#TXLEGE, #atxcouncil: The Cynical Politics of Homelessness

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world."
1 John 4:1

This is depressing:

Crystal Brimm said she was gone all of 20 minutes.

That's all the time it took for the Texas Department of Transportation to clean the encampment where she lives under U.S. Highway 290 and Ben White Boulevard on Wednesday, after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered homeless people to be removed from state overpasses in Austin. Abbott has spent months railing against Austin and its local leaders, accusing them of worsening what he calls a dangerous homelessness crisis by relaxing camping ordinances.

About 10 people returned to that area of the overpass, down from 30 before TxDOT arrived, Brimm said as she sat in a lawn chair Thursday outside the blue camping tent she shares with her husband.

"Everybody else packed up and ran like cockroaches," she said.

As Brimm pondered her future living situation, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office unveiled his plan to provide temporary living space for Austin’s homeless — a five-acre plot of land off State Highway 183 near Montopolis Drive.

The soon-to-be campground is a large expanse of concrete surrounded by a manufactured home factory and forest. It's about five miles away from the Texas Capitol, in a clearing adjacent to the historically low-income Montopolis neighborhood, across from the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Slow motion train wreck continues to fester.

Lovely.

Unfortunately, it's not in any politician's interest to solve this issue:

• From Steve Adler and Greg Casar's perspective, it's an excuse to shovel ever increasing sums into the homelessness-industrial complex.

• From Greg Abbott's perspective, it's the campaign issue that keeps on giving.

The worst part is, it'll probably work (for both sides).

The homeless are pawns.

The rest of us are collateral damage.

Wonderful.

Bottom Line: We love to be proven wrong, but we won't be.