Be Seen Be Safe Campaign
This is the first media attention on this multi-pronged campaign, that is starting in Austin but has serious national implications (possibly 100,000 people living under our bridges may be affected) as the nation starts to renovate our nation’s highway infrastructure.
House the Homeless is advocating that in order for contractors to be able to meet the time line of their contractual obligations, that they tap into their contingency funds for each individual renovation project and create emergency transitional housing for our bridge dwellers while local communities get time to create appropriate housing. For example, in Austin we housed folks from Hurricane Katrina then Veterans and then Hurricane Harvey.
In Texas, TX-DOT has the opportunity to participate as a true community member. TX-DOT people are not “housing people,”they are “asphalt people.” They came to us with the Be Safe…Be Seen project to provide bags to prevent injury to our people and as a way to distribute information to warn bridge dwellers to move away ahead of their bulldozers (200 people in Austin, TX).
But then all the city-wide advocates came to realize that they believed that they could simply contact us and we would come get these people and house them. We do not have that capability at this time. We need time to get disabled people Disability Benefits (up to a year) in order to leverage housing that will take Walter Mareau and others like him, up to 5 years to create.
In the meantime, House the Homeless and the First Baptist Church is responding to this Humanitarian Crisis by first Winterizing them with Thermal Underwear and all the other life saving items. The straight up cost for this minimal response is $7,000. Thanks to all our supporting Citizens.
Financial Sponsors:
*House the Homeless, Inc.
*First Baptist Church
*Eddie & Ritamay Mire
*Jeff & Alyssa Korn
*Bruce Agnes- Community First
*TXDot
