There are a few great programs that I think have a lot of potential (Community First Village, The Other Ones Foundation, House the Homeless), but there's a lot of NIMBY for it.
On top of that, there's a lot of trash and messy camps in places that don't help the fight. The underpasses around here got real bad for a year or two which caused a recent vote on a camping ban that effectively made their encampments illegal. It doesn't solve the problem and only serves to keep these people in danger and without a solid place to rebuild their lives, but when using the underpasses becomes dangerous due to the trash lying around and ending up in the turn-arounds it's a hard thing to live with.
Community First Village and Other Ones Foundation does a lot to help by providing places for these individuals to rebuild their lives, but the shitty wages and rising housing costs make it hard too.
Austin in early 2019 was the kind of place you could walk down the street with little kids at 1st and the river at midnight and feel safe. It was beautiful and open and friendly, and started becoming much worse even prior to Covid. Since then violent crime has skyrocketed (despite actually going down in much larger metros like DFW and Houston) and homelessness is out of control because the Mayor made it illegal to enforce the existing ban on encampments.
And yet, despite everything getting worse in Austin relative to Houston or Dallas, the moneyed class in Austin will act like their boutique issues are the reason Austin isn't better. The people that move there have amazing cognitive dissonance: they're political refugees who want to install the existing regime in their new "home."
