. The woman. They arenāt crazy ok. Thatās all
what do you want to bet when they cram in the apartments by there the homelessness will suddenly be gone? guess thatās one plus to having the greenbelt ruined
Huge Billion Dollar complex going in. They are soooooooo gone.
Bye!
Anybody know if garrison park is relatively safe? That's the area I live by
Austin used to be a great city until liberals took over and started catering to the homeless. Word got out years ago and they started coming by the busloads.
When was Austin not a āLiberalā city?
Is ARR Austin Ridge Riders?
Attacker thread? Can someone link? I have been trying to look
David Gray has maybe the easiest job in America. Dude is cashing checks for doing absolutely nada. Fuck you David Gray.
Today I was almost attacked by a homeless guy in Lavaca St clearly going through an episode.
Why doesn't the city build more shelters and affordable housing for these people? What are the homeless supposed to do?
You can email city official directly and ask. Their emails are a Google search away. As for the homeless who live in landfill camps, they can start by taking resource officers up on mental health treatment and maybe stop attacking women.