Austin’s Homeless: Laissez Faire in a Mixed Economy

Here in Austin, Texas, the reductio ad absurdum of the city government’s policies toward the homeless is that you (and all your friends) can take over any public space for your own use. The city council and mayor have declared de facto privatization. I want a school. They are not being used now and I can make good use of one. Once in, I will be hard to extricate because schools are defensible fortresses. (See, for example, The Girl Who Owned a City.) Perhaps you would like a park or a sports arena. Just find one that is not being used and make yourself a home. 

 

Menchaca and Ben White Jan 2020 and June 2020 

Austin Statesman

City Council rescinds measures that critics say criminalize homelessness

By Elizabeth Findell 

Posted Jun 21, 2019 at 3:36 AM

Updated Jun 21, 2019 at 6:14 PM

 

The Austin City Council early Friday rescinded city prohibitions on sitting or sleeping in public and panhandling — measures social advocates said wrongly criminalized homelessness — after hours of emotional testimony from passionate residents on both sides of the issue.

 

The decisions, made after 2 a.m. during a meeting that started at 10 a.m., capped a long day of intense discussion surrounding several homelessness-related votes at City Hall.

 

https://www.statesman.com/news/20190621/city-council-rescinds-measures-that-critics-say-criminalize-homelessness

 

Ben White opposite Target Then 

Summary of Changes to the Ordinances

On October 17, 2019, the City Council made several revisions to the city ordinance that prohibits camping in public areas.  Other ordinances, including those prohibiting obstruction on sidewalks in the downtown area and aggressive confrontation, remain unchanged.  The ordinance changes went into effect on October 28, 2019.

https://www.austintexas.gov/department/council-direction-and-policy

 

The Texas Tribune

Greg Abbott says TxDOT could remove homeless camps from Austin's highway underpasses

BY DAVIS RICH OCT. 18, 2019

 

The governor has vowed to use state resources to clear Austin's homeless residents from public spaces since city officials began changing local ordinances dictating where people can and can't camp.

 

Gov. Greg Abbott's office said Friday the Texas Department of Transportation could force homeless Austin residents out from under bridges and overpasses where some of them live or camp if recent changes to city ordinances don't result in less feces and fewer needles by Nov. 1.

 

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/18/greg-abbott-says-txdot-will-remove-austin-homeless-under-highways/

Ben White opposite Target Now 

 

KVUE-TV (ABC)

After more downtown stabbings, Abbott says Austin's 'reckless' policies on homelessness 'must end now'

Author: Drew Knight, Luis de Leon

Published: 5:16 PM CST January 24, 2020

Updated: 8:16 AM CST January 25, 2020

AUSTIN, Texas — After a series of Downtown Austin stabbings overnight left three people injured, Gov. Greg Abbott released a pointed statement for the Austin City Council on Friday.

"City of Austin leaders have allowed lawlessness throughout the capital city that is resulting in violence against Austin residents, including those who are homeless," Gov. Abbott said in a statement released to KVUE. "Last night’s tragedy, leaving three injured, is just the most recent instance of this violence. This rise in violence has corresponded with the revocation of the camping ban that the Austin City Council passed in June. Public endangerment and murder can no longer be tolerated because of the actions – and inactions – by City officials. Mayor Adler and the city council should re-instate the camping ban and restore the rule of law in Austin. The City’s gamble on these reckless policies has been a loser and must end now."

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/gov-abbott-calls-austin-homeless-policy-reckless-after-stabbings/269-fe1bd9ab-d65b-4cff-a013-3edb295c4c1f

 

Fox-7 TV

Gov. Abbott working to override Austin homeless camping ordinance

By Steven Sarabia 

Published February 7 [2020]

Homeless Crisis FOX 7 Austin

While talking about Austin's homeless issues Wednesday, Abbott said on Twitter, "Next step should be to reinstate the ban on camping and work with non-profit organizations to assist with shelters. That's exactly what I will ask the Texas Legislature to do."

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/gov-abbott-working-to-override-austin-homeless-camping-ordinance

Wikipedia provided this definition from the Communist Party of Texas

LUMPENPROLETARIAT - German for "rag proletariat." Generally unemployable people who make no positive contribution to an economy. Sometimes described as the bottom layer of a capitalist society. May include criminal and mentally unstable people. Some activists consider them "most radical" because they are "most exploited," but they are un-organizable and more likely to act as paid agents than to have any progressive role in class struggle.  See https://www.cp-texas.org/glossary

 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

 

Workers’ Paradise Promised an End to Money 

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny 

Karl Marx and the Dustbin of History 

Furloughs for Freedom: Downsizing Government 

Toxic Leadership 

 

Stadtluft macht frei

"City air makes you free" is a secular prayer from the Middle Ages. If a serf could evade re-capture for a year and a day, the manor lord's bond was broken. Freedom is the ability to choose; and the city offers a multiplicity of choices. You can make yourself anew in the city. We do not question the fact that in our popular culture, all of the superheroes have secret identities and live in cities: Superman's Metropolis; Bruce Wayne in Gotham; The Green Arrow in Star City; Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West, and Bart Allen in Keystone City... 

