City Council LUZ approves yet another homeless facility blocks from Downtown

[gmpalmer]

We can just set up a few booths downtown & have a few vans.  Any homeless person who wants to sign up can get a free ticket and $40 worth of food and a free escort to the Greyhound station.

Heck, maybe Greyhound will even give us a discount for buying 10,000 tickets.

[Springfielder]

Stephen, it is crazy down there. WTF, I have to go through a metal detector and have my belongings xrayed to enter City Hall while the city ignores the disaster going on right in front of their faces. Really, how big does the elephant have to get? You people at City Hall are the only ones who are not taking note of what is happening in this city and your constituants are pissed!

You can thank your mayor for this....don't you all remember that he said we didn't have a homeless problem some time back? To have the park right across from city hall is shameful. It's a nice little park, but who the hell can ever stop there to enjoy themselves? NOBODY but those who live there!

As for where to set up the new facility or where to send them on a free bus ride, how about Ponte Vedra, I'm sure Petyon wouldn't mind having them as neighbors

[ChriswUfGator]

It was been getting almost as bad in Riverside lately, but I really do have to give JSO some credit over the past few weeks, as they've been cracking down on the panhandling problem and it's been MUCH MUCH better as a result of it. So some definite props to JSO on that one, it is much appreciated.

Hemming Park is a disaster, though. I always make a point of walking around it so I don't have to deal with all the crazies. The Riverside bums were all pretty much professional scam-artists who could easily work a job if that wouldn't have cut into their drinking/drug time, but the Hemming Park ones are a different variety. They are real crazies, most of them have a major screw loose...

[strider]

I believe that throughout the history of any city, the homeless, the poor, the hopeless were there. The shelters no one seems to like weren't just built downtown, they evolved here.  Even if the results aren't always positive ones; their mission always is, to help those in need.  Is it fair that the urban core has more facilities like that than anywhere else?  No.  Is complaining about it being unfair going to change anything?  No.  In another thread, I suggested that if any of you didn't like this facility here, then you had to help the "powers that be" solve the problems of having it somewhere else.  Did anyone even try to do that? Probably not.

The comment to remember isn't that the homeless were always here or here before....those comments mean nothing.  The important comment to remember is that they are here now.  How best to help them, how best to accomplish what you want as well?  A daycare center where they can bath, use a restroom and find help?  A transitional housing facility to enable them to move on back into a normal society?  A work program like used during the depression?

Whining about another homeless facility in "your" downtown won't solve anything.  Get together and help solve the problem or live with what the 'powers that be" do. 

[ChriswUfGator]

You can't solve problems, when the problem is actually another person and they don't want to be helped.

And I don't think anybody's 'whining' about the homeless, or at least not without justification. You think it's OK to have some weirdo jumping on park benches, screaming at passersby, and sucker-punching 16yr old kids? I am not sure you can say that people who don't like that behavior are 'whining'...

[heights unknown]

What does it matter as long as the facility properly and appropriately attacks the root causes of homelessness and gets people off the streets and back into the mainstream of society?  If the facility fails to do this, and is just another "feed em, clothe em, and send em back out in the streets" program within the facility, then yeah, don't build it downtown and/or don't build it at all.  These facilities should be attacking the problems and sores that cause people to be homeless; if this is not the case then I agree with what most of you are saying about NOT having a facility downtown or anywhere else in Jax.

Heights Unknown

[Karl_Pilkington]

yawn.. whats new, this IS Jacksontucky right?

those in city hall drive in from their suburban home, electric garage door opens they drive out then into the cozy private garage at their place of work.  Walk around Hemming Park, huh...they can see it, but walk around it never, not their problem.

I do walk around it often and see the crazies, but I also see a lot of people just hanging out playing chess, working on laptop etc.  Because I do walk around downtown a lot I would say that there is an inordinant amount of vagrants there in Hemming Park.  From what I see from my walks the vagrants/homeless do hang around the facilities where they are given freebies.  Walk down by the Sulzbacher and you'll see a lot of milling around, same goes for Clara White, the Plasma place on Julia and the City Rescue Mission.  One thing that I notice about all of these areas also is trash, lots of trash, strewn about, mostly plastic and styrofoam.  So I would say, bring a homeless shelter to an area and you'll bring vagrants and trash, not the way you'd want to liven up a place thats for sure.  For those of you who don't walk around downtown I'll just say, stay in your car you ain't missin nothing.  The suburbanites have nothing to worry about this town won't tarnish your area with a homeless shelter, as for us urban dwellers just have to keep entertaining ourselves with the freak show that is our backyard and yes many of us are CCW.

[urbanlibertarian]

Downtown is my 'hood.  The homeless are among my peeps.  Do I find them unpleasant?  Occasionally.  Do I find them threatening?  Rarely.  It's just part of life in the big city.  Wouldn't want to live anywhere else.