Welcome to Austin, California (renamed)

Lived in ATX 5 years. Loved it, except for the ridiculous traffic.
I haven’t been back in 2.
Talked a friend to take his family there for a short vacation. 5 nights with several recommendations from me on what to see.
His family of 5 stayed in the Omni(I think), and left after two days. The homeless have taken over? He said he couldn’t leave the hotel.

Simple folks- ATX is embarrassingly liberal, see what happens? CA natives ... you left CA , and you knuckleheads left for a reason. Why start that junk here?
Yeah make Texas blue, geez.

 

Downtown Austin has become disgusting. Homeless camping in random lots and under over passes. Last time I went we had homeless camping behind the dumpster of our hotel and coming in for the free breakfast.

 

The challenge is how to maintain the open Bohemian atmosphere Austin is famous for, without letting it descend into a filthy anarchy. San Francisco took the same route as Austin. NYC under Giuliani and Bloomberg cracked down on street crime (large and petty) and were still able to maintain NYC’s atmosphere. Now it’s going the route of San Francisco. Same with Seattle. There has to be a minimum floor of law and order even in such places, or it all goes way downhill.

 

We had that minimum floor until our idiot democrats running the city decided to open the flood gates and allow every vagrant that wanted to to move here and set up shop wherever they wanted. That is exactly the result of their short sighted policies.

 

I'm getting the hell out of large cities, I want nothing to do with the madness of this crap. If this is the world the democrat's want they can have it. I'm more than willing to leave this crap behind. Right now I'm looking for land in Blanco or as far north as Fredricksberg. I refuse to live in the ****-fest of Austin, Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio.

I'm giving the hardest look at counties that have declared themselves gun sanctuary counties.

 

There were homeless folks in Austin when I was there in the 70's. But most, especially around the Drag, we picked up by the Austin Police, driven to the outskirts of town and "invited" to NOT come back. From what I've seen on the news and heard from people who work in the downtown area, the bums and derelicts are everywhere. That needs stop, like NOW!

 

The traffic is so bad they can’t get out

Austin has kept weird though

 

This is what matters

 

Austin isn't weird in a unique way though. It is a Progressive weird city where they ignore reality.

 

And the camping is moving outwards from downtown, unchecked by Adler and the rest of the clown show. Saw a series of tents in the cracks under where 71 and 360 split heading towards Barton Creek Mall (in front of the center where Last Call used to be). One of them actually has enough money for a vehicle that they had under its own tent...seriously.

Surely SOMEONE will be waking up before this crap reaches Rollingwood and West Lake Hills.

 

Sad.

 

Grew up mostly in San Antonio (Army brat as a little guy), came up here in the late 80s for college and got my first taste of Austin, then back to SA for early career. Wife and I moved to Austin in 2007 for jobs and remain to this day. Love the town to death, but despise what the moronic city leadership - Adler, council, all of them - are doing to it. A lot of the "weirdness" Austin was known for has passed with growth, which I fear was inevitable, but it can still retain so much of what makes it a special place if the leadership will change. I'd say if the leadership will pull their heads out of their asses but it's abundantly clear they are unable to do so, so they must be changed.

There's a growing undercurrent of folks fed up with the crap (literally) who are getting items on ballots and forming grass roots efforts for change. Sad thing is it's taking a long time and things deteriorate in the meantime. I used to love San Francisco and Seattle, now you wouldn't catch me stepping off the plane anywhere near them. Austin needs to avoid their path.

 

Strictly speaking, Austin ceased to be Austin when the city did stupid crap like plowing over Liberty Lunch to build an unnecessary new City Hall complex and other development in that area...

It ceased to be Austin when they created noise ordinances to appease the tards who bought condos in the entertainment districts without the slightest bit of due diligence about what makes Austin AUSTIN!

 

I think I attended one of Liberty Lunch’s last nights but that could easily be poor memory.

 

I was back in Austin last week, for the first time in maybe a decade. What a dump! Looked like a third world shantytown under I35. Can't imagine what it's like a night, and don't want to find out. Houston downtown looks less a dump than Austin.

What a disgrace. The current Austin leadership inherited a city built by other, better, men than them, then pissed it all away.

 

I haven't set foot in Austin since 2017. (I would have last year, but with Covid restricting air travel and my move to the UK, I didn't make it back.) However, it seems that the politics of the city have changed. When I lived there in the late '90s, it was a Democratic city, but it wasn't a blowout. Republicans won in some areas and could occasionally even win a countywide office.

When I moved back in 2003, the GOP was clearly in decline, and by the time I left in 2011, Republicans were only slightly competitive in a few areas. However, the Democrats were a different breed. The city was largely run by Kirk Watson-type liberals who knew how to appease the freaks without actually giving them very much. You had the Jennifer Gale or Leslie Cochran crackpots advocating goofy stuff, but they were lovable weirdos that people downtown had their pictures taken with when they were too drunk to care that those dudes smelled like 3-day-old crotch. People (and especially policymakers) didn't take them seriously. For state office, they elected people like Elliott Naishtat, Sheri Greenberg, and Dawnna Dukes (who was basically Kamala Harris without Willie Brown) - solid liberals but not kooks.

Well, now the lunatics have real power in Austin (similar to what has happened in other cities) and are enacting really bad policy. Of course, this should be an opportunity for Republicans to rebuild strength, but they'd have to get smart about it and have a little flexibility. Someone with a national Republican brand isn't going anywhere. However, a Republican who was more of a "make the trains run on time" type might be able to mount a serious race. It would have to be someone with the credibility to basically say, "I'm not a Trumper, but I will fight tax hikes, keep the city from wasting money on stupid things, and end this idiotic homelessness policy that's turning our town into a dump."

