Here’s a Texas Public Policy Foundation roundtable on homelessness, with a focus on the problem in Austin.
I’ve cut out five minutes of nothing-at-all at the beginning.
(Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings.)
Posts Tagged ‘Austin City Council’
TPPF On Homelessness in Austin (And Elsewhere)
Saturday, August 29th, 2020Austin Police Defunding/Homeless Update
Thursday, August 20th, 2020In a follow-up to last week’s police defunding story, here are a few tidbits of Austin news related to police defunding, Adler’s bumsvilles, etc.
“[T]hey will lose the lifeblood of the revenues they receive from property taxes in Texas,” Abbott explained. “What this does, in English, is it is going to defund cities and cities’ ability to operate at all if they try to defund law enforcement.
“We believe in law enforcement in Texas and we are not going to allow a replication of the types of policies we’ve seen destroying cities like Seattle and Portland and others.”
Abbott accused such liberal precincts of “caving to the forces of socialism” even as crime increases, and added that some are allowing their municipalities to be “hijacked.”
“So Texas is laying down a marker and that is, whether it be the city of Austin or another city, such actions are not going to be tolerated. In Texas, we embrace law enforcement, we will not accept turning power over to these socialistic forces that seek to abandon the rule of law and abandon the law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to keep our communities safe.”
However, unlike Abbott’s various Wuhan Coronavirus mandates, this will require the Texas legislature to enact, which won’t happen until next year. And Socialist Austin city councilman Greg Casar says it won’t deter his anti-police agenda.
It always seems to go back to the decision to make Austin bumsville, doesn’t it?
“There were thousands of pounds of trash, human waste, and needles washing through our backyards and the creek bed.”
Kevin Ludlow struck a nerve after posting his time-lapse video of the Windsor Park creek, which runs from Cameron Rd., into the neighborhood behind Ludlow’s house, and continues east. It even runs past a new community pool and water park.
The video in question:
The portion of creek bed which runs the length of the Heritage at Hillcrest apartment complex, behind his back yard, and down a couple of blocks further is prime real estate for the city’s growing homeless population because of its shade and relative seclusion.
Since the beginning of 2020, Ludlow noted the population of homeless individuals living in the creek bed grew to a few hundred people until its apex a couple of weeks ago. A storm came on July 31, causing the creek to flood and wash the piles of debris further down the area.
The issues that have arisen downtown and in the city’s business-heavy districts have been well-documented, but it has extended beyond these areas.
Snip.
In his video, Ludlow was able to record footage of campers smoking crack and shooting up heroin. Multiple times, campers became confrontational over his documentation.
He added that because regular syringes can be hard to come by, campers turn to insulin needles — which are much smaller both in length and tip — of which he’s found numerous on the ground.
He underscored, “I’m a pretty progressive-left guy, but [allowing homeless camping] has helped nobody, especially the homeless.”
Snip.
Back in October, Austin Police Department Chief Brian Manley reported statistics showing a 15 percent increase in violent crimes wherein both the victim and the suspect were homeless from July through September of 2019 compared with the same time frame the previous year.
Austin’s homeless problem has been growing for decades, but a watershed moment occurred last year.
In June of 2019, the Austin City Council approved the rescission of its public camping and lying ban. It went into effect in July and has led to a massive uptick in the unsheltered homeless population ever since, as more transients made camp on public property ranging anywhere from parks, sidewalks, underpasses, and more.
The city’s stated intention was that the policy change would bring the homeless population into sheltered facilities wherein they could receive whatever aid they needed.
In this year’s homeless population survey, the city recorded a 45 percent increase in its unsheltered population and an 11 percent decrease in those sheltered. There was an unmistakable incentive to leave shelters or the woods and live on the streets.
The city eventually reinstated some of the restrictions in place before July 2019 but stopped well short of fully reinstating the ban. The issue has grown substantially and fractured the community and its elected council considerably.
Read the whole thing.
Adler emails his Senior Policy Advisor to confirm homeless crime stats as reported by the Statesman. Adler is advised that the Statesman did them a favor by not emphasizing the 5 yr homeless crime rise & instead focusing on the violent crime by the non homeless. That figures. pic.twitter.com/oTIqsUQU5n
— johnnyk2000 (@johnnyk20001) July 8, 2020
This must be the email that got Jacob Aronowitz his new position as Jimmy Flannigan's field director. ATX you have been warned. pic.twitter.com/leJLtPt3rG
— johnnyk2000 (@johnnyk20001) July 29, 2020
“Funding that upholds our dignity.” What bilious, gaseous nonsense. What he probably meant to say is “the graft that lines our pockets.”
LinkSwarm For June 12, 2020
Friday, June 12th, 2020Riots! Guns! Social Justice Warriors! Animated police dogs! Today’s LinkSwarm is packed to its furry ears…
This has been a long time coming. At least a generation, maybe two. The left methodically has taken control of key institutions to implement an anti-American, anti-Capitalist agenda.
You send your kids to public schools and college, where they are taught from their earliest years that America and capitalism are the sources of evil in the world, that we are a systemically racist society that consumes ‘black and brown bodies,’ while socialist and communist systems are more equal and fair. It’s all a lie, but it’s a lie told by the teachers, professors, and administrators with power. The real racists are the people who obsess about race, and who judge people based on the color of their skin.
