Downtown Jacksonville Ranks Last For Job Growth

[mtraininjax]

You really think I'm a moron? No, I'm a Yankee, and that makes me superior.

Did I say that? Are you from Orlando? Home of the evil Mouse...

[urbaknight]

You really think I'm a moron? No, I'm a Yankee, and that makes me superior.

Did I say that? Are you from Orlando? Home of the evil Mouse...

Sorry, I misunderstood your post.

[mtraininjax]

Sorry, I misunderstood your post.

No sweat. I am often misunderstood out here in MJ land.

[Timkin]

I don't understand

[jcjohnpaint]

I am from the Northeast and the only thing that I feel is 'really' different is we spend a lot more time sitting in traffic

[jcjohnpaint]

oh and the God thing is really big down here

[krazeeboi]

As far as the homeless go, they will just blend into the street scene once downtown gets some destinations that put more people on the street. Like someone mentioned before, my former home of Charlotte has its "stragglers" towards the north end of Tryon Street, but it doesn't deter a lot of people because there are establishments that people patronize on that end of the street. Plus those folks don't do a lot of panhandling and such anyway. I've heard it called "solution by dilution."

[krazeeboi]

Oh yeah, and it's also no surprise that the top four cities with the most downtown workers in raw numbers as depicted in the second chart are state capitals.

[urbaknight]

Sorry, I misunderstood your post.

No sweat. I am often misunderstood out here in MJ land.

Me too. But I do use a lot of sarcasm, so sometimes I unintentionally offend.

[thelakelander]

Those stats would be even worse if they extended to 2011.  The study went from 2002 to 2009.

If we could solve one problem in downtown in the next 4 years, top on my list to consider would be the number of homeless.  Time and time again, I hear from most people, the reason they don't go downtown is because of the homeless population.  We must be a mecca for homeless.  With all of the programs that we have for feeding them and providing shelter at night, is it doing anything to reduce the population?  I would guess those programs have had the exact opposite effect.  Time for a little tough love, IMO.

After spending some time walking around Downtown San Diego today, I'm now truly convinced that the homeless aren't as large of a problem that we make them out to be.  In DT San Diego, they are everywhere including the popular Gaslamp District.  They set up camps on the sidewalks, surface parking lots, parks and along the waterfront, right in the middle of the tourist traps.  However, tourist, workers, businesses and 30,000 DT residents operate just like they aren't even there.  The Jerry Morans of DT Jax would immediately drop dead if we had the amount of homeless that San Diego evidently ignores.  When I get back to Jax, I'll share some pics.

[tufsu1]

exactly Lake...I noticed the same thing while there 2 years ago

[jcjohnpaint]

Funny because I was in Ventura CA a few days ago and I thought the same thing.  There were homeless everywhere and they just blended in with everyone else.  By far much more than I see in JAX and especially for Ventura's much smaller population. 

[simms3]

Always thought the same thing and have mentioned it in the past.  I came to Jax briefly a few weekends ago and had lunch with my dad downtown at Chew and frankly I didn't see anyone on the sidewalks...homeless or otherwise.  It was a rather depressing site.

[ronchamblin]

I agree that our homeless population is not nearly as bad as it could be; that it is somewhat tolerable, and that it would be much more tolerable if we had a few thousand more workers and residents in the core.

Will the homeless ever leave the core?  Can we make them leave?  Unfortunately they are free to do what they wish to do and go where they wish to go as long as no law is broken.

When I first arrived downtown, I engaged some of these homeless when I needed some temporary workers.   Not surprisingly, most were able to do demolition work; that is, placing materials into dumpsters, and some were able to do work requiring more skills.

My curiosity allowed me to experiment with offering three of the fellows, during the first two years of my renovation, an opportunity to work part time, doing projects requiring a little more skill.  I came away from the experiment, realizing that 3 out of 10 homeless are mentally dysfunctional (nuts), 4 out of 10 are only mentally dysfunctional in moderation, but with that added baggage of being either on drugs or heavily into alcohol, and therefore not trustworthy, and that the remaining 3 of the 10 seem to be somewhat together mentally but that they either are heavy drinkers or druggies, and so they too are undependable, and not trustworthy; that is, they are apt to take what they want when opportunity is before them.

Although I was inclined, being an optimist, to take it upon myself to engage these fellows in need; that is, to offer a job and support so that they might climb to a reasonable level of self-sufficiency, my attempts have resulted in failure, as it takes too much time and money, not to mention risk, to achieve success.  In the end, the mental habits encountered were simply too formidable, and theft has been the parting act of two of the individuals to whom I’ve extended my assistance and opportunities.

So it seems that most homeless persons are unfortunate in having mental states that are below the requirements for almost any job, and below the requirements for achieving a self-sufficient existence by any means.  But I suspect that although most have thought habits preventing positive engagement with the environment, there are some who are ultimately able, but by way of possessing what we might call destructive habits, or criminal ways, they choose not to.  Fortunately we have jails and prisons for those individuals.

Most mental states are, in most individuals, set as if in stone.  Those who possess mental states of reasonable stability and quality are fortunate indeed.