What is Mayor Sylvester Turner's legacy?

[editor]

I came back to Houston late in Turner's final term, so I don't have a sense of what Houston was like before he became mayor.  And, honestly, all I've seen him do has been either ceremonial, or an endless stream of dancing videos on social media.

So I'd like people who have been here since 2016 to list what he's accomplished, so that I can have a better (and hopefully more kind) understanding of his legacy.

 

[samagon]

the office of the mayor has his biography online.

https://www.houstontx.gov/mayor/bio.html

it's not particularly impressive to me.

I recall one of the things he promised when he ran for office was to eradicate potholes. I haven't seen a lot of action there.

I have seen the complete streets stuff make some strong moves through making the bicycle network a lot more robust, but I wonder, are these things that would have happened regardless of who was in that office, or did he lead a charge that accelerated change in this?

homelessness seems to be worse, crime too, but those are endemic across the nation, I think.

@dbigtex56 mentioned some pretty condemning things in another thread, specifically as they relate to public housing.

Edited May 19, 2023 by samagon

[mkultra25]

1 hour ago, samagon said:

I recall one of the things he promised when he ran for office was to eradicate potholes. I haven't seen a lot of action there.

At the beginning of his first term, he promised that potholes would be fixed within 24 hours of being reported. There was a lot of attention paid to this initially, and for the most part it appeared that the city was making good on that promise...for a while. Haven't heard too much about it since then, so I don't know if they're still making that claim or have just quietly swept it under the rug. The last pothole I reported was on a freeway feeder road, so I got referred to TXDOT as it was outside the city's area of responsibility. 

I had hoped that Turner's long tenure in the Texas Legislature would have left him well-positioned to be a very effective advocate for Houston's interests at the state level, but we all know how that's worked out, not least because of the apparent belief of the current Powers that Be that any elected official with a "D" next to their name should be forced to shuffle down Congress Avenue clad in rags, ringing a bell, and crying "Unclean! Unclean!"  If Whitmire gets elected to succeed Turner it'll be interesting to see if he's any more capable of thawing relations between the state and Houston/Harris County.  

[Reefmonkey]

On 5/19/2023 at 3:24 PM, samagon said:

the office of the mayor has his biography online.

https://www.houstontx.gov/mayor/bio.html

it's not particularly impressive to me.

I recall one of the things he promised when he ran for office was to eradicate potholes. I haven't seen a lot of action there.

I have seen the complete streets stuff make some strong moves through making the bicycle network a lot more robust, but I wonder, are these things that would have happened regardless of who was in that office, or did he lead a charge that accelerated change in this?

homelessness seems to be worse, crime too, but those are endemic across the nation, I think.

@dbigtex56 mentioned some pretty condemning things in another thread, specifically as they relate to public housing.

 

Homelessness is definitely NOT worse. The Coalition for the Homeless does a census every year, that includes both people living on the streets and in shelters, and the number last year was less than 3,200, down from over 8,400 ten years ago. Houston has actually received national attention for the success of its program to address homelessness, and over the past decade has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses. The overwhelming majority of them have remained housed after two years. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, Houston did more than twice as well as the rest of the country at reducing homelessness over the previous decade. The program started with Anise Parker, but Turner deserves a lot of credit for keeping it going and expanding and adding onto it.

[samagon]

34 minutes ago, Reefmonkey said:

 

Homelessness is definitely NOT worse. The Coalition for the Homeless does a census every year, that includes both people living on the streets and in shelters, and the number last year was less than 3,200, down from over 8,400 ten years ago. Houston has actually received national attention for the success of its program to address homelessness, and over the past decade has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses. The overwhelming majority of them have remained housed after two years. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, Houston did more than twice as well as the rest of the country at reducing homelessness over the previous decade. The program started with Anise Parker, but Turner deserves a lot of credit for keeping it going and expanding and adding onto it.

perhaps all of Houston has fewer homeless, but maybe they have congregated in the area around downtown and midtown, which is where I seem to see a lot of them.

[Reefmonkey]

1 hour ago, samagon said:

perhaps all of Houston has fewer homeless, but maybe they have congregated in the area around downtown and midtown, which is where I seem to see a lot of them.

That's where they always have been most heavily concentrated (I lived in midtown from 2000-2004). If they seem to be more conspicuous recently, that may be due to TXDOT kicking them out from under certain overpasses TXDOT owns the land under.

[samagon]

3 hours ago, Reefmonkey said:

That's where they always have been most heavily concentrated (I lived in midtown from 2000-2004). If they seem to be more conspicuous recently, that may be due to TXDOT kicking them out from under certain overpasses TXDOT owns the land under.

yep, I've lived/worked/played in and around the downtown/midtown area for 15 years now, and it looks worse than ever. maybe I'm just paying more attention to it in my older age? dunno.

the camps that used to be under various freeways are gone now, so yeah, that might also be a contributing factor.

Edited June 7, 2023 by samagon

[BeerNut]

I frequent Midtown and Downtown,  it doesn't seem as bad as it used to be.  The worst was when it was a free for all under 59 near Fiesta and at Wheeler Station.  Even the area under 45 near Hutchins and Pierce has recently been cleared out.  Can't forget about the corner of Herman Park that was out of hand till they had the od incident.

[editor]

1 hour ago, BeerNut said:

I frequent Midtown and Downtown,  it doesn't seem as bad as it used to be.  The worst was when it was a free for all under 59 near Fiesta and at Wheeler Station.  Even the area under 45 near Hutchins and Pierce has recently been cleared out.  Can't forget about the corner of Herman Park that was out of hand till they had the od incident.

I think vagrancy seems worse in downtown and Midtown because numerically, there are far fewer non-vagrants than there were before so many people went work-from-home.  It's a ratio thing.

Also, I think it seems worse because there's fewer people who are "homeless" and more people who are just junkies.  The city seems to be doing a good job of moving people who want housing into housing — the actual homeless.  But most of the vagrants I see downtown aren't people who are too unfortunate/poor to afford a place to live.  They're people so blitzed out on drugs that they don't care if they have a home or not.

Protip: No shoes is a sure sign of an addict.  You can sell a pair of shoes for a week's worth of fentanyl.

Another sign is hygiene.  Yesterday I saw a guy bathing behind the bushes of the Chase bank in Midtown, using the lawn sprinklers as a shower.  That's a sign of someone who works, but has a super-crap job, like the homeless guy who sweeps the parking lots at the Chevron and Walgreens.  Homeless because he's poor.  Not homeless because he's drugged-up and face-down in his own filth.

I sometimes wonder if there's a drug dealer right near the intersection of Main and Rusk, because worst of the the vagrants seem to pass out there.  And while I'm not a drug user, I suspect that when a junkie gets some new drugs, he uses them immediately rather than going somewhere else to imbibe.

I know there's a dealer who works Main Street between SoDo and the SuperGhettoMart on the corner of Lamar.  He's approached me twice.  But something else is going on at Main between Capitol and Rusk.