 

I'm sure the current Dem leadership is taking the wave of Corp relo's as a sign that they are doing things right. Real Estate prices going through the roof. Right now it is still trendy so for the short run they are going to keep up with dumb policies.

 

Just imagine how good Austin would be if they just cleaned up the homeless problem. I would be all for taking bergstrum and turning it into a detention camp for the homeless so we could round them up and ship them to other cities like LA, SF or Seattle and let them deal with them. Anywhere but Texas.

99% of these people have chemical abuse problems and mental illness and should be treated as such. Either they leave or clean up.

 

Sheldon
Nail on head
Yes drug abuse and mental health issues but I am 100% certain the city has social workers and there are charities who go aorund visiting the homeless to help them get services.
When the homeless refuse and most do there is nothing more to be done. It would violate their civil rights to force them into a safe place and treatment

 

Most places still look good in the nice neighborhoods. There is still development in East Austin too. But you are correct certain parts look very trashy downtown.

Plus you encounter for vehement mask fanatics. I saw someone wearing a gas mask a couple of months ago.

 

BOSD, many of the relos aren't going into Austin city limits though. Apple is, but most are moving around the perimeter North, East, and South. I think Tesla is outside of Austin is that correct? I may be wrong on that but it is at the very edge if so.

 

Deez, I don't think you would be for this, but along with what you are saying it could provide an opportunity for Libertarians in local government. They could plausibly say there aren't aligned with Trump or the wacky wing of Progressives.

 

Is that the real crux of the problem? Housing prices getting out of hand driven in part from the huge growth of the tech industry? That's the primary driver in Seattle and CA. "Liberal policies" are only treating the result of the homelessness, not the problem source. In fact, there isn't an option for treating the source. Not sure anyone would agree to restrict home valuations in order to make housing (buying or renting) more affordable.

The real question is why don't people move when they get displaced from their home/job? You could apply that to the Coal Miner in WV or the retail worker in Seattle. Neither seems willing to relocate. The difference in Seattle, SF or Austin (it seems) is that housing is cheap in WV. There is a surplus of run down homes that nobody really cares about. Whereas, it hot housing markets investors are very quick to raise rent rates, evict or even tear down and build anew to take advantage of the market.

The perpetual homelessness and drug problems are the result of rapid rise in housing costs. We've seen it over and over and over.

 

I moved there in '69 when the population was around 250k and thought I had gone to heaven. My landlady said the place was overcrowded and I should have been there in the 50's when the population was half as large.

I was there for a day a few weeks ago and was aghast at what has happened. I imagine the newcomers there think it is great and will rue the day thirty years from now when it is home to 3 million and is too crowded. And they will dream of moving to the suburbs----San Angelo or Abilene

 

The homeless I see in Austin are mentally ill and/or on drugs. I think the housing prices have very little to do with the number of homeless. The people I have spoken with that try to get them into shelters say the same. Same in SF an Seattle from what I have seen. They are attracted to these areas due to the lax policies.

Shocking VIDEO Shows One Austin Neighborhood's Deterioration Due to Homeless Camping – PJ Media

 

Do you think they are moving to Austin? From my experience working/living in Seattle, few actually moved to Seattle after becoming homeless. They live here THEN become homeless. Drugs might contribute to their homelessness but I doubt the numbers are high for drug users that moved to Seattle simply for liberal policies.

Mental illness is a major problem within the homeless populations. That's a bit of a chicken/egg situation. Was the mental illness the reason for them becoming homeless or did their homelessness become a catalyst for exacerbating mental illness?

In the 90's I had a professor who had his wife drop him off in Seattle and he spent 90 days living 100% as a homeless person as part of his research for his disertador. In the early 90's, he was convinced that >90% had some form of mental illness.

 

Homeless people do move around a bit. They migrate because they are so exposed to the weather. But they also go where they think life will be easier.

 

Some places have had to do that - NYC elected Rudy to clean up what had become a disaster of a city under Dinkins. But just like a drunk who has to wake up in a puddle of their own vomit, the city has to hit rock bottom.

But a Rudy type would never get elected now - the media entertainment complex, which had a majority position in the 90's, is now a virtual monopoly. Any Republican who ran, even as a barely partisan, clean up the city, make the buses run on time and get the human waste off the street type, would be slimed by the media as meanie who hates.

The ability to virtue signal, and show how much better they are than others, is the most important consideration to urban leftists. No amount of competency is enough to overcome this.

Also, in many cities, the Democrat machine has, on purpose, gone to jungle primaries (isn't that racialist?), where about a dozen candidates run in the primary, then the top two go to the general election. So your choice in the real election is between a leftist, and a communist, such as last year in Portland, when you had Mr. Ted's Excellent Adventure vs. some commie loon.

 

Yep. Co-def of one of our rail-riding clients who got 40 for a homicide had a criminal history spanning several States. Our client was the predecessor to the current druggies that move about to the areas with 'legal weed man." His co-defendant was just a one-man crime wave...and the lack of fixed address had made it easier for prosecutor after prosecutor to do nothing about it...until someone ended up dead.

 

I still have a house in Austin, which is paid for. I was renting it out until last year the tenants moved to Denver. Decided not to rent it out and do some much needed upgrades. I was planning on moving back in for 2 years so when I sale I don't have to pay the capital gains tax, Sorry Joe. Yes I have seen the homeless under some bridges that's why 2 years and I am out.