Posted on 08/17/2019 10:19:14 AM PDT by JeepersFreepers
You already read the headline, but that’s not even the worst part.
Yes, Austin City Council is spending a record-high $62.7 million this year to try and solve homelessness, equivalent to giving roughly $28,000 to each homeless person in the city. But the more startling fact is that Austin officials are leading the city down the same dangerous path San Francisco has already journeyed—a path Austinites should be wary not to travel.
Before peering down the road toward Austin’s future, let’s look around for a moment at the crisis happening right now in Texas’ capital city. The homeless population is rapidly rising, up 5 percent a year for the last two years; the number of those unsheltered on the streets is the highest it has been in nearly a decade. And you may have even noticed people camping in the middle of public areas all across town, thanks to a recent decision by the city council that has spread contention throughout the community.
We already know city council’s plan to solve this whole problem is to spend a lot of money, but instead of just writing a $28,000 check to each homeless person, they’re sending pallets of tax dollars through a cash-eating maze of city administration and bureaucracy, hoping that a fraction of it eventually comes out the other side to the people on the streets.
Will that plan work? Enter San Francisco, the potential Austin-of-the-future.
If you look just past the shiny Golden Gate Bridge, you’ll see one of the worst homelessness disasters in the United States. The Bay City has recently become infamous for homeless crime, used syringes, and human feces littering the entire downtown area (the city even has a designated “Poop Patrol”).
San Francisco’s city government created a bold plan to solve everything, a plan Austin is now following: Spend lots of citizens’ money.
From 2016 to 2020, their city government will have spent over $1.5 billion on homelessness. If you do the math of that four-year spending based on the current homeless population of 9,784, that’s over $153,000 on each person.
Yet despite San Francisco’s mind-boggling payouts per person, the situation for those on the street—and the rest of the city—has only deteriorated.
Indeed, the homeless population has grown by nearly 7 percent in just the last two years (and 14 percent since 2013), with the vast majority of those new homeless being hometown folks. Oh, and the dangerous turmoil on the streets downtown has only intensified.
In short, the plan isn’t working. San Francisco’s city government has thrown a bewildering amount of money and programs at this problem, yet the landscape remains in shambles and littered with feces.
Back in Austin, where citizens are beginning to see more visible vagrancy and crime downtown, our city officials are trying the same exact plan as San Francisco with a fraction of the money. How should they expect that to end? (Hint: According to a city audit, Austin officials are already doing a dismal job fixing this problem with the money they do have, and the city is only just beginning their planned spending sprees.)
The path San Francisco has traveled—the path of enormous government spending—has ended in chaos, but Austinites can protect their own quality of life by telling their city officials to turn around now.
Indeed, and fattens themselves as long as they can
Dr. Drew Pinsky said that Los Angeles faces an imminent outbreak of bubonic plague because of the growth of the homeless population and the failure of state and local authorities to deal with rodent problems.
Dr. Drew told Adams that he had predicted the recent typhus outbreak in Los Angeles, which was carried by rats, transferred by fleas to pets, and from pets to humans.
Bus ticket to San Fransisco is only $99 one way
hmmm, I see a really inexpensive solution to this problem
ALL the money goes to the social welfare warriors!
Anybody care to guess the salaries these dingbats get paid to “solve” the problem?
See my post #44!
“Philanthropy using public tax money is a very lucrative business. Pitt of that $28 million spent I bet only $1 to 2 million reachs the intended beneficiaries while the rest is vacumed up by politicians and the well-connected.”
The Law
Law and Charity Are Not the Same
The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect persons and property.
Furthermore, it must not be said that the law may be philanthropic if, in the process, it refrains from oppressing persons and plundering them of their property; this would be a contradiction. The law cannot avoid having an effect upon persons and property; and if the law acts in any manner except to protect them, its actions then necessarily violate the liberty of persons and their right to own property.
The law is justice — simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this. If you exceed this proper limit — if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic — you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you. This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself?
Frederic Bastiat
“Why not just buy them a cheap house in a cheap state and be rid of them if you’re gonna spend that much?”
because “homeless” drug addicts and illegal aliens would flock by the hundreds of thousands to any city that would buy them a free house ...
Not happening. San Francisco is prosperous and has a lot going for it, despite the liberal crap going on there. Austin is a cesspool and a "nothing there" town. I've been to Austin many times, and it reminds me of Berkeley. A bunch of liberal freaks with a few trendy restaurants and bars but not much else to look at or do. About the only thing okay are the lakes and waterways (except for all the bats living under the bridges). Austin sucks.
It’s about what you subsidize you get more of.
Who says they’re not wanted. I think Austin just passed an outdoor camping ordinance that says they can basically sleep anywhere they want to, even on your sidewalk. They love their dragworms there, always have, at least since the first time I saw Austin.
If Austin weren’t the state capital, it would be just like Portland.
Truly. Just how much worthless could LIBs be? Really.
muh values
Somebody up thread said it well - don’t let children play with matches. Don’t vote democrat for anything.
The Austin city council is infested with idiots.
San Antonio isn’t far behind.
“...a path Austinites should be wary not to travel.”
Would be more successful preaching to fence posts!
I have attend the TCEA Conference in Austin many times. Either 3 or 4 years ago, I noticed a huge increase in the homeless. One popped on the sidewalk at 8 am right by the Convention Center. Another one stepped out of an alcove toward me when I was leaving a night time reception. Luckily, I had a big man with me. The convention has been moved to San Antonio.
No, don't do that. They'll just come back. Put them on a plane to Hawaii.
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