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A resident of Austin, Texas, is raising awareness of the city’s homeless problem and its unprecedented impact on green spaces.
Jamie Hammonds, an investigative filmmaker who heads the organization Documenting Austin’s Streets and Homeless, or DASH, shared videos on Twitter on Wednesday showing a homeless encampment on the Violet Crown Trail after about a year of neglect.
“It’s destroyed. It will never be the same again,” Hammonds tweeted.
A broker agreed, saying the “environmental damage from these camps is immense.”
The videos, taken by Hammonds on Wednesday morning, show piles of trash lying on the trail as far as the eye can see. Hammonds reported seeing cars, trailers, mountains of trash, needles, human waste, and hundreds of homeless people.
A homeless camp in Austin, Texas. (Jamie Hammonds)
“You can smell these places in the summer. These big homeless camps. The trash and stuff that goes up,” Hammond told Fox News Digital. “There are probably 300 people living in the forest. Their path has just been decimated and completely destroyed with garbage.”
CALIFORNIA CITY NEARLY ELIMINATES HOMELESS POPULATION WITH ZERO TOLERANCE CAMPING POLICY
Hammonds blamed city officials for exacerbating the problem. He argued that city policies have pushed homeless people into green areas out of public view. Consequently, many city dwellers are unaware that the problem persists.
“The problem is there, it’s just that people can’t see it. They don’t realize how many people are actually in the forest,” he said.
Hammond lamented the trail’s damage, noting that the “crown jewel of Austin” and such green spaces made people forget they were in an urban area.
But Hammond, who has experienced homelessness himself, clarified that his aim was not to disgrace the underprivileged, but to put pressure on city officials to get them into shelters.
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“We’d like the city to start offering them some kind of services that would help them get off the streets if they wanted to eventually,” Hammond said. “It’s such a shame what’s happening here.”
Bradford Betz is a Fox News Digital breaking reporter covering crime, political issues and much more.