When your kids emerge from the social justice warfare meat grinder, you don’t recognize them anymore. Oh well, you shrug.
There is a concerted effort funded by leftist billionaires and high tech companies to control what you can say, and to silence you through mob action or social media throttling if you get out of line. The large corporate media, with only a couple of exceptions, is thoroughly corrupt and works every day to elect their preferred candidates, always Democrats.
The law enforcement system is being undermined by district attorneys funded by George Soros whose agenda is to prevent enforcement of laws, and politicians whose goal is to see those arrested released immediately without bail. We’re seeing that right now with rioters and looters almost immediately released. The next push is to defund the police.
Hollywood, The music industry. Television. Gone.
We still have the vote and can win elections, despite the disadvantage. But it’s not a guarantee. Which is why the left wants to subvert voting integrity.
All this time, you have seen bits and pieces, and figured that while you might not agree, it wasn’t a threat to our existence.
The wilding and looting should be your wake up call. When seconds counted, the police were pulled back by the policitians.
Let us know Biden and his party by what they have done for black people in all the decades Dems have enjoyed a firm hold on their vote.
If they really cared about black lives, they would have tried to address the real reasons for black disadvantage. They would worry about fatherlessness, the 70 percent of black children born to single mothers, the illiteracy that holds down black achievement, and drugs that blight black lives.
They would champion school choice, which Attorney General Bill Barr calls the “civil rights issue of our era.”
They would wonder why black disadvantage and violence is entrenched in cities they have controlled for decades.
But instead, Democrats blather about “systemic racism” and blame cops and President Trump.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Texas hit a new daily high in COVID-19 cases Tuesday with 2,504 new cases reported, according to data released Wednesday by the Texas Department of State Health Services. That topped the previous daily high of 1,949 cases May 31.
Just over 21% of the new cases were reported in Jefferson County, which reported 537 new cases Tuesday, nearly doubling its previous total.
Asked about the cause of the increase, DSHS spokesperson Chris Van Deusen pointed to Jefferson County’s three state prison units.
Most of the new cases were “due to a change in how the local health department is reporting” cases from the prisons, he said.
Hot spots like prisons have recently started to do mass testing, and the data is not always reported daily.
To the growing list of opinions that could cause you to be cast out of public life we can now add: thinking white privilege is a bullshit idea and thinking that staging a protest in Wales against police brutality in Minneapolis is a bit stupid.
For over the past 24 hours it has been revealed that two British men have been sacked and suspended respectively for the crime of gently criticising the tactics and rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Stu Peters, a presenter on the Isle of Man’s Manx Radio station, has been suspended and put under investigation following an on-air clash with a black caller. In the exchange, Peters criticised the concept of white privilege (‘I’ve had no more privilege in my life than you have’) and questioned the point of BLM protests on the Isle (‘You can demonstrate anywhere you like, but it doesn’t make any sense to me’). The case has even been referred to the Isle of Man’s Communications Commission.
We just had the biggest spike of new gun buyers in recorded history — and then did it again one month later
The NSSF (the gun industry’s main trade group) just released their report on gun sales in the first four months of 2020. Record-breaking spikes in guns sales actually happen relatively frequently, and that’s certainly been the case in 2020. But the unique thing this year is how many of those gun sales were to first-time owners. The NSSF estimates that 40 percent of sales were to newbies, two-thirds higher than the typical level of 24 percent. Combined with 6.5 million background checks in the first four months of the year, NSSF estimates that the January–April 2020 period created 2.6 million new gun owners in the US.
There are 209 million adults in the US. Thirty percent of them personally own a gun. So 2.6 million new gun owners means a 4.1 percent increase in the total number of gun owners. In four months, driven by COVID. That’s before the second wave of new buyers from all the May–June upheaval — which wave, judging by the images of 2-hour lines outside gun shops, could be just as big as the first one.
Much bigger, I would guess, if demand can keep up.
Country doesn't have a color. pic.twitter.com/0sNI4tZds1
— L (@SomeBitchIKnow) June 6, 2020
The left is seeking to define the scope of acceptable thought, and they do it by marginalizing the mainstream and mainstreaming the marginal.
They do it by lying both directly and by omission of normal views the leftists disapprove of. I talk about it in detail (and brutally) in my new non-fiction book The 21 Biggest Lies About Donald Trump (and You!). Even as my tome prepares to drop on 7/7, new examples of this crap keep popping up.
Look at the “defund the police” idiocy. This sinister power grab – it’s not crazy, but rather a calculated effort to centralize force within left-wing power structures and leave you disarmed and defenseless – gets the support of only a rounding error of American citizens, but it’s the only view you hear on the commie cable shows. Some try to gaslight it so not to freak out the whiny white wine women of suburbia who know their Ken-doll feminized and gunless husbands won’t be able to protect them. The sugar coaters assert that only a stupid conservative dummy would think “defund the police” actually means “defund the police,” just like “believe all women” could never be reasonably interpreted as meaning that people should “believe all women.”
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
.@BretWeinstein was demonized for being right. pic.twitter.com/PZK8ULZfl9
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 7, 2020
“These ideas are wrong.”
