Homeless Shelters Should Be Moved To More Remote Areas
Some businesses on Broadway have very legitimate concerns about a homeless outreach facility in their area.
Cutting right to the chase, there is a facility in South Overton on Broadway that serves a lot of homeless. Neighboring businesses say that with the homeless comes trash and people sleeping on lawns (and they were nice enough to stop there). In my experience, it also brings a higher rate of theft and LOTS of human waste.
My daughter used to work in one of the offices mentioned and taking the trash out was a legitimate concern. Without going into details, let me just say the neighbors in this KCBD article were being nice about the problem.
We could waste our time the here, what and why's of homelessness, but there's no reason to. I am a tattooed person. Tattoo shops can only be located in certain parts of town and that law was first put into place because we were seen as shady people. Bars can only be in certain parts of town because some think they are shady places. Heck, you can't put a chicken restaurant in the middle of a neighborhood because no one wants the traffic. What I'm getting at is, this is a zoning issue and one that no one wants to deal with.
The idea that this place "has to go where the homeless are" is ridiculous. First, that's a chicken or egg situation. Second, why do homeless have more rights than tattooed people or people who just want to work or live in a safe area?
It's going to be tough to find an area to zone for homelessness outreach, but that's why we're supposed to have city leaders. This difficult issue needs to be tackled because these tax-paying business owners shouldn't have their rights to a safe and clean neighborhood trampled either.