Shelters Not the Solution to Area’s Homeless Problem

Photo courtesy of Wikicommons.

Date: February 07, 2021

By Sylvia Cooper

Homelessness is not where the heart is except for the bleeding hearts who think they can make it go away by getting the homeless into shelters. But the cops on the streets know better.

That dichotomy was on full display at Tuesday’s Augusta Commission when Danielle Ringgold, speaking for the Augusta/CSRA Democratic Socialists of America and Martinez resident Kiara Bouyea decried the lack of homeless shelters in Augusta.

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“It was lack of shelter that took the life of Willie Walker last December as he froze to death on our streets,” Ringgold said. “Our chapter worked with him. He was a wheel-chair bound Army veteran.”

Ringgold said Richmond County sheriff’s deputies take items such as tents and sleeping bags from homeless people and throw them away.

“Richmond police officers are throwing away the only means people have of support,” she said.

She’d reached out to Sheriff Richard Roundtree on Dec. 10 but had heard nothing back, she said.

Tuesday, she asked Mayor Hardie Davis and commissioners to form a committee of elected officials and community members to work on the homeless problem.

Bouyea posed two questions to the mayor and commission.

“How do both available housing in our city and a member of our community dying of exposure on the street exist simultaneously?

“How can we have a valid community when all the members in it do not have access to clean water, food, basic shelter and safety, especially during a pandemic?”

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Coincidentally or not, though probably not, Pat Clayton, Roundtree’s chief deputy, was on hand to give an “update.

Clayton said deputies do not just go in and take items from homeless people. They go into areas where they congregate and put them on notice.

“For example, under the bridges, 15th Street and the different bridges, we had DOT directed us to get all the housing out as they had “

A massive fire under a bridge on I-85 near Piedmont Road in Atlanta in 2017 caused the bridge to collapse. A homeless man had been smoking crack before he set a chair on fire that he had set on a shopping cart. The fire spread to materials stored there and then to the bridge.

“We don’t just go in and willy nilly and take the homeless’s equipment, supplies and belongings and throw them away. We don’t do that.”

The sheriff’s office has an initiative and works with social services agencies, including the Marion Barnes Center, Salvation Army, Veterans Administration, Serenity, Downtown Development Authority, United Way and others, Clayton said.

A homeless person in Augusta is able to get food and clothing on a day-to-day basis. About 85 percent are alcohol or drug dependent or mentally ill. Sometimes all three of them, he said.

“Some are Professional Panhandlers”

“So what they do is use the services we provide for their day-to-day needs, but then they’ll panhandle, trying to get money for drugs and or alcohol,” Clayton said. “So we have a problem with citizens wanting to give them money. They’re thinking for food and their basic needs, and they’re being used for drugs, and these people are forever trapped

in a cycle of homelessness. We have ways to get them out of homelessness, but they have to avail themselves to the opportunities.”

After officers arrested one panhandler and emptied his pockets, they found he had $469, Clayton said.

He also said a lieutenant in Zone 1 said that people come in on trainsbecause Augusta is a “good area.”

To You It’s Mrs.

When it was Bouyea’s turn to speak, the mayor said, “Ms. Bouyea, state for the record your name and address. You have five minutes.”

“It’s Mrs. Bouyea,” she corrected him.

When she’d finished speaking, the mayor said, “Thank you, Ms. Bouyea.”

“Ít’s Mrs. Bouyea,” she said.

“My apologies,” the mayor replied.

Some people were thinking, he should have said, “My apologies to Mr. Bouyea.

Doing As They Do in California is Not Often the Best Option

Look at the complete homeless-policy failures in San Francisco and Los Angeles, two liberal bastions of the theory “the more we spend on the homeless the better off we will all be.” Homeless have swarmed the cities to the detriment of all.

Headline: “Los Angeles is Spending Over $1 billion to House the Homeless. And it’s a Failure.”

Sub-head: “Los Angeles County saw disease and 1,000 homeless deaths last year.”

_ Zach Weissmueller, “Reason,” a libertarian magazine, Dec. 5, 2019.

The Train Has Left the Station

Adam King, Chairman of the Committee to Preserve the Augusta Judicial Circuit, told Augusta Commissioners on Tuesday that Columbia County’s splitting from the circuit is a divisive and expensive venture for a problem that does not exist.

The circuit has existed since 1870, and it has been successful, he said.

King asked commissioners to revisit the issue and make a resolution to restudy it.

When he’d finished his five-minute speech, Commissioner Sammie Sias asked, “Attorney King, in a realistic sense, what do you consider the real value of your presentation, considering the fact that folks on Columbia County have heard your thoughts?”

King said he was a hopeful person by nature and was hopeful the commission would issue a resolution to study the split.

“I’m hoping we can slow it down,” he said.

“You are aware the Georgia Senate has already approved it,” Sias replied. “There’s not much in that train that’s already rolling down the tracks.”

Actually, Augusta couldn’t get a resolution there fast enough to even catch that rolling train.

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Mr. Public Safety

Augusta Commissioner John Clarke is taking his new job as Public Safety Chairman seriously. One of his first orders of business was to place an item on Tuesday’s commission agenda calling for the enforcement of a city code that requires the numbered addresses of all premises in the county be visible to first responders.

Clarke proposed that owners of the premises be given 90 days to comply or be fined.

He made the motion but didn’t get a second.

Administrator Odie Donald said they could educate the public about the code by putting flyers in water bills.

“I will accept educating the public via public service announcements and notices in the utility department mailouts and then revisit at the end of 90 days,” Clarke said. “If there is no visible improvement being made at the end of 90 days; then the code should be enforced.”

Gone to the Dogs

Since voting in America has gone to the dogs with dogs and cats receiving absentee ballots in the mail and voting, these famousmdogs are watching the actual broadcast of My Pillow founder Mike Lindell talking about big tech censorship in an interview on Newsmax on the big TV screen at their favorite hangout, “Bones Bar & Grill.”

(The jukebox in the corner is playing Hank Locklin’s “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On.”)