For more privileged individuals such as [Catherine] Tait, as Glenn Loury told the Quillette podcast recently, the anti-racism movement is now more akin to a performative religion, presenting garment-rending adherents with concepts analogous to original sin (whiteness) and excommunication (cancelation). America and its white inhabitants are presented as having permanently cursed souls, a defect that can be addressed only through elaborate rites of penance, as in recent scenes of white people washing the feet of black community leaders. And it’s notable that the above-described art-house and newsroom controversies always seem to originate in some supposedly sacrilegious text or monologue, whose heretical nature is taken as proof of a contaminated character.
Snip.
The reason the Times has lost its editorial moorings isn’t that social media is crazy and tribalistic. Social media has always been crazy and tribalistic. What’s changed is that the firewall between social media and real life has now broken down completely thanks to the pandemic lockdown. Since we’re all working from home, and dealing with co-workers only through digital means, the line between colleague and troll has blurred to nothingness.
It was one thing when Times staffers had to co-exist in a world of cubicles, water fountains, lunchrooms, and elevator chit chat. We all say we’re exasperated by office life, but the annoying rituals of communal work help remind us that our colleagues are actual human beings who tell stories about their dogs and put stick-it notes on their Tupperware. Canceling James Bennet, Real Human Being, would have been a lot harder than canceling @James_Bennet, the Slack-channel avatar. Certainly, it’s no coincidence that the Times’ descent into full-blown progressive cancel-culture social panic happened to coincide with the only period in the newspaper’s history when people who once rubbed elbows daily suddenly never saw each other for many months.
“One of our nation’s most storied newspapers just had its intellectual independence challenged by an angry mob, and they folded like a house of cards,” McConnell said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “A jury of people on Twitter indicted them as accessories to a thought crime, and instead of telling them to go take a hike, the paper pleaded guilty and begged for mercy.”
100 million dollar question that leftists are refusing to answer:
To what organization do the funds raised on the Black Lives Matter website go?
BLM raised 40 million dollars in 48 hours because of George Floyd’s death. But WHO did Act Blue direct that funding to?
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) June 11, 2020
Rioters in Philly deface a statue of Matthias Baldwin, an early abolitionist who fought against slavery 30 years before it ended. pic.twitter.com/1HKrDusPBh
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 11, 2020
President Donald Trump’s decision to cut the number of U.S. troops in Germany has irked Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government and German media.
The White House plans to withdraw 9,500 out of 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany by September, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The move came after Germany ignored President Trump’s repeated warnings and kept defaulting on the agreed defense spending, leaving the U.S. to pick up the hefty NATO bill.
“The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable,” President Trump said at the 2018 NATO summit. The U.S. shoulders more than 70 percent of the NATO defense budget.
Peter Beyer, a German politician and a key Merkel ally, called the planned U.S. troop withdrawal “completely unacceptable” to Germany. “It’s not just about 9,500 soldiers, but also their families, an estimated 20,000 Americans,” he added.
What’s the last year Germany met it’s 2% funding target?
LinkSwarm for March 20, 2020
Friday, March 20th, 2020I hope you’re enjoying your splendid isolation on the first day of spring. As in previous weeks, the Wuhan coronavirus dominates the news with the reminder that the Gods of the Copybook Headings are never far away…
Holy crap—flashback to @wapo quoting the Chinese FM slamming the Trump administration's 1/31 travel ban AND noting that WHO (still operating under Chinese disinformation about #COVID19) was against Trump's move to stop entry into the US from China. pic.twitter.com/kkHfgwrv4Y
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) March 19, 2020
From the Verge 1/31 – apoplectic that Trump was going against WHO recommendations (because he's such an anti-science xenophobe…) pic.twitter.com/G83YAaVhsT
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) March 19, 2020
All of this PALES in comparison to Laurie Garrett in @ForeignPolicy lavishing praise on the Chinese for their response while viciously admonishing the Trump administration for going against WHO recs—calling the travel ban an “improvisation”
I bet the CCP won't be banning Laurie! pic.twitter.com/MUdPiunyPi
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) March 19, 2020
I think this has to be the last one I post for now because after this I need to go walk my dog and have some wine. Maybe at the same time.
My God. pic.twitter.com/tsJ4kWqjVR
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) March 19, 2020
The Centers for Disease Control has a $6.6 billion budget and one job which it messes up every time.
The last time the CDC had a serious workout was six years ago during the Ebola crisis. Back then CDC guidelines allowed medical personnel infected with Ebola to avoid a quarantine and interact with Americans until they showed undeniable symptoms of the disease. There were no protocols in place for treating the potentially infected resulting in the further spread of the disease inside the United States.
At the height of the crisis, confidence in the CDC fell to 37%. Meanwhile, CDC personnel had managed to mishandle Ebola virus samples, accidentally sending samples of the live virus to CDC labs. And the heads of the health bureaucracy blamed the lack of funding for their failure to have an Ebola vaccine.
Snip.
During the Ebola crisis, the CDC had been spending a mere $2.6 million on gun violence studies. But the CDC has a history of wasting money on everything from a $106 million visitor’s center with Japanese gardens, a $200K gym, a transgender beauty pageant, not to mention promoting bike paths.
