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Originally Posted by austlar1
It is strangely less visible here in Austin. Just a few years ago large numbers of homeless and tent encampments were to be found underneath all the overhead freeways throughout the city and also in parks and trails closer to the center. There have always been homeless encampments on vacant land (wooded areas especially) within about a 6 mile radius from the center of town. I suspect none of that has changed much, but the visible homeless population and a lot of the squalor associated with it has disappeared from view to a large extent. You'll still see a stray tent or three set up at various places around town, especially around highways 290 and 183 on the NE and North side of town, but the numbers have declined greatly. Even the large numbers of homeless on the sidewalks around the ARCH resource center have diminished to just a few dozen at any one time. There are still a lot of presumably homeless sign flyers at major intersections. That's been the case for at least two decades, so I don't really factor that into my assessment of local homeless situation. Things seemed to improve after the old city manager, who largely ignored the issue, was fired, and a former mayor (Kirk Watson) returned to office. Austin's mayor has little real power, but he is clearly not interested in coddling the homeless population. I think a large number of homeless have been housed in motels throughout the region, and supposedly a lot of homeless are utilizing the large state run encampment located somewhere on the SE side of town. I don't know how many have recieved housing in motels, and I am doubtful that the state run encampment is actually that well utilized. Since there is so much hard core drug addiction and/or mental illness in the homeless population, it seems doubtful that long term housing in motels will work for these people. I'm really at a loss to explain the decline in visible homelessness here in Austin, but I have to admit it's a huge and welcome improvement.
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I noticed the same during my last visit (I left Austin in January). Several years ago, it was horrible. Just like you said. Just about every underpass was tent cities and piles of garbage everywhere, including adjacent to the Arboretum, which I understand was losing business. A 55+ apartment community was having trouble with leasing because people didn't want to live a block from the mess. The area around Ben White and Westgate/Menchaca was bad before any other area. Downtown businesses were really suffering. We even had some tents set up right in my neighborhood, about 50 ft from homes. I agree the homeless seem to have found other places. I noticed trails leading into the woods in several areas, like a long Braker between Mopac and 183. You could always tell, because there would be a bunch of shopping carts and trash at the entrances.
From everything I read, Austin still has a huge problem, but it isn't as visible, I would agree.
I live in Cypress now, a Houston suburb of about 250,000. In six months, I've never seen any tents anywhere, and have seen maybe a couple of transients on street corners. E.g., the intersection of 290 and Barker-Cypress. My guess is that the population and law enforcement in Cypress would never tolerate what has happened in Austin. It's even unusual to see any litter here, and the medians are all landscaped and maintained. In Austin the medians were trashed out anywhere they were close to a tent city, and there was no budget allocated to cleaning up all the trash. There are things I miss about not living in Austin, but I'm loving how much cleaner this place is.
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I think youre seeing shit at this point. Name this street please. Im on Santa Monica Blvd all the time. Stop your bs.
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