urbanSTL

From the above article on the 12th and Park shelter:

The plan calls for the homeless men to be bused in at 6:30 p.m. from a staging area at The Bridge, 16th and Olive streets, and bused out at 6:30 a.m. The men will receive supper at the 12th and Park shelter.

This part of the plan does not inspire confidence. The homeless will still be loitering/doing drugs/fighting/urinating/defecating all over the same downtown areas all day. There are already a ton of them all day every day outside the Bridge.

^Yep. Walked past those guys about 30 minutes ago. They didn't even offer me a Tallboy. Good to hear Larry will be sticking around a little longer... Sigh.

Dweebe, where exactly were they? The park between 17th and 18th?

The good thing about the city's program—unlike NLEC—is that they try to move people into permanent housing as quickly as possible. So even though the shelter only operates at night, they do work to limit the cycle.

It's hard to believe any plan that the City can come up with could possibly be worse than what's going on at NLEC.

An officer that works security at the Central Library said this to me last night:

On Friday nights large crowds have been gathering outside the library. It's a mix of homeless people, drug dealers, and others gathering for handouts from the cars, vans, and trucks who drive in to hand out food and supplies to the homeless. There is often a lot of public drinking and it's not uncommon for the drunks to get hostile when they are denied access to the library to relieve themselves. The officer said this "we're scared to do our jobs." The officer is African american.

Who organizes these "events." It seems to me that there should be some type of ordinance that permits this activity only in designated places at designated times. I doubt our crown jewel library is the place.

^I would suggest sending this information to Eddie Roth and Dotson. The residents also should call 911 when they walk by. The only way to stifle this type of activity is to be diligent.

moorlander wrote: On Friday nights large crowds have been gathering outside the library ...it's not uncommon for the drunks to get hostile when they are denied access to the library to relieve themselves.

I thought the library closed at 6 on Fridays?

I may have assumed it was night time since people were drinking in public. Maybe it's Friday during the day?

moorlander wrote:Who organizes these "events." It seems to me that there should be some type of ordinance that permits this activity only in designated places at designated times. I doubt our crown jewel library is the place.

at least a couple of the "events" are organized by churches out in the county. surprise, surprise.

^Yes, likely the county and elsewhere in the region. My vague understanding from attempting to understand the downtown homeless issue for some time is it's churches and other organizations or just plain people in the region who are trying to help the homeless but don't fully understand what effective rehabilitation is.

urban_dilettante wrote:

moorlander wrote:Who organizes these "events." It seems to me that there should be some type of ordinance that permits this activity only in designated places at designated times. I doubt our crown jewel library is the place.

at least a couple of the "events" are organized by churches out in the county. surprise, surprise.

95% of these "events" are organized by churches in the county. They typically drive home around 5pm. with a sense of being a great person and Christian, leaving a piles of trash and the homeless problem in their rear-view mirror.

Health professionals who encounter desperately poor people in rural Missouri often drive them to NLEC and drop them off. I guess that's their best option, but where is the state?

robertn42 wrote:95% of these "events" are organized by churches in the county. They typically drive home around 5pm. with a sense of being a great person and Christian, leaving a piles of trash and the homeless problem in their rear-view mirror.

yep.

there's got to be a way to force the county and rural munis to set up their own services. how can it be legal for them to continuously dump their poor and homeless on the city's doorstep?

urban_dilettante wrote:

robertn42 wrote:95% of these "events" are organized by churches in the county. They typically drive home around 5pm. with a sense of being a great person and Christian, leaving a piles of trash and the homeless problem in their rear-view mirror.

yep.

there's got to be a way to force the county and rural munis to set up their own services. how can it be legal for them to continuously dump their poor and homeless on the city's doorstep?

All while complaining about the city's homeless problem. It's maddening.

^ Actually I just had an argument related to this over at NextSTL. According to publicly available stats at health.mo.gov, there were a little less than 9000 babies born to unwed mothers receiving Medicaid in the city from 2010 to 2013. In St. Louis County there were over 13,000 such births over the same years. Now IF that statistic is a reliable proxy for the number poor people in each region (I don't know that it is, but the gentleman that I was arguing with seemed to think so—too bad he didn't bother to check ALL the stats before insinuating that the city generates all the region's poor) the county is producing more poor people than the city. Yet the county provides zero services for the poor and homeless. That seems criminal to me.

^Good. That's the way it should be everyday.

Meanwhile in Denver

There were massive amounts of cops out yesterday, for the robotics competition I assume. It seemed like there was a pair of cops stationed on the sidewalk at every corner of Washington from the Convention Center on down to at least Tucker.

I've also seen/heard them rousting the homeless more frequently lately. More of the pulling up and telling loiterers to disperse from their car loudspeakers. Not sure if it's happening more or I just happen to be seeing more of it.

I've been struggling lately with when to call the cops on the loiterers. It's tough to figure out where to draw the line. I did end up calling on a guy who cursed me out after I didn't give him money.

But if my wife and I called for all the nuisance activities that we see every day, the cops would start blocking our calls.

^They won't and the calls create a record of the problem. Keep calling. My wife and I did. It helps. Without the complaints, so called advocates can say there isn't a "problem". Homelessness is one thing, a bunch of degenerates gathering in a park getting drunk, doing drugs, and making citizens uncomfortable is another. Keep that # on speed dial...