The occasional outbreak only calls the CDC’s general incompetence to everyone’s attention. The rest of the time its incompetence, like that of other government agencies, just ticks along wasting money.
In 1999, the CDC announced a plan to end syphilis in 5 years. The Clinton era National Plan to Eliminate Syphilis was an unserious social welfare proposal that wanted to battle racism and was such a success that by 2018, syphilis rates had hit a new record high. But Democrat presidential candidates using the CDC for imaginary proposals to end a disease, not by utilizing science, but social welfare, had become a bad habit under Obama, diverting resources from what the CDC could realistically do for political scams.
In 2011, Hillary Clinton had promised an “AIDS-free generation” by, in part, using the CDC. Like her presidency, the “AIDS-free generation” never arrived and was never going to.
The CDC isn’t prepared to fight epidemics because it’s too concerned with pushing gun control, fighting obesity, and waging social justice. (Hat tip: Zerohedge.)
What Beijing cares about is clear from its sustained war on global public opinion. Chinese propaganda mouthpieces have launched a broad array of attacks against the facts, attempting to create a new narrative about China’s historic victory over the Wuhan virus. Chinese state media is praising the government’s “effective, responsible governance,” but the truth is that Beijing is culpable for the spread of the pathogen around China and the world. Chinese officials knew about the new virus back in December, and did nothing to warn their citizens or impose measures to curb it early on.
Instead of acting with necessary speed and transparency, the party-state looked to its own reputation and legitimacy. It threatened whistleblowers like the late Dr. Li Wenliang, and clamped down on social media to prevent both information about the virus and criticism of the Communist Party and government from spreading.
Unsurprisingly, China also has enablers abroad helping to whitewash Beijing’s culpability. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus refused for months to declare a pandemic, and instead thanked China for “making us safer,” a comment straight out of an Orwell novel. This is the same WHO that has refused to allow Taiwan membership, due undoubtedly to Beijing’s influence over the WHO’s purse strings.
Most egregiously, some Chinese government officials have gone so far as to claim that the Wuhan virus was not indigenous to China at all, while others, like Mr. Tedros, suggest that China’s response somehow bought the world “time” to deal with the crisis. That such lines are being repeated by global officials and talking heads shows how effectively China’s propaganda machine is shaping the global narrative. The world is quickly coming to praise the Communist Party’s governance model, instead of condemn it.
The reality is that China did not tell its own people about the risk for weeks and refused to let in major foreign epidemiological teams, including from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Thus, the world could not get accurate information and laboratory samples early on. By then, it was too late to stop the virus from spreading, and other world capitals were as lax in imposing meaningful travel bans and quarantines as was Beijing.
Because of China’s initial failures, governments around the world, including democratic ones, now are being forced to take extraordinary actions that mimic to one degree or another Beijing’s authoritarian tendencies, thus remaking the world more in China’s image. Not least of the changes will be in more intrusive digital surveillance of citizens, so as to be able to better track and stop the spread of future epidemics, a step that might not have been necessary if Beijing was more open about the virus back in December and if the WHO had fulfilled its responsibilities earlier.
Politics aside, this is incredible and the right response in this critical time. 👏🏽 https://t.co/MUzGkAxNaO
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 19, 2020
And the moon became as blood… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
I’ve bought a number of books there over the years…
Last year, ProPublica published a list of ER wait times at New York hospitals. Keep these pre-Wuhan virus wait times in mind when media begin to claim, in order to foment fear and hysteria, that long waits at NYC ERs are a new phenomeneon (they're not). https://t.co/rMhfdnXXlt pic.twitter.com/ET2nEMGvJc
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 19, 2020
After two years of hiding public voter data, the state’s biggest county will finally disclose records of foreigners illegally voting in Texas elections, ending a court battle initiated by an election integrity group.
This week, Harris County settled a lawsuit brought against its top voter registration official and agreed to release all records of noncitizen voters requested by Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm that specializes in fighting to enforce federal voter roll maintenance laws.
Snip.
PILF sued Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Ann Bennett in 2018, after Bennett’s office refused access to records of registered voters identified as noncitizens, as well as actions taken by the county regarding those registrations.
Hitchens detested tribal and parochial feelings of any kind, which is why he was dismayed when he witnessed the emergence of identity as a catalyst for political mobilization in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In his memoir, Hitch-22, Hitchens attacked radicals who thought it was “enough to be a member of a sex or gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic ‘preference,’ to qualify as a revolutionary.” When Hitchens first heard the expression “the personal is political,” he knew “as one does from the utterance of any sinister bullshit that it was—cliché is arguably forgivable here—very bad news.” As he put it in a 2008 article:
People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of ‘race’ or ‘gender’ alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason.
