With a recession-bound economy, and winter weather spurting into spring, just when you think Austin’s homeless can’t have it any worse, the City Council comes up with a bright idea: Let’s send a bunch of UT School of Social Work undergrads to stick surveys in their faces!
So, uhh, what’s it like begging for change on the side of the highway? Fulfilling, or not?
While such questions obviously aren’t at the forefront of council’s mind (or the researchers’ either, hopefully) you have to ask – what is? Last Thursday, March 6, council entertained a morning briefing on the solicitation (né panhandling) survey. Last seen late last year, it became the third way out of an increasingly untenable move to overhaul the city’s solicitation laws, and one could be excused for thinking it died a politically expedient death. Instead, council voted to spend the summer accumulating data on Austin’s panhandlers. Health & Human Services director David Lurie said the survey’s goal is two-fold: to determine “who is soliciting and why; what are the reasons for that activity?” To get to the bottom of this vexing question (hint: They want money), the department plans on developing a questionnaire and sending those aforementioned students into the field – or overpass or intersection – to get answers, from July to August. In return, they’ll deliver paltry cash payments or food certificates to the participants.
How will they know what corners to hit? H&HS has been working with the Police Department to pinpoint panhandling hot spots and to provide “overall logistics.” That alarmed some council members, with Jennifer Kim voicing concern about the cops’ mission. “I just want to make sure the APD is not going to try and get that information to arrest them,” she said.
But to worry about this narrow enforcement capacity misses the forest for the lean-to in the trees. Could the entire exercise simply be an excuse to revisit Austin’s solicitation laws – which currently prohibit most of the roadside solicitation council so disdains – this time under a scientific veneer? As Lee Leffingwell pointed out, the city had a lot of information on the homeless: “We know there’s 4,500 or so citywide. We know that there’s about 600 that are considered chronically homeless. … We know that there’s about 1,500 homeless veterans. The point is we know a lot.”
Given what we already know, it seems the survey is mainly designed to prove that some solicitors aren’t homeless – thereby making it politically correct to enact tougher laws. (It’s not surprising that leading the survey charge was Brewster McCracken, who led the previous push to revisit the ordinances.) But is it worth the time and money? As Lurie told council, “I think it’s going to be ambitious for us to accomplish everything we’ve discussed within the $48,000 [budget].” And as two other items on that day’s agenda made clear – a $108,000 grant to keep the Salvation Army afloat and upcoming conversion of the 15th Street Ronald McDonald house into a sorely needed mental-health halfway house – if council truly wants to help, isn’t a more effective use of dollars painfully obvious?
Webberville Confidential
Trust us – we’re movie producers! When have we ever screwed anybody over?
Hard to believe, but last week council narrowly balked at the hard sell from Villa Muse, voting instead to continue negotiations with developers of the proposed megastudios only if the project stays in Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdiction – to which the would-be tycoons have responded with scorched earth, publicly slamming the council for its decision.
As they say in the dream factory: This time, it’s personal. (See “Developing Stories,” for details.)
Last week, BTP incorrectly reported that Mike Martinez abstained from voting on Sheryl Cole’s Feb. 28 single-member district proposal; Lee Leffingwell’s was in fact the abstaining vote. Council’s off this SXSW week, to return March 20. E-mail BTP at wdunbar@austinchronicle.com.
This article appears in March 14 • 2008.