Frost Tower from the Scarbrough Building

Bank of America Building from the Scarbrough Building

The Littlefield Building from the Scarbrough Building.
In 1910 they competed to be the tallest,
though limited by law not to surpass
the State Capitol.  The Littlefield is Beaux Arts.
In 1930 the Scarbrough was updated to an
Art Deco interior.

The German word is Wolkenkratzer: Cloudscraper.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Around Austin
Austin at Night
Formulas for Success
South by Southwest 2013
Images from SXSW 2013
South by Southwest 2012

SXSW 2013

South by Southwest is iconic. Music is the core experience, but much more is associated and affiliated from Interactive computing to a Film Festival with multiple venues. Technically not an SXSW event Bill Gates was here to dedicate a new computer engineering lab at UT.  As a security guard posted to 6th Street and Congress Avenue, SXSW comes to me.

Bill Keys writes poetry on the spot.

Round here we're all swimmers
Everything that has ever breathed this sweet air
was conceived in a liquid medium
Blood is smarter than the nerve
              the heart quicker than the brain
Swimming is more sensitive than a jog.

Photographers are ubiquitous.  I like to take snapshots, too.  I wonder what they see that I do not.  Of course, I see them: gangs, droves, clubs, and clutches of them.  Austin is no more or less photogenic than any other town, but they are here for SXSW.  My ex taught me that the best camera is the one you have with you right now; and so, therefore, the best subject is the one before you.

Posed, but nice.

My buildings are the Scarbrough and Littlefield, both built in 1910 and both competing to be the tallest -- but, by law, no taller than the State Capitol Dome.  That has changed, but the Art Deco of the Scarbrough and the Beaux Arts of the Littlefield draw photographers.

SARAH, A PEDICAB

Pedicabs work for tips and they are regulated by the city.  They are limited by law in where they can go and what they can charge. Austin is a one-party people's republic, politically like Ann Arbor, Berkeley, and Portland.  The city council just outlawed disposable plastic bags.  So, now the stores give away plastic bags even larger and thicker than the old ones, very undisposable.  And paper.  Lots of paper. The Austin City Council chose to chop up the Amazon, rather than drain Saudi Arabia.  Moral choice are so difficult...  But, that aside, pedicabs may be the sine qua non of capitalism.

Pedicabs wait out the rain at Halcyon coffee shop

In the late 1600s, in London, bank runners were supposed to carry papers from place to place.  However, they stopped at coffee shops and there they exchanged their notes.  This was the origin of the merchant banking clearinghouse as we know it today.  The same coffee shops also gave birth to the insurance industry.  It was at the Lloyd's Coffee House in 1688 (the year of the Glorious Revolution), that news of shipping was posted, bringing in the modern insurance industry.

Previously on NecessaryFacts:
Images from SXSW 2013
South by Southwest 2012
Stadtluft Macht Frei
Around Austin
Austin at Night

Around Austin

Texas has no income tax. Sales tax is 8.5% here in Austin because 1% goes for CapMetro, the bus and rail lines.  Dell, Motorola, and a dozen more are here, hundreds of small high tech firms and design studios dot the economic landscape which is dominated by the University of Texas and the state government.  Then, there are cinema, music, and fine arts. KMFA-FM plays no NPR or other news; and Composer's Datebook reminds us that "once all music was new." (The NPR affiliate is KUT-FM, which also launched an alternative format KUTX-FM.) I live in a Mexican neighborhood (no surprise), but a mile up the road, two banks have signs in Chinese.


5th floor near 6th and Lamar looking north
(Whole Foods HQ not visible at far left).
Note all the trees.

You don't see a lot of people getting speeding tickets here. In fact, as a Michigander, I find it downright frustrating to be behind two enormous SUVs each doing 25 in a 40 MPH zone, along the main drag, Lamar Boulevard.  (The street honors Mirabeau Lamar, second president of the Texas Republic.  Houston Street is a small lane, easy to miss.  Sam Houston wanted the capital someplace else.)  Freeway ramps are longer than the roads between towns back East.

The Bar Crawler caught in broad daylight.

But business is booming and bursting and reforming and reformulating.  You will find real estate, minerals, computer chips, computer games.  The culture - music, cinema, fine art, theater - is an economic sector, of course. NPR-affliate KUT-FM provides a deep playlist of local and contemporary music. In addition to Whole Foods, Schlotzsky's home office is here.

The McCombs College of Business at UT is one of several
to have received an antique stock exchange station.

Michael Dell began building personal computers in his dormitory room at UT.  The town as seen busts: people turn nostalgic about the good old days of the 1980s.  An Austin American-Statesman article last year offered hand-wringing because recovery from the Dot Com Meltdown still might not yet have reached the gaming coders.

The Goodwill stores have a computer museum,
funded in part by Dell.
A Cray stands among the vintage machines.

The land is diverse, more like Ohio than it is like New Mexico.  We went through a drought last year with record highs for record days, but that, too, is one of the environmental textures.  When it rains, it pours.  We just passed the apex of cricket season.  You get so many in one place, you can smell them.  Same with grackles.