In the summer of 1992, actress Mia Farrow found out that her adopted daughter Soon-Yi was still romantically involved with Mia’s ex-long-time-boyfriend and collaborator, Woody Allen. According to then-21-year-old Soon-Yi, Mia responded by telling a psychologist that Woody was “satanic and evil,” and that she needed to “find a way to stop him.” Three days later, seven-year-old Dylan Farrow, Mia’s daughter, accused Allen of molesting her in Mia’s Connecticut house. But when the child’s accusations, which were captured on videotape with reported coaching from Mia, were investigated by the Connecticut State Attorney, the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital and the New York Department of Social Services, no credible evidence could be found to support the allegations. As Kyle Smith reported in a definitive National Review article, Mia’s own nanny “quit the family rather than support Mia’s version of events.” And Dylan’s brother Moses wrote in 2018 that the Mia-Dylan abuse narrative simply made no sense given the architecture of the Connecticut house where the abuse allegedly took place. Yet Woody Allen was nonetheless smeared as a rapist and pedophile. And last week, his publisher, Hachette Book Group, announced it would cancel its deal to publish Allen’s memoirs.
The accusation always struck me as bunk. You can believe that Allen marrying his girlfriend’s stepdaughter is a creeper move without believing he’s a pedophile.
The 125cc Husky 🤔🤔🤗🤗🤭🤫🤫🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭
The dog gone to bikes 😬
Crank it up..literally 🥴🤔🤫😬😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
pic.twitter.com/9Ia3hZxtN8— 🗡⚔️🗡Templar🗡⚔️🗡 (@aTeXan575) March 17, 2020
This is as good a time as any to tell you that my dog sings along to the Law & Order theme song every time he hears it pic.twitter.com/4HNVPWrzmE
— Peter Schultz (@pete_schultz) March 19, 2020
LinkSwarm for December 13, 2019
Friday, December 13th, 2019Happy Friday the 13th! Going to be a short one, since I spent most of the week finishing up the book catalog I sent out yesterday. And there are a lot of big news topics (like the Horowitz report) I want to do longer posts on. Maybe this weekend…
Wow! pic.twitter.com/8WTKIlY25V
— Sam Bowman (@s8mb) December 13, 2019
— Peter R. Quiñones (@PeterRQuinones) December 13, 2019
Austin Half-Asses Its Homeless Problem
Tuesday, November 12th, 2019The problem with posting about Austin’s ongoing homeless problem is where to stop gathering data and throw up a post, since the left-wing politicians who created the problem refuse to do anything about solving it. So let’s just dig in:
When last we checked, Austin’s downtown areas had become increasingly overrun by homeless drug addicts thanks to Austin mayor Steve Adler and the City Council repealing the urban camping ordinance. After watching this clown show, a little over a month ago Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared that if Adler wouldn’t fix his own problem, the state would. As per his word, last week the Texas Department of Transportation started clearing homeless camps from underpasses.
In between then, faced with obvious evidence of a how massively they screwed up, and that actual citizens hated their newly trashed city, Adler and the city council boldly decided to half ass the issue:
After the Austin City Council voted to lift a ban on homeless camping, sitting and lying, city leaders have decided to make some changes at a council meeting Oct. 17.
The changes mean camping on all city sidewalks will be banned, but sitting and lying down will not – unless it is 15 feet from an operating business. Camping, sitting or lying downtown around the ARCH will be banned, within a quarter mile of the area. That rule will eventually apply to the South Austin homeless shelter when it is built.
Camping, sitting and lying will also be banned in high wildfire risk zones, which is 14% of the city, or if it is endangering the health or safety of the public. It was approved by a 7-4 vote.
The four nays were Kathie Tovo, Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen and Alison Alter, who supported a more specific plan that would add bans in more areas and make the ordinance clearer for enforcement.
Underpasses were not addressed in the changes on Thursday.
So transients camping on business sidewalks are right out, but open public spaces next to ordinary citizens are evidently A-OK to camp and shoot-up on.
Two days ago, the Texas Department of transportation opened a camp for the homeless near 183 and Montopolis Drive. (Montopolis is one of the last ungentrified black neighborhoods in Austin.) DPS troopers are patrolling the camp 24 hours a day. My prediction is that this will help some, but the majority of homeless won’t avail themselves of it because they won’t be permitted to buy and use drugs there.
The City Council is also considering buying a motel for $8 million to house the homeless:
The Austin City Council on Thursday will consider allocating $8 million to purchase an motel in South Austin to provide housing for people who are homeless.
The property is a Rodeway Inn at 2711 Interstate 35 South, between Oltorf Drive and Woodward Street, with 82 units.
“The property is an ideal location given the proximity to areas where individuals who are experiencing homelessness live, accessible by public transportation, close to major arterials, and within reasonable distance of health care facilities,” city documents say.
That seems to be about four times what it’s actually worth:
Here’s the property @austintexasgov is proposing we pay $8M to buy so 82 rooms ($98k/room) can become homes for the #homeless. Est. market value: $2.1M. Current owner: Super Success, Inc. Who is that & why so much? Please explain. @mayoradler @statesman https://t.co/Ho3Jl2vrUQ
— Scott Hendrix (@MrScottHendrix) November 9, 2019
I’m sure property owners in the Riverside/Oltorf area, which had been undergoing gradual gentrification from it’s immediate sleazy past, will be happy to have drug-using transients imported into their neighborhood on a permanent basis.
Chuck DeVore, who fled California’s dysfunction only to see it crop up again in Austin, has some clear-eyed observations on the problem:
Last summer, the all-Democratic 10-member Austin City Council voted to lift the city’s ban on sleeping or camping on public property, such as sidewalks and parks – except for City Hall itself.
