Austin's HEAL Initiative focused on high risk homeless camps during severe weather season
AUSTIN (KXAN) — This week's forecast has included the risk of tornadoes, hail, flash flooding, and damaging winds. For people living outside and without easy shelter options, that type of weather presents unique challenges.
'Last night's storm was another reminder of why the preparation is important. Especially when you have severe wind, rain, hail and tornado warnings happening in the middle of the night,' Austin's Homeless Strategy Officer David Gray said.
How does the city of Austin decide which homeless encampments to clear?
That's why Gray said the city is tailoring its HEAL Initiative efforts toward areas that may be most impacted by severe weather right now.
'We've been looking at sites in wooded areas both to prevent wildfires but also to make sure that people are not injured from lightning strikes, falling trees, wind, tornados and floods,' Gray said.
The HEAL Initiative is Austin's program that moves people from high-risk homeless encampments to a bridge shelter, where people get a temporary place to stay until something more permanent opens up. HEAL stands for Housing-Focused Encampment Assistance Link.
'A lot of our recent HEAL initiatives have focused on creek beds for this specific reason. We know that we're entering severe weather season and it's really important that we get people out of those creek beds and out of those low lying areas, so if we do have a flash flood, heaven forbid, we've minimized the chance for people to get injured in those weather events,' Gray said.
Austin-led HEAL initiative closes four encampments
If it's left you wondering — well, there's an encampment near my house. Why hasn't the city cleared that one?
The city can only move people to shelter if one is available. When that space opens up, the city has a ranking system for which camp it targets next.
'Priority rankings are based off of things like the people who are at the sites, so if there is evidence of children or pregnant women or seniors. We also look at factors like, have there been fires at sites recently, what's its proximity to residential areas,' Gray said.
Read more about that process here.
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Associated Press
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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: Sending the military to a big city to police Americans is the wrong call
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Both of these situations have everything to do with the president's . Too bad he didn't think the insurrection on Jan. 6 was worthy of the National Guard, a situation that truly merited supporting the local police. But that was also another ego trip for him. is the madness going to stop?Chicago is the perfect location for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to strike next. Surely a Texas or Florida city won't be next. Chicago has a divided government as the mayor does not control the City Council, and the mayor is unpopular. The mayor should be calming the city now to alleviate some of the protesting. I would advise Illinois' governor to immediately call up the National Guard upon the first instance of escalated protests before President Donald Trump editorial 'MAGA morphs into Make America Cruel Again' ignores the serious consequences that unchecked, unlawful entry has on our country. While America has always welcomed legal immigrants, illegal immigration breaks federal law and burdens citizens who follow the rules. First and foremost, illegal immigration is illegal. By excusing or encouraging it, we undermine our legal system and send a message that laws are optional. This is unfair to the millions around the world who wait years and spend thousands to come here legally. Law-abiding immigrants and U.S. citizens deserve a system that honors order and fairness — not one that rewards disregard for the rules. Illegal immigration puts pressure on our public services. Schools are overcrowded, teachers are stretched thin and health systems face rising costs. Local emergency rooms and clinics must provide care, but the bill is passed on to the American taxpayer. It's not sustainable, and it's not right. Crime is another serious concern. Americans should not have to fear that their safety is secondary to political narratives. Don't ask law-abiding citizens to subsidize illegal entry and its consequences. We need an immigration system that is lawful, secure and fair. That means enforcing existing laws, securing our borders and streamlining legal immigration — not ignoring our laws in the name of misguided compassion. Americans are generous, but we also value order, accountability and the editorial about the events in Los Angeles, the Tribune Editorial Board 'wondered how on God's green earth this country can hold it together for three-and-a-half more years of this level of presidential overreach, this amount of hatred and division.' My response is: Does the board remember the 1960s? Consider just 1968. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April. The ensuing riots all over the country make what is happening in LA look minor. We can still see the effects of those riots in parts of Chicago today. Two months later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Then came the Democratic National Convention. I assume the editorial board remembers that. That was just in the United States. In January 1968, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo and held its crew captive for 11 months. At the end of January, communist forces in Vietnam launched their Tet Offensive. While the offensive was a strategic defeat for the communists, its main casualty was President Lyndon Johnson. There were student protests and riots all over Europe. In August, the Soviet Union occupied Czechoslovakia because it dared to have thoughts of its own. And then there was the draft. In other words, while things seem crazy now, we have been through worse. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about what is happening, but we should keep things in perspective. Because we have been there before.I have to agree with all the immigration demonstrators across the country today. The immigrants deserve good jobs and schools and honest government and to live without fear. The problem is they are marching in the wrong place. The root cause of the problem lies in their home countries. They should be marching in the capital cities of their home countries. Let's focus on the root cause. If everyone who feels so strongly about immigration went to the capital cities where the immigrants are escaping from, it would do much to eliminate the problem. March in Mexico City, Quito, San Salvador or Guatemala City, where the problems originate. Let's fix the root cause.I would like to remind my fellow Americans that this country has faced many crises in its short history. There is always someone there to remind us of who and what we represent as a nation and to the world. Such a man was Edward R. Murrow, an American broadcast journalist who lived through the Sen. Joe McCarthy era and stood up against what he knew to be a gross injustice and a violation of our values. I would like to share one of his many memorable quotes to ponder and then for us to decide as a nation if we wish to stand together for what we know is right and then to act. 'We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.' What will you do to meet this crossroad?I faithfully read Voice of the People each day. Letters that go straight to the truth are my favorites. Some letters, however, simply fuel the flames of divisiveness, without revealing a profound truth. I quickly identify those letters when a I see the words 'posse' and 'minions,' which appeared in two letters on June 6: 'Donald Trump and his posse' and 'Joe Biden and his minions.' Labeling huge swaths of the American electorate as thoughtless sycophants does nothing to help us achieve equitable solutions for today's issues. Certain words divide us. Let's drop them from the discussion.I'd like to take a moment to provide a different perspective to a June 6 letter ('Short memories') regarding Joe Biden as president '(throwing) money at anything that moved' during his administration. Let us remember that Biden inherited an economy that was in a tailspin. To save the U.S. economy and support citizens of our country, Biden used his presidency to benefit the economy, middle class and struggling lower class. Let us remember that his stimulus plan included individual stimulus checks, extended unemployment benefits, extended child care tax credits, increased funding for a national vaccine plan, and increased the budget for mortgage assistance as well as emergency assistance for those who were unhoused. Biden's administration invested billions of dollars in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research to bring the U.S. manufacturing sector in line with worldwide development. Those were just a few of the positive benefits for U.S. citizens under the Biden presidency. Let us not forget what we once had. If anyone is going to be accused of throwing money, let that money at least be used to support the children and families of the United States. When Biden left office, he gave his successor one of the healthiest economies in the world, with low unemployment, plus a record high number of jobs created. It's a national shame that we can no longer say that about our Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to change the name of the USNS Harvey Milk because Milk's identity as a gay man would compromise the Navy's effort to establish a 'warrior ethos.' Poor Hegseth seems unaware that in classical Greece, gay men — including pairs of gay lovers — were seen as essential to military unit cohesion and effectiveness. According to neoconservative historian Victor Davis Hanson's 1994 study 'The Western Way of War,' pairs of gay lovers fought with ferocity. The Sacred Band of Thebes, made up of 150 pairs of gay lovers, shattered the Spartan army at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C., establishing Thebes' independence from Sparta. Four years later, at the Battle of Tegyra, the Sacred Band vanquished another Spartan force three times its size. One recent account called the Sacred Band of Thebes 'the Special Forces of the classical era.' It is unsettling that the security of the United States is in the hands of a man with no military experience and no knowledge of military history.
