Chase Karacostas graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020 with degrees in Journalism and Political Communication. He has covered the environment, housing, homelessness, health care and more for media outlets around Texas, including The Texas Tribune, Austin American-Statesman, Community Impact Newspaper and the Dallas Morning News.
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Since Windsor Park resident Kevin Ludlow posted a video showing trash, human waste and drug use in a growing encampment behind his home last weekend, more than 60,000 people have viewed it on YouTube, hundreds have reached out to him directly and the site has been cleaned up.
Now, the area looks "really great," Ludlow said, adding that a long-term solution is still needed.
Massive problems in the Windsor Park creek video released Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020. www.youtube.com
The camp is along Little Tannehill Branch Creek between Broadmoor Drive and 52nd Street.
The cleanup, the result of a city contract with local nonprofit The Other Ones Foundation, began on Tuesday and wrapped up on Friday.
A TOOF spokesman said the group regularly cleans up similar camps around the city. The city called them about Windsor Park last Monday - the day after the video was posted and drew 25,000 views in 24 hours.
"There's so much to do, that it wasn't in our rotation until the people living around there (Windsor Park) called the city," said Max Moscoe, community engagement coordinator with TOOF.
TOOF, which employs people who are homeless at $15 an hour, has worked on similar cleanup efforts around the city since beginning a $720,000 year-long contract with the city last October. The group was established in 2018 with a pilot program through the city.
Encampment clean-ups had been paused since March because of pandemic-related health concerns.
Attempts to speak with Council Member Greg Casar, whose district includes the camp, were unsuccessful, but a spokesperson said Ludlow contacted his office three weeks ago about the camp.
Since then, Casar's office has been organizing efforts to get the area cleaned up and help those who live there access support and mental-health services, spokesman Braden Latham-Jones said.
"They've been able to get a few people into housing," Latham-Jones said. "The video came out, which brought a lot more scrutiny, [but] the process, regardless of the video, is the same."
Ludlow said he believes the video was a catalyst.
"There's no doubt about it that the video has had a massive impact on the response from the city," Ludlow told Austonia. "I don't think they want to dismiss it, but putting it out there to the public definitely garnered the type of reaction where they could not ignore it."
Raising awareness
While the city was aware of the encampment, many people who live in the area around it were not. It is nearly invisible from the streets that line it, blocked from view by homes and apartment buildings.
Dan Strub, president of the Windsor Park Neighborhood Association, said it has been there for 18 years but had grown recently.
"Truth be told, I don't think many people were aware of the size of the encampment before the video," Strub said. "I live here, and I wasn't aware of what was going on back there."
Hundreds of Austinites reached out to Ludlow after he posted and many offered to volunteer at future clean-ups, he said.
His footage also resonated with Austinites in other areas that are facing similar issues.
Lisa Novack owns a condo in the Riverside neighborhood east of I-35. Since the city repealed its ban on public camping last summer, she has noticed that the homeless encampment along the Riverside Drive median has grown.
Novack feels compassion for the people who live there, but she also worries about safety and the lack of regulations and would like to see the ban reinstated.
"I watched that YouTube video of the people with them in their backyard just camping along the river," she said, "and just said, 'Oh my god, I feel guilty for ever complaining,' because they aren't necessarily in mine."
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Popular
After a few weeks of steady decline, the number of new coronavirus cases in Travis County is hitting a troublesome plateau, Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said Tuesday.
"This makes us concerned that we are no longer headed in a good direction, that we are flattening out" rather than improving, Escott told the Travis County Commissioners Court. "Particularly because we are about 30 days from the start of in-person schooling, we have to do better."
Nevertheless, Escott said, the various statistics Austin Public Health uses to track the spread of coronavirus in the region show that Travis County has entered Stage 3 territory, potentially giving way to less stringent public-health restrictions in the coming weeks.
But Escott said he is not ready to make that call, which would expand the number and type of businesses considered safe to be open.
For officials to be comfortable downgrading the county to Stage 3 restrictions, Escott said they would need two weeks' worth of numbers supporting that level.
"We've seen over and over again, across the country and across the globe, that when communities relax too soon, it results in a bounce of cases and a repeat surge," Escott said.
Better news, he said, is that ICU and hospital-bed usage in Austin are still down, and the city has more than enough ventilators to handle a large surge in cases.
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FBI looking into possible Chinese spying on COVID research at University of Texas-Austin
The Chinese government may have tried to steal research related to COVID-19 from the University of Texas at Austin, the FBI told the school earlier this month.
The news came from an email sent Monday to faculty, staff and post-doