I have received the comments from the NCS. The city provided them. I have to reformat them before I post, but after a quick review I was surprised by how many people commented about the transient problem DTSF, this is just one of many;
I am not typically insensitive to such things or unthoughtful about the words I choose but it must be said. Bums have taken over downtown. I have lived here most of my 41 years and have not seen anything like it before. Covid hit and it’s like we now tolerate vagrancy. Even as folks are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into making this the showpiece of our city, we are just overrun with bums. Sure there’s mental health and addiction issues but a lot of it is just bums. I saw someone sleeping on Phillips Ave in front of the old Visnu Bunny space at 9am on a weekday. Why do they feel comfortable doing that? There should be a multi-pronged effort to squash this immediately. Make laws that empower police to push back against panhandling. Offer transients bus tickets to leave the city. Put constant pressure on those who haunt DT and litter and generally degrade our quality of life. Why would the behavior of a couple hundred people be allowed to ruin the heart of a city that hundreds of thousands of people.
A multi-prong approach would require multiple agencies working together within the city. I know, laughable.
Not a lot of solutions offered but it was most certainly the NUMBER one topic in the comment section.