Homelessness in Downtown Austin
From 2008 to my retirement in July of 2020, I worked for a company based in San Francisco and traveled there frequently. San Francisco has been a haven for the homeless forever, but the change in the 13 years that I traveled there regularly was remarkable. About 18 months ago on a trip where I stayed in downtown San Francisco, I had the experience of stepping over human feces on a sidewalk storm grate, and then the next morning in a cab on the way to the airport, I watched a man drop his trousers, squat and defecate into a curbside storm drain. I wrote a letter to San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and copied it with a note to Austin Mayor Steve Adler. I communicated my experience to Mayor Breed and implored Mayor Adler not to follow what San Francisco had done. I got a response from Mayor Breed, nothing from Mayor Adler. A few months later, Austin City Council changed the ordinance on camping and loitering, moving exactly in the direction that San Francisco and other large cities on the west coast have gone.
Homelessness in Downtown Austin Part 2 – Why you should vote YES on Proposition B on May 1, 2021
On May 1st, 2021 Austinites will vote on a new ordinance to roll back the ordinance that replaced the ordinance that replaced the ordinance banning camping on public property without a permit. The special election item, Proposition B, will be on the ballot as the result of a petition signed by over 26,000 Austin residents and sponsored by the Save Austin Now non-profit advocacy group. Essentially, the proposed ordinance would reinstate a ban on camping and loitering in the downtown and University of Texas areas, and in public parks and greenbelts, and would prevent panhandling in those areas from 7 PM to 7 AM.
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Waterloo to Austin 