In Race to End Homelessness, San Antonio Takes the Lead

[mahatmakanejeeves]

David Weigel Retweeted

San Antonio already met and exceeded its goal of finding housing for 1,500 homeless people by the end of the year. The city is setting the pace for the Biden administration's House America campaign:

bloomberg.com
In Race to End Homelessness, San Antonio Takes the Lead
The Texas city beat its goals for placing people in supportive housing — part of the Biden administration’s 2021 House America initiative.

Link to tweet

CityLab
Housing

In Race to End Homelessness, San Antonio Takes the Lead

The Texas city beat its goals for placing people in supportive housing — part of the Biden administration’s 2021 House America initiative.

By Kriston Capps
October 18, 2022 at 8:00 AM EDT

In September 2021, San Antonio officials pledged to place more than 1,500 people in permanent supportive housing and add hundreds more new affordable units to the construction pipeline before the end of 2022. This week, local and federal officials said that the city had surpassed that goal, finding housing for 1,600 residents and counting who were without homes.

That commitment was part of “House America,” an effort by the Biden administration to partner with local governments to put roofs over people sleeping on the streets and, in some places, end homelessness altogether. Housing Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and officials from local organizations assembled at City Hall on Monday to announce that San Antonio is the first community to meet and exceed its target.

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[Jirel]

1. Any work toward this is good, but San Antonio should not be praised.

San Antonio's work on homelessness - or I should say lack of meaningful work - is absolutely dismal. San Antonio's track record is all about making homelessness DISAPPEAR in tourist areas, not actually provide for people in need. I would not be surprised if this is just more whitewashing.

San Antonio built Haven For Hope, a staggeringly Orwellian name for a facility meant to warehouse poor people to a less used end of downtown in squalid conditions. No sooner was that built, than the government of San Antonio (I'm looking at YOU, Nirenberg and friends!) began harassing all the nonprofits, religious and otherwise, that were feeding and housing the poor all over the city, to close down their services. That was around 2010-2011, and it has continued since. It was all about concentrating homeless folks into that one sector of town.

San Antonio is famous for destroying tents, and for ticketing people who still have cars to sleep in. It is famous for cops that will rummage through a homeless person's belongings, find their medications that they got from one of the low income or charity clinics and that are clearly labeled, and laugh while telling the homeless person that they have no way of knowing that these are their meds, or that the labels match what's in the bottle, and then dumping the pills out in the garbage. The "Haven For Hope" is a truly hopeless place that homeless folks go out of their way to avoid, for issues like overcrowding, people being forced to sleep outside in the courtyard in still overcrowded conditions or having to sleep on the streets around it, theft, disease, violence, and more. One winter, they destroyed the belongings of most of the people sleeping there because of parasites that were running rampant. People lost EVERYTHING. Rather than improving the situation for homeless folks, the city is interested only in placating the residents living nearby, who know that Haven is nothing more than a warehousing facility and homeless folks have nowhere else to go, so they're spilling out and living on the streets all around it while trying to take advantage of what little they can get there that actually helps. About 600-700 people can sleep there indoors, but on any given day there are another 700+ who go in and out to get showers and try to access services in that courtyard, but then have to go find some other place to be. Of course, having driven away other services and created this mess, the cops then overpolice the area to ticket and arrest people for doing things they have to for survival, like panhandling or camping. Way to go, adding criminal charges, jail time, fines, probation fees and burdensome reporting, etc., to the lives of people with nowhere to turn to. Oh, and they proudly tout that the center is a "good neighbor" because they assist local residents in calling the cops on homeless people who aren't where they're "supposed to be."

So, let's not hear any cheers for San Antonio. Here's a piece by a San Antonio city councilman from just last year, who is still polishing the turd even as he points out what San Antonio does to unhoused folks daily - https://theappeal.org/san-antonio-homelessness-housing/