At the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Austin offers much.  Nearly two million people agree.  Housing is disproportionaltely expensive as a result.  The city owns the electric power company and rates rise as their operating costs fall.  Taxicabs are regulated and all charge the same rates.  Pedicabs are regulated differently.  In a lot of ways, Texas is very much like Massachusetts.... but don't tell them that.  The Texas flag flies at the same height as the American flag; and the Texas flag is larger than the American flag. You don't get that in Massachusetts.

Also on Necessary Facts
Austin at Night
Stadtluft Macht Frei
South by Southwest 2013
Images from SXSW 2013
South by Southwest 2012

Back in the Saddle Again

(These comments are edited from an original post to the Rebirth of Reason discussion board.)

This week and next, I am in Austin, Texas, to find work.  I have not had W-2 income in Ann Arbor for over a year, and I was never employed full time since we moved there in 2005.  We completed our degrees, which was our goal.    Watching NUMB3RS, we saw ads for Rick Snyder's campaign for governor - "The toughest nerd in politics."  But I cannot wait for a Republican to discover free enterrprise.

 A few years ago, after we moved back to Michigan, I heard NPR's Terrie Gross of "Fresh Air" interviewing Mrs. Lynn Cheney, the wife of the former Vice President and Terrie Gross simply was so focussed on lesbian politics that she failed to perceive Lynn Cheney's actual purpose for the interview: her funding of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.  You see, out West, they had racism and prejudice and all that nonsense, but if you kept your word and helped your neighbors without making them beholding to you, then you stood as tall as any man.  Out West, people are equal despite the law.  Back East, you cannot be equal without the law.

"... where the only law is Right."

The first woman to be governor was Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming (appointed). The first woman in Congress was from New Mexico, when they were a Territory.  The first woman elected governor was Miriam A. Ferguson of Texas.  

We have been planning this move for about three years, but it never gelled.  In 2008, we checked out Portland, Oregon, Cincinnati, and Madison, Wisconsin.  No place seemed better or better off, and in Portland and Madison, people said that we would like there because "it's just like Ann Arbor."  

I considered New Hampshire. It has good numbers and the Free State Project.  Nice place. But I'm a cowboy, not a yankee.   We lived in Albuquerque and loved it.  New Mexico is poorer than Arizona, but we know that left wing socialism is economically worse than fascism. You have to pick your demons. Myself, at some level, I can take the poverty in preference to the prison, but Michigan has sunk below my pain threshhold. 

Until this year, I never considered Texas.  From my studies in criminology, I know Houston to be a whole peck of troubles, beginning with the police.  Dallas is Big. It has skyscrapers and suburbs. It is "like" any other American city its size. I worked a project for AEP's purchase of a power company in Dallas. I flew down on Mondays and home on Fridays for about two months. Nothing at all stood out for me, which is why I never considered moving there, though I did think of Fort Worth, which still has that substrate of having been a cow town.  This year, Austin came up on repeated searches of demographic and economic data.  Perhaps the deciding factor was the bumperstickers we saw in Ann Arbor: "Keep Austin weird."  

Arriving on Tuesday, the 19th, I have been riding city buses to see the town.  I met a realtor with rentals to see what we could get for how much.  I shopped at the Wheatsville Food Co-op and saw several of its competitors in and around Hyde Park, the area with with bookstores, Vietnamese carryout ("Bite Mi"), and some alternate media, including the Austin Chronicle, and at least one, maybe two, gaming cafes.   (I found the area from a real estate search engine asking if we needed a kiln or proximity to yoga classes.)  I had a walk-in interview with a security firm I know. It went well enough: no management jobs now, but lots of opportunity for posts and patrols, which no longer exist in Ann Arbor.  On Thursday, I met with an IT recruiter.  On Friday, the 22nd, I had lunch with the Austin Tech Republicans, a group I met via LinkedIn. Our guest speaker was Austin Bay. His topic was "Cyber War."  Colonel Bay earned a Ph.D. in English at Columbia.  (More on that later.)

After five days in Austin, it is clear that I could work 80 hours a week at a range of part-time jobs paying $7.50 an hour.  That is no longer possible in Michigan.

The final closing of Borders only underscores the intellectual bankruptcy of the groups behind Gov. Rick Perry as it does the supporters of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm.  Chasing smokestacks, they want to "bring jobs" to Michigan.  Unable to let go of the 20th century, they are unprepared for the 21st.  Austin has beggars at the freeway exits; and I see people sleeping under bridges; but here also is enterprise.  You cannot tell a bodega from a car dealership because everything is for sale.  With the temperatures near 100-F, I saw a woman standing a median, selling bottles of cold water.  When I introduce myself, it seems perfectly normal that I have three different business cards.

Of course, it is not utopia.  Yesterday, I heard a discouraging word - several of them - from a drunken guy whose wife and daughter were leaving him.  I took out my cellphone for 911, but he turned away from them and walked off.  Also discouraging is the lack of stetsons.  Even downtown, guys wear suits, but not hats.  Like a topology problem, Austin is surrounded by Texas, but not really in Texas.