Immediately following the vote, Austin’s visible homeless population soared, with people passed out in the doorways of businesses, erecting tents along busy parkways and, according to police, getting hit and killed by cars.
Responding to criticism from city residents, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott (who lives in downtown Austin in the governor’s mansion), the City Council passed an amendment to its homeless camping ordinance last month. The new rules made it illegal for the homeless to camp within a quarter-mile of a large downtown homeless shelter.
The amended ordinance quickly pushed more of the homeless into the city’s business district, leading a manager of one of Austin’s famous food trucks to note that the increased chaos on the streets was threatening to his customers.
In his Fox News interview, Adler, a Democrat, repeatedly said the homeless problem can only be solved by giving people homes. He blamed the homelessness issue on the high cost of housing.
Adler also claimed that the new ordinance didn’t create more people experiencing homelessness, but rather simply drew them into the open from the woodlands and greenbelts where they had previously been staying, mostly out of sight.
However, a Fox News reporter recently interviewed a homeless man in Austin who had a different take, saying: “This is a famous place to live on the streets. Everybody knows that. If you want to live on the streets, go to Austin. You don’t even have to buy food. Everybody feeds you, give you money. You can party, it’s a blast.”
Adler referred to getting the homeless into homes at least a half-dozen times during his interview, mentioning medical care once. This is what’s known in policy circles as a “housing first” strategy. The mayor’s intent was made clear when, near the end of his interview, he claimed that Austin needed “no barrier housing.”
What is “housing first” and “no barrier housing”?
“Housing first” is a federal policy that prohibits nonprofits receiving federal grants from requiring the people they serve to comply with service participation requirements like sobriety or job training – this is also the “no barrier housing” to which Adler referred.
So, in short: Sturdy beggars comes to Austin to get high and mooch off bleeding hearts. We should start calling them “Adlers.”
Because up to 75 percent of unsheltered people struggle with substance abuse disorders, a one-size-fits all “housing first” policy often ends up harming the very people it purports to help – recovering addicts and domestic violence survivors – by placing them in close proximity to addicts and abusers. This incentivizes program models that don’t work.
Unlike the Trump administration’s successful approach to the opioid crisis – which recognizes individual needs – “housing first” failed to address the root causes of homelessness. For many people, the root cause of their homelessness is drug addiction and untreated mental illness. In that sense, “housing first” threatens to undermine the progress being made on the national opioid crisis.
So why haven’t Adler and the City Council reversed course despite huge public opposition to their move? Some say because of all the money to be raked off for the “Homeless Industrial Complex”:
Here’s how the process works: Developers accept public money to build these projects to house the homeless – either “bridge housing,” or “permanent supportive housing.” Cities and counties collect building fees and hire bureaucrats for oversight. The projects are then handed off to nonprofits with long term contracts to run them.
That doesn’t sound so bad, right? The problem is the price tag. Developers don’t just build housing projects, they build ridiculously overpriced, overbuilt housing projects. Cities and counties don’t just collect building fees, they collect outrageously expensive building fees, at the same time as they create a massive bureaucracy. The nonprofits don’t just run these projects – the actual people staffing these shelters aren’t overpaid – they operate huge bureaucratic empires with overhead and executive salaries that do nothing for the homeless.
Many examples of how this works in California snipped.
Recognize that a special interest, the Homeless Industrial Complex – comprised of developers, government bureaucrats, and activist nonprofits – has taken over the homeless agenda and turned it into a profit center. They are not going to solve the problem, they are going to milk it. Their PR firms will sell compliant media a feel-good story about someone who turned their life around, living in a fine new apartment. What they won’t tell you is that because of the $400,000 they charged to build that single apartment unit, dozens if not hundreds of people are still on the street with nothing.
For examples of what Adler and company’s decisions have wrought:
More:
And it’s had extreme negative effects on Austin businesses:
Even former mayor Lee Leffingwell (hardly a conservative) says that the repeal of the camping ban was a huge mistake.
More complaints from the citizenry:
I consider myself progressive. This isn’t it. Fighting for workers/opportunity means investing in strong cities, education, transportation, health, and public safety. Turning #Austin streets over to criminal vagrants, #homeless addicts, non-workers is an insult to those who work. https://t.co/pvJDUoerh3
— UnlivableATX (@UnlivableATX) September 27, 2019
Well, well..look here. Austin follows CA & enters the Homeless Industrial Complex business. Big bucks are to be made to keep ‘em on the streets. Now what do LA & Austin have in common? 🤔Thx @ghceorg . @BinenTravis @SoledadUrsua @Edantes112 @Ron4California @HMDatMI @LarryOConnor https://t.co/a4Pe5myTId
— Carol (@LAVagrants) November 1, 2019
#Austin just throwing taxpayer money at the #homelessness problem; without competitive bids, without community input, without transparency, and consistently overpaying by millions. Who is benefiting? It’s not the #homeless who need more thought than just a city-funded flop house. https://t.co/nXQ2xWtQoK
— Everyone In Austin (@UnlivableATX) November 11, 2019
City of Austin retakes public property for use by the public. Anti-social #homeless activists (paid by whom?) continue to try to divide Austin community and agitate homeless to commit violence. https://t.co/bxtwsjJFTv
— Everyone In Austin (@UnlivableATX) November 10, 2019
And Rep. Dan Crenshaw weighed in as well:
Thankful our governor was willing to solve problems when the city of Austin wouldn’t.
