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Originally Posted by Mimol742
Do you live in Austin? I have never been but I hear the problem is just as bad as it is on the west coast.
I truly believe some cities attract homeless people (weather, political environment, etc).
Also we have free healthcare in NYC and we offer our homeless shelter in city hotels yet we still have mentally ill people and druggies roaming the streets and sleeping on sidewalks. I’m not really sure what liberal California is doing for it’s most vulnerable citizens. As the 5th largest economy in the world and with its high taxes it could do a lot more for these people.
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Yeah, I do. And oh, yeah, the homeless issue is bad here. I do think people come to Texas cities mostly because the weather is warm for the most part, except for that crazy winter storm we had last month. I think there are a lot of reasons why it's worse in some cities than others. People tend to blame the local governments, but it's more than that. It's climate, it's access to resources/safety nets/support and a perception that the local population is sympathic and "kind" to the homeless. Also, it's the built form of a place - are there places for them to camp. There certainly are here with our greenbelts we have along the creeks. It's bad in other Texas cities, but I think there is a perception that more liberal places tend to be more receptive to it. I've seen homeless in many Texas cities and in the suburbs, too.
And, yeah, Austin has purchased a few "run down" hotels to be turned into public housing for the homeless. That's been met with different reactions. Mostly people who don't like the idea of those hotels being used in such a way, but honestly, it's not like those were upstanding businesses to begin with and were being rented to druggies and prostitutes anyway. And my argument to that has been you can either have them wandering the streets and starting fires in the woods to cook their food or you can house them with an address and hopefully a path to some normalcy. The state government also operates a homeless "camp" where they literally are camping in tents on state owned property. Someone actually froze to death in one of those camps last month when the temperature got down to 6F here and we had 7 inches of snow on the ground. That was extremely rare, though. It was the most snow Austin had seen since 1949. It was pretty incredible.