I have concerns about the shameful action taken by the Mayor and City Council to ban the homeless from downtown Tucson.
Other people are also being pushed out of downtown. This includes artists, the elderly, the poor, galleries, longtime Mexican-American residents, small retail shops, anybody who can’t afford the rising rents.
The City, in partnership with the U of A, is expanding the campus into downtown so that mostly white, affluent students can have a place to live, party and study in a safe, clean environment. Are homeless tolerated on the U of A campus? NO!
New, ugly prison-style dorms are being built to house these new eople and an electric streetcar will transport them back and forth between the U of A and downtown. Common buses are not good enough. The eviction of homeless people will also benefit bars and restaurants which cater to students, sports fans, boosters, faculty and staff. And who will pay for this? Homeowners, citizens, taxpayers.
I grew up here. It’s an old story.
—Michael Cajero, artist
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2016.
Raul Grijalva and MEChA would be so proud of Mr. Cajero, fighting to keep all the west side brown, including downtown. Whitey, you’re not welcome.
Unfortunately Mr. Cajero, it is your sympathizers, the guilty white liberals of Tucson who have spent hundreds of millions to make downtown what it is today, a place where the homeless can defecate in the streets.
Tucson – the capital of White Guilt in America. 5th poorest city in the country, and damn proud of it.
Um, shouldn’t we strive to have less homelessness instead of keeping it around? Short sighted and selfish is what this is.
Downtown Tucson began to thrive when artists and musicians began to create fun spaces out of dead, and mostly ignored, commercial spaces. The rents were cheap and the facilities were basic at best. They lived and worked with other locals in the surrounding barrios while they learned the history and culture of Tucson’s Hispanic and Native communities. Unfortunately the Urban Renewal Program had already destroyed large expanses of homes and businesses in the area so that the remaining community were left hanging by their fingernails next to an abandoned downtown that was once full of jobs and commerce. As the artists and musicians began to draw other folks downtown to spend time and money the area began to support these communities fairly well. Tucson has always done well with the arts and cultural communities.
When the Mega Dorms began to spring up, like tumors on an old sailors face, the influx of students could have been a welcome surge to the local economy. Except that they were not, and are not, interested in the real jewels that Tucson has to offer. A large assemblage of youth that is better suited for the bars in Scottsdale have overwhelmed the otherwise intelligent students that U of A has produced in the past. I have witnessed the pushy rudeness that comes with the entitlement of baby socialites partying on their parents money. Catering to them is causing the arts community to be pushed out of the area that they had resurrected from the ghost town that was Downtown.
Tucson’s Arts and Music Community is one of the finest in the country. They need to be treated with the same respect as this hoard of University students. To not do so will be the death nell of a vibrant future for Downtown and a huge readjustment for the creative community. I feel this glance at how the current Downtown came to be is important. A lot of heart and soul has been invested by Tucsonans in reviving the area.
Michael is a passionate Tucsonan and I agree with him. We do not help homelessness by hiding it from view. We need to know the needs of the homeless and help find some solutions to those needs. I am also a born and raised Tucsonan. I know that we all work and create and play and solve problems together. We do that well.
nutridawg and Michael…we’ll round up all the homeless and send them right over to your neighborhood.
I’m sure that’s ok with you.
This is such a beautiful town. Tainted, like many, by “deadbeat” managers, CEO’s, Police Chiefs and on and on. But, then again, we live in the most corrupt state in the nation according to Harvard statistics. So, what can we expect when we dont pay our personal property taxes? (A threat to enforce ARS), about the only thing enforceable today, as, resources to catch people, even when given information, is, depleted, thus, is why Jan Brewer signed off the carrying of weapons. The city sure cannot protect it’s people, nor can the police as their “oaths” promise us to do so, under the help of “God”. It’s been proven more than once. However, they can involve themselves in prostitution rings and not get charged for it either. Only civillians.
Blight happens everywhere. We say urban renewal gift huge chunk of monies but nothing but to lift existing conditions.
None of the monies here ever went to infrastructure master plan. Mostly fought by a bunch of NIMBYs with short side opinions on what they dont like. With each new decade new NIMBYs,
Gone is a master plan but for the bike paths completed. Tucson Electric’s main office was bought 20 years ago for the tie between the Aviation Corridor and I-10. Then a new police chief thought as a enforcement control device dropped the speed limit down to 35. The second year law student researched and AZDOT had to remind the city all speed limits were set by the state parameters. That Aviation Corridor was set at 45 so thousand of tickets had to be thrown out. Where was the city Atty and streets on that, so we are paying retirement for the best and brightest
None of this would be possible with a master plan but the county wants to be mayor and council all-in-one thats why some city council members live in phoenix. This is going quickly to a sleepy college town cost to start and keep a business is to much. County sups have long given up on continuing education for the workforce. Question can the city hang on long enough to meet it’s retirement obligations? The infrastructure is shrinking and going fast. Just drive around the commercial and industrial areas see much improvement since the last year or the last 5? we have a new outlet I am proud
Marty; The police into prostitution I remember the massage parlors run by Sheriff Weldon Burr in Ajo & Country Club there must have be 20. I remember the undersheriff Williams caught with a Cessna D-18 full of marijuana in Minnesota.
I remember Senator Fannin, Judge Deconcini, Tucson Mayor all drinking gambling in a Hacienda on Old Nogales Highway during prohibition and running out the backdoor onto the indian reservation to avoid being arrested it was an election year. I have the picture done by my uncle the dealer bartender of them standing on the reservation laughing.
When the County and City both dont have a general accounting method for procurement, timesheets, billing standards, they never have and they never will. Does anyone remember county ATTY Dennis Deconcini and his “MANTIS” Metropolitan Area Narcotics Interdiction Squad, turned out to be nothing more than a rip crew tooling around in a confiscated lear jet. That cost to operate took all the the monies confiscated. Then set himself up for millions on land trust acquisitions
Oh yea the Sheriff out sweating a junkie/drug felon to find others to bust allowed him to carry a gun. DEA out offering to sell looking for those that are buying so the meet was done at the Airport and a shootout and killing. Just what police and prosecutors are allowing is illegal activity just dont let it get out of hand. Police skim off the top County atty enforce with plea bargains and deals get a cut off of seizures and fines.
Or the superior court Judge that ha $300,000 in debt to a vegas Hotel and all the sudden the debt was forgiven
Why would it be business any different that what has been going on for years. Electing a puritan won’t solve the problem neither will gender, sexual identification, marriage, or race will replace greed.
Michael Cajero is making my sides split from hypocrisy. He ripped up my section 8 acceptance letter, a single mother with a child. He would tell TW readers that he’s trying to help homeless people. This is actually ridiculous because he not only threw away my paperwork to have section 8 that took 10 years to get, his brother was a Hollywood producer who was a multimillionaire & who supported his career. MICHAEL CAJERO LOVES THE IDEA OF idealized conceptual symbolic HOMELESS PEOPLE BUT REAL HOMELESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN…he himself evicted!