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Old Posted Jul 25, 2019, 8:10 AM
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Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AviationGuy View Post
We're pissed in Austin, too, but this guy in the video seems full of hatred toward people who have major problems (albeit due to their poor choices in life in many cases). What we need to be pissed about, at least in Austin, is that the police no longer have enforcement power, and our city has rapidly become a garbage dump like Portland, without much effort by the city or highway department to clean up the mess. Our city "leaders" are talking more about housing the homeless, which is a discussion that is needed, but they're not talking about cleaning up the garbage. If they are, I haven't heard anything from them. Like many Austinites, I've been contacting the mayor and city council offices, with no responses.
I hear you but I'm also pissed about the attitude of the homeless themselves. If the civic problems they caused were truly unavoidable--they do have to exist somewhere--it would be different. But so many of them seem so angry and resentful at the rest of us and, as a consequence, so antisocial in their behavior. They don't just make messes because they have to--many of them make messes to "get even" with society (that means us). In the public open space of my condo building we have maybe 4 or 5 trash cans (because there are ground floor eating places that sell take-out food and we encourage people to sit and eat and throw the trash in those cans). I've watched homeless guys go from can to can, presumably looking for bottles and cans with a cash return value, but they don't just root through the can contents. They purposely pull everything out and let it scatter to the wind, then throw the lids on the ground.

And even those sidewalk tents--around here there's an alley bisecting every block. They could pitch those tents in the alleys but they prefer to pitch them on sidewalks on main streets so people have to walk out into the street to get around them. And I've seen too many people "nodding" (I assume), sprawled out totally filling a sidewalk so people have to either step over them or go out into the street again to get around them. All of this is illegal, of course--San Francisco has a law against sitting or lying on sidewalks--but there is zero enforcement with the "collusion" of the cops, prosecutors and judges.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AviationGuy View Post
There's even talk now about a recall of Austin's mayor over this issue.
San Francisco's recently elected mayor was the most conservative candidate running at the time. She's a black woman--a Democrat of course--but during the election she gave plenty of lip service to dealing with the homeless problem and, to be fair, she's trying. So recalling her would be pointless--she'd likely be replaced by someone who would try even less. But there's really very little she can do. She's trying to build more of what here are called "Navigation Centers" which are sort of deluxe homeless shelters with a variety of services and rules permitting people to stay in them 24 hours a day (regular shelters kick people out every morning). But everywhere such facilities are proposed, the "neighbors" do everything possible to block them (lately without much success so the Mayor is making some progress there). She's also promising some law enforcement but really what can you do? Fines are futile--these people have no money. They aren't deterred by jail--in jail they get methadone if they are addicted and 3 meals and a cot to sleep on. And there's no room in SF's jails for many of them anyway.

Last edited by Pedestrian; Jul 25, 2019 at 8:22 AM.
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