Greg Travis - Former City Councilman Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seven twenty two hour time here in Houston's warning news.
All right, so the city is announcing a new sixteen
million dollars low barrier homeless super hub. I'm not exactly
sure what that means. I get the impression it's not
just a place to house the homeless, but it's a
place to provide city services for the homeless, all of
one location, whatever those services may be. Join us to

(00:20):
talk about Greg Travis, former city councilman. I guess the
first criticism you hear about something like this is, you know,
anytime you have someplace that attracts a huge number of
homeless people, it can be a negative image for the city.
Do you see that as being a problem with this.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, Jamie, thank you for having me on. Yeah, I do. Actually,
I think this is going to be encouraging more homelessness,
and I'll talk about that in a second of Portland.
But the interesting part, as you asked at the beginning
with your tea's, is this going to be a good investment?
And the answer is going to be no. I mean,
we're gonna be paying sixteen million dollars for a property
it looks like it's only worth around six million and
The reason for that is they're trying to get ear

(00:58):
the homeless underneath the bridge dyke In Park, and you're
only four blocks away from that area. So why are
we paying sixteen million to try to move people four
blocks away? It just ignores human nature. It just ignores
the fact that these people don't want their rules. They
don't want it because it says it's gonna be a

(01:19):
no barrier. Well, that means they can come and go
as they please. Well, I guess what they're gonna go
when the baseball games are playing. They're going to go
four blocks to Dyke and Park. That's where the money is,
that's where the panhandling is. So I don't understand why
they're doing this unless it's somebody just wants to give
to sixteen million and give it to somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Well, you know, and even in a perfect world, if
something like this would actually work, rig Gravis and I
agree with you, I don't think it does. It only
is expected to include one hundred and fifty to two
hundred and twenty five beds. We have a lot more
homeless than that, don't we.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well we do. Fortunately, we don't have as many homeless
as other cities. If you go to San Francisco, La,
Portland and Seattle. But that's also because we don't enable them,
and I don't want us to be enabling them up there.
They actually pay them and they actually pay their people
one thousand dollars a month stipend be homeless. So that's
why people go up to Portland and become homeless. And

(02:08):
if you walk around there, our city's got some bad
homeless issues, but it's not as bad as other areas.
And you don't want to walk on that slippery slope
where you start encouraging it, because then you're going to
get more people congregating, and they're going to be coming
here from other cities and they do that. Okay, do
you ever talk to the people on Portland streets? Sure
they've come from other cities.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Oh yeah, they go to where they think they can
get the most benefits exactly. One of the things that
the superhod though supposedly would do, that maybe has some
good to it is that evidently they were planning up
providing on site healthcare, psychiatric services, substance abuse treatment, and
that it covers at least two out of the three

(02:46):
big ones. We know that most of the people who
are homeless. Are homeless because they want to be. Many
of them have mental health issues, many of them have
substance abuse problems. So you would like to see a
successful treatment of that. Maybe you can get them out
of that being homeless.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, and that would be a good thing. But we
can still do that now. We still do that now.
I mean it's not that that's not being done. It's
just this is going to be done at this facility.
But again, you're not gonna what about people that are,
you know, a mile away or over on the Galleria
area that we've got some homeless over there. They're not
gonna go all the way down there for this homeless treatment.

(03:23):
But I do agree with that. And here's why, because
when the public out there thinks of homeless, they think
of the mother with two kids who just lost their
house or divorced whatever. But most of these people are
mentally ill. And that's what we have to costure on
the mental illness and what they do with their drug
of choice, whether it be heroin, meth or alcohol, is
they're trying to overcome the pain and they're trying to

(03:44):
That's that's their treatment of choice. So you've got to
take care of that mental illness. But you know the
best way to do that is you know, President Trump
is talking about reis studying the mental institutions, and there's
a lot of pushback on that. But obviously you got
to be cruel to be kind sometimes because it's better
these people be in a facility with a warm bed,
hot shower and three meals a day getting psychiatric treatment

(04:07):
to be on the streets.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Well, here's the bottom line too. Sixteen million dollars is
a big expenditure for a city that has financial issues.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
We're spending more than that on homeless. We're spending over
one hundred million. If you look at all the NGOs
are involved. Just pull up Houston homeless shelters. Almost everyone
that pulls up on your website is on the city
doll They get some money somewhere because we've afforded those NGOs,
non government organizations to treat this facility, to treat this issue.

(04:37):
So there's a lot of money going out to the homeless.
I don't have a problem taking care of the problem,
but let's just do it where we get the most
benefit for the bucks.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, I think you're saying that there's money well spent
there's money that's wasted. And if we're spending one hundred
million dollars and we still have a homeless problem, then
obviously the money's not being very well spent.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Exactly, it's not. And again it's also not done in
just one in one trotch. It's done to this group,
to that group, to this group, and under this guy's
under that guys. And so when you look at it, it
looks like ten million here, five million here, eight million there,
but when you add them all together, it's over one
hundred million dollars.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, a lot of money. Thank you for your time, Greg,
appreciate it. Greg Travis, former Houston City councilman, seven twenty
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