zaphod

Honestly, I would just tear the entire thing down and coordinate with the city to realign the streets by the bayou. Franklin could probably arc out a little bit, allowing restoration of the bayou's banks and make room for steps that go down to a waterfront patio or plaza. If the freeway reconstruction happens, most plans ive seen suggest that I-10 will shift north and the I-45 loop will be reduced in size, making the site more open and less constrained on its northern half. Then subdivide it into multiple blocks and gradually fill them in with conventional mixed use development. Over the long span of time it will just feel like an extension of downtown. IMO there's nothing special about that post office. Houston is full of buildings that look like that and they aren't endangered.

Where were these people before they were homeless, or when they were not homeless or in shelters or institutions or jail? Did they live with relatives or friends? A dilapadated motel? Also where do we expect them to go if/when they become clean? Seattle doesn't have an equivalent to Aldine or Cloverleaf, so where are the kind of people living in those wrecked trailers clustered together in the woods living? Also giving them housing doesn't mean we give them full sized apartments. What about some kind of dorm with on-site security? I don't think institutionalization is necessarily the right answer because taking away a person's freedoms is not a casual matter. Think about what it takes to put someone in prison, and those are criminals who actually hurt someone. You want to give someone a life sentence behind bars just because they were a public nuisance? How would you enforce these rules and apply 'strikes' against a person leading to them being locked up? Sounds like something that could be abused or subject to bias. If we are going to put people in institutions then their liberties must only be restricted by the absolute minimum degree necessary, with frequent reviews where the restrictions would be lifted. Instead of imprisoning people in mental wards what about hybrid outpatient options where people aren't locked up?

I don't know many details but I have an ancestor who was an oilfield foreman and stayed at a camp in that general area around that time period. Maybe it was West Columbia.

Source? It's never clear cut. It's likely that being homelessness triggers or makes otherwise manageable mental disorders that many otherwise "normal" people suffer from worse. So why fight it then? It may be easier to get people off the street and into treatment if you stabilize their situation with a stable place to stay. Expecting people who are in a world of shit to turn into a model "deserving poor" person overnight is delusional. At best they aren't in public causing trouble. I wouldn't just assume charities are going to be present and have the right resources. There needs to be some public services that are assured to possess adequate capacity. And what are those solutions, then? Don't leave us hanging. Turner is the mayor of a city in the state of Texas. He does not have the power to change laws allowing mentally ill people to be committed to institutions. States and the Federal government is responsible for comprehensive mental health care services. What would a conservative or Republican mayor do about the problem? Abolish the harm reduction programs for ideological reasons despite evidence they work? Just pack the jails full of vagrants until there's no more room for criminals? Shuffle off the problem from visible areas where upper class people dwell and into neighborhoods where the problem is hidden(have you driven on Jensen? It's bum city). I don't understand the Turner hate. None of the people challenging him have ever given any rational policy statements. They just complain about how Turner is doing everything wrong. Ok, what would they do differently? There isn't enough "waste" in government to magically pay firefighters huge salaries and fix all the potholes. Everything would require cuts to other things, robbing peter to pay paul.

Makes sense that a nice dark patina would form there. Better than some beige stucco that fades out. One thing I wonder about is the future of all these modern buildings with metal panels and bits that stick out. That stuff will rust in the corners over time and look bad.

Statistics are better than Reddit comments. Anecdotes don't really describe reality well. Homelessness could be cut in half and then half again, but there would still be gathering spots and out of millions of people going about their daily life someone would still see one and rant about it online. IMO, the city should do as much as it can to reduce the issue. Nobody wants to feel like they are on the set of the Walking Dead which is how it is in the worst spots and in cities that have the problem worse than Houston. But no matter how hard we try there will always be a little grit, that is just life in the big city.

Beyond the segments described as in the works, where do they think it will go from there? I can try to imagine a narrow right-of-way alignment straddling the railroad tracks similar to the Hardy Toll Road, but past the Beltway it would run into the old part of Pearland and there would be significant eminent domain required.

If you have the Google Earth for PC(not the app or the web version) you can use the historic imagery slider to see how things looked going back to roughly 1978 for most of the area(some areas have imagery going back to 1953). It's a bit shocking how extensive and unbroken the forest along the San Jacinto river was up until the late 1990s. Now it is fragmented by sprawl. Houston in the 1980s and 1990s had a lot of empty space, now its all filled in.

I figured at some point they'd get a big retail center like that. Brenham is bigger than it looks and probably has more spending power than most towns of its size.

If anything the eastern fringe of the med center is the best area for this stuff. It's not really walkable, there are few businesses, most residential areas consist of gated apartment complexes, right? So even if there was problem with the people coming and going from this facility(as you say there probably won't be and people are scared of nothing) it won't effect anyone. The worst thing you can do is concentrate social services in areas like Midtown and the East End(the status quo) because those are such open and exposed public spaces where you want people to feel safe walking or using public transit. That's how you get Wheeler station.

True that. It looks like a completely normal, clean, and safe motel that normal people who are traveling away from home might actually spend the night in. The other places in the area look sketchy, like hooker/drug hangouts.

Will the public still be able to use the beach or are they taking away a beach to give to private interests? Is this a result of the demise of the open beaches act? What a shame, I can't believe they would approve something like this.

Hopefully Buzbee and King will split the malcontented conservative vote. I worry if either of them won, a lot of public services would get cut back(like parks, sanitation, all the misc stuff like animal control) and quality of life would suffer. But hey regarding Prop B, we should just follow the example of such prosperous and amazing cities like Stockton, California, right? Fast forward 2 years. If Buzbee is Mayor halts the progressive momentum that has been building over the last few years, I will move. I work in IT, a field where everyone is a job hopper and if you are not growing professionally you will struggle so its easy to justify quitting every couple of years. Let us not forget that one of the best job markets in both the nation and the world for the past decade is only a 2 hour drive west on 290. Are you talking about Crompton Park across the railroad tracks? I think it serves a purpose. Apartment complexes in the area are full of international and married student families. Those complexes are not friendly to children, so a public playground was necessary. I was more disappointed in the council caving to NIMBY interests on "stealth dorms"(apparently tumbledown 2 bedroom wood siding rent houses are precious historic relics), killing dockless bike share(where were those people complaining about yellow bikes when there are Target and Kroger shopping buggies strewn all over Southwest Parkway), etc. Sometimes I still check out CS news. They never built a railroad crossing at Deacon, they are going to close and fill in the pool in Thomas Park despite all the neighborhood people who use it, and they keep approving trash development like townhomes behind Sam's in a floodplain. I guess all cities, big and small, from Houston to College Station, give their citizens some reason to complain

Blow it up and build something else.

I'm glad that a building like that could be saved and reused. I hope they keep or replace the window frames and the awnings with similar looking ones.