As of today, the criminal court system in Harris County and the city of Houston has a 3+ year backlog for murder and various violent felony cases. Yet, can somehow Mayor Turner was able manage to pull together multiple jury trials & plan to reissue citations, to people feeding our homeless community? This is an outrageous abuse of power, public safety & resources….
The City of Houston and Harris County have allocated $235+ million for the homeless.
Houston "invested" $200M to reduce our homeless population by 612 people. That's a grand total of $326,797.38 p/p. Nobody, could figure out a way to get, all 3835 homeless people set up for $52K p/p? That's more, than a lot of working families in our area make, in a year.
Why is Mayor Turner abusing his power to go after a charity feeding the homeless when the City of Houston is so miserably failing at curbing homelessness? I continue to see the same articles recycled as to “how the City of Houston has done a remarkable job at attacking homelessness” but the amount of homeless people I observe driving around Houston daily is completely different than what I read which from the City of Houston and Harris County.
In the CNN Opinion piece Eichenbaum and Nichols regurgitate talking points written up over two years ago and continue to pretend that Houston’s homeless problem is not the worst it’s been since the 80s oil bust. In turn, these talking points are used to request more grants for the homeless. Unfortunately, this money seems to be finding its way predominantly to consultants, friendly real estate developers of City and county officials, and somehow continues to be shuffled around through various (hand selected?) charities which charge administrative fees each time they receive the funds.
What is even more egregious about this situation, Mayor Turner seems to have abused his power and weaponized the courts against the charity Food Not Bombs. Currently, Houston is facing a 4+ year criminal court backlog. Why don’t sexual abuse and murder victims families get this sort of treatment with their cases? The video above is a Prosecutor testifying in Commissioners Court of a SEXUAL ASSAULT OF A MINOR CASE TAKING 6 YEARS TO TRY. Yet, the City of Houston can use all their resources going after a Charity feeding the Homeless?
The Houston city attorney, Arturo Michel, added in a statement: “The City of Houston intends to vigorously pursue violations of its ordinance relating to feeding of the homeless. It is a health and safety issue for the protection of Houston’s residents. There have been complaints and incidents regarding the congregation of the homeless around the library, even during off hours. No municipality prevails in every prosecution of a category of violations. Houston prevailed in the first matter and expects to do so in several others.”
Food Not Bombs volunteer Shere Dore received 15 of the 43 citations issued against volunteers for feeding the homeless in Houston. Dore has been volunteering to feed the homeless with the group for 12 years.
She criticized the citations and rhetoric from the mayor’s office and asserted all volunteers will be pleading not guilty and seeking to contest the citations through jury trials.
“We believe in our constitutional right to serve people who are hungry on tax-paid public property without government permission. If we have to start asking our government if we can feed people, we have serious problems in society,” said Dore.
Volunteers with a group that has been feeding Houston’s unhoused population since 1994 are facing a potential $80,000 in fines after a crackdown by local police.
Food Not Bombs is currently disputing 44 tickets issued by Houston police department for giving food to homeless individuals outside of the Houston Public Library. If a jury finds them guilty, they can be fined the maximum penalty of $2,000 per fine, with the group noting they could owe over $80,000 in fines at this point.
I guess we're not in the club. It is incredible to me they can use 350K per person to fight homelessness - what did they do? Buy each of them a house? I expect the administrators of the program have some fat pockets by now.