Business leaders rally to oppose discriminatory legislation
Apr 19, 2021 |
Texas Competes, represented by business leaders and of chambers of commerce, held a press conference at the Capitol in Austin today, Monday, April 19, to oppose a long list of discriminatory bills working their way through the Legislature.
The legislation includes bans on trans athletes from participating in sports to bans on providing medically necessary gender treatment to a number of license to discriminate bills, both specific and broad. Other bills would ban gender marker changes, criminalize HIV infection and invalidate local nondiscrimination ordinances.
State Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, D-Dallas, kicked off the presentation. Gonzalez authored an omnibus LGBTQ nondiscrimination bill also working its way through committee.
Anti-LGBTQ bills are bad for business: Texas employers nydailynews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nydailynews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Editorial: Lifting the camping ban without a plan was a failure, but Prop B won t help
By American-Statesman Editorial Board
Cities have long grappled with homelessness. But in this moment in Austin with tents lining the breezy shoreline of Lady Bird Lake, with burgeoning encampments spilling out from highway underpasses and popping up closer to neighborhoods, with the public safety hazards measured in charred structures and frostbitten, amputated feet homelessness is the consummate crisis.
Austin’s last point-in-time count put the homeless population around 2,500, a number that has surely grown over the past year. Many of those folks live in desperate conditions in our public spaces.
KUT Residents have begun constructing single-person shelters at Esperanza Community, a state-sanctioned camp for Austinites experiencing homelessness.
As an excavator peeled apart a decades-old garage housing folks at a state-sanctioned camp in Southeast Austin, new construction was ramping up across the 5-acre lot.
The TxDOT site, known as the Esperanza Community, has served as a home for people living outdoors since late 2019. A few of the roughly 170 residents used the garages for shelter. This week, neighbors have been working with TxDOT crews and getting paid to build 10-by-12 shelters to replace them.
The Other Ones Foundation, the nonprofit that helps run Esperanza, hopes there will be a single-person shelter for every resident.