Take note: Austin’s “tolerant” homeless policies don’t actually solve problems, they compound them.
We need leaders in office that want to do good, not just feel good. https://t.co/CbwIvoRc3S
— Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) November 8, 2019
And today Austin is getting its first seasonal hard freeze, with homeless shelters expecting an influx.
None of the actions Adler and the Austin City Council have taken since repealing the camping ban have addressed the central issue: their actions made Austin streets a Mecca for sturdy beggars and drug-addicted lunatics. Either they restore the ban, or Austin voters need to recall and/or vote them out.
California’s Present, Austin’s Future
Sunday, August 18th, 2019Wonder where Austin’s “Let the homeless do whatever they want, wherever they want, except in front of the city council building” plans lead to? Watch this.
I won’t stop , the gov of CA and his liberal ideology ruined my business.. I decided to close the doors today. I can’t do it anymore and I’m irate. Sincerely , a hard working self built self employed California business owner. pic.twitter.com/ydT28sQCYn
— Yeshua_porvida_amor (@Jesus_porvida) August 17, 2019
(Crap, just before I clicked publish on this, this Tweeter set their account to private. It was a video of a Sacramento business owner talking passionately about how she was leaving because she had gotten tired of removing the needles and washing the poo and pee off the sidewalk in front of her business every day, and how the patrons of her hair salon literally had to step over homeless people to get in.)
Update: Was poking around and I found an article that transcribes her statement:
A frustrated California woman took to Twitter on Friday to blast governor Gavin Newsom’s disastrous policies that have created a desperate homeless problem. The woman – who goes by @Jesus_porvida on Twitter – was clearly upset as she posted a video detailing why she may be forced to close the doors of her business.
I have had a business in downtown Sacramento for 15 yrs, a successful business. I now have to leave my place of business. I have to close my shop.
Later tweets show pictures of the woman’s shop after the most recent in a series of break-ins, a break-in that apparently was the last straw for the Sacramento are hair stylist.
I have to clean up the poop and pee off my doorstep. I have to clean up the syringes. I have to politely ask ppl who I care for – I care about the homeless – to move their tents out of the way of the door to my business. I have to fight off people who push their way into my shop that are homeless and on drugs because you won’t arrest them for drug offenses. I have to apologize to my clients as to why they can’t get into my door because there’s somebody asleep there bc they’re not getting the help they need.
I talk to police offers. They told me to contact you. They want to do something and they can’t because you changed the laws. So I wanna know what you’re gonna do for us, the ones that are unhappy. You wanna make us a sanctuary state. You wanna make it comfortable for everybody except for the ppl that work hard and have tried their hardest to get along in life and now we have to change that because of your laws.
She shredded Newsom’s “liberal ideology” as the cause for the current chaos that forced her to close the doors of her business.
While you sit in your million dollar home you don’t have to look at what we have to look at; there’s hard working people who have to deal with this on a daily basis. What are you going to do for us?
I won’t stop , the gov of CA and his liberal ideology ruined my business.. I decided to close the doors today. I can’t do it anymore and I’m irate. Sincerely , a hard working self built self employed California business owner.
And Austin is already spending $28,000 in taxpayer money for each homeless person:
Austin City Council is spending a record-high $62.7 million this year to try and solve homelessness, equivalent to giving roughly $28,000 to each homeless person in the city. But the more startling fact is that Austin officials are leading the city down the same dangerous path San Francisco has already journeyed—a path Austinites should be wary not to travel.
Before peering down the road toward Austin’s future, let’s look around for a moment at the crisis happening right now in Texas’ capital city. The homeless population is rapidly rising, up 5 percent a year for the last two years; the number of those unsheltered on the streets is the highest it has been in nearly a decade. And you may have even noticed people camping in the middle of public areas all across town, thanks to a recent decision by the city council that has spread contention throughout the community.
We already know city council’s plan to solve this whole problem is to spend a lot of money, but instead of just writing a $28,000 check to each homeless person, they’re sending pallets of tax dollars through a cash-eating maze of city administration and bureaucracy, hoping that a fraction of it eventually comes out the other side to the people on the streets.
Will that plan work? Enter San Francisco, the potential Austin-of-the-future.
If you look just past the shiny Golden Gate Bridge, you’ll see one of the worst homelessness disasters in the United States. The Bay City has recently become infamous for homeless crime, used syringes, and human feces littering the entire downtown area (the city even has a designated “Poop Patrol”).
San Francisco’s city government created a bold plan to solve everything, a plan Austin is now following: Spend lots of citizens’ money.
From 2016 to 2020, their city government will have spent over $1.5 billion on homelessness. If you do the math of that four-year spending based on the current homeless population of 9,784, that’s over $153,000 on each person.
Yet despite San Francisco’s mind-boggling payouts per person, the situation for those on the street—and the rest of the city—has only deteriorated.
Indeed, the homeless population has grown by nearly 7 percent in just the last two years (and 14 percent since 2013), with the vast majority of those new homeless being hometown folks. Oh, and the dangerous turmoil on the streets downtown has only intensified.
Here’s a piece on volunteers having to clean up the historically black Walnut Creek Cemetery because homeless people have started camping there. (Homeless people camping in cemeteries is a problem Seattle started to have after they stopped enforcing laws against homeless camping.)
Some more tweets:
As much as I love Texas, right now thanks to Austin I’ve never been more embarrassed in all my life. This is what Austin’s City Council and the Mayor have turned Austin into. A homeless shelter for all the homeless. This is allowed. Are you fucking kidding me? pic.twitter.com/2Ofpm8TYgU
— Chief Slapaho✋™ (@SassyTexasBelle) August 10, 2019
Not gunna lie. This one’s my favorite: The Pallet Palace. No building permit needed. They’re building their own housing at this point. 183/Braker. #austinhomeless
(No, I wasn’t driving.) pic.twitter.com/kVseGMNSSN
— Christine Deacon (@christinedeacon) August 10, 2019
@austintexasgov also, these folks in the encampments are not supposed have stuff that can’t fit in a plastic bag. Seriously, they have trash everywhere, stolen bikes, solar panels, hammocks, etc under there! Wtf!?! Clear out immediately!!! #ATXCouncil #austinhomeless pic.twitter.com/H7K2yOEA1p
— TechAddictz (@TechAddictz) August 9, 2019
It appears that the Austin City Council has finally started figuring out just how deeply they screwed up:
Austin will re-examine its new rules governing homelessness, according to a memo released Friday.
The memo sent to the City Council on behalf of Austin’s Homelessness Strategy Office says the city could abandon its idea to make space for emergency encampments in every City Council district.
The office said after meeting with the Downtown Austin Alliance, the Greater Austin Crime Commission, service providers, public safety officials and the city’s newly formed Homeless Advisory Committee, it is prepared to limit where people can camp and sit or lie down in public – as well as limit how long a person can camp or rest.
The City Council voted to scale back rules on that behavior in June, allowing people to rest or camp in public as long as they didn’t do so on city parkland, completely obstruct a sidewalk, or present a public health or safety risk to themselves or others. The decision was met with pushback from Austinites who argued the new rules allowed for more visible encampments throughout the city.
Here’s an idea: How about they just restore the ban on public camping?
Want to contact the Austin City Council? Dwight has you covered.
City of Austin Votes To Let Drug Addicts Shit In The Streets
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019That’s not how the statute is worded, but I’m jumping ahead to the practical effects:
After emotional testimony last week regarding homelessness in Austin, City Council members rescinded prohibitions on camping on public property. Starting Monday, so long as they are not presenting a hazard or danger, people will be able to sleep, lie and set up tents on city-owned sidewalks, plazas and vacant non-park space.
Except, not in front of City Hall itself.
City Hall building guidelines implemented by former City Manager Marc Ott in 2012 disallow anyone from using the outdoor plaza, covered amphitheater or raised mezzanine from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. unless a city meeting is going on inside. The rules specifically prohibit sleeping, camping, storing personal property and erecting tents.
Well, we can’t let transient drug addicts and lunatics hassle city employees. Their antics are only supposed to degrade the lives of regular law-abiding Austinites.
Evidently the Austin City Council looked at the poop-bedecked streets of San Francisco, the needle-strewn yards of Seattle, and the rat and typhus-infected tent cities of Los Angeles and said said to themselves “Hey, that’s just what we need in Austin! Our streets are far too feces- and needle-free!”
Note that every city council members except Alison Alter and Kathie Tovo voted to turn Austin into an open sewer.
Governor Abbott is promising action:
If Austin— or any other Texas city—permits camping on city streets it will be yet another local ordinance the State of Texas will override.
At some point cities must start putting public safety & common sense first.
There are far better solutions for the homeless & citizens. https://t.co/xYezoovVCg
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) June 24, 2019
Look at this insanity caused by Austin’s reckless homeless policy.
All state-imposed solutions are on the table including eliminating local sovereign immunity for damages and injuries like this caused by a city’s homeless policy.
The horror stories are piling up. #txlege https://t.co/WkBryvLKWU
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) July 2, 2019
Iowahawk has some observations:
RIP South Congress
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 1, 2019
Other tweets on the subject:
Wake up Austin City Council! If you haven’t noticed, this is what you are doing to Austin, by allowing the homeless to claim public spaces as personal real estate. This is a travesty! https://t.co/0WzKt8mLjA
— Karen Choate (@kchoate) June 28, 2019
This policy helps no one. I’ve lived in downtown Austin for over 3 years now. The homeless population has exploded (can’t overstate, exploded) and they are now setting up in every covered space. They have gotten very aggressive and large parts of the city are filthy. https://t.co/NVmwpgfbue
— Tyler Norris (@TXTylerNorris) July 2, 2019
The People’s Republic of Austin isn’t as far-gone as San Francisco yet, and this might just engender a widespread revolt by “liberal but not entirely insane” Austin voters who rank their own health and safety over virtue displays of just how woke they are. Dwight has a handy contact page for members of the Austin City Council, and regular Austinites should let their offices know, a great length, just what they think of the decision.
Election News Roundup for November 3, 2014
Monday, November 3rd, 2014Election day is tomorrow! Now would be a good time to locate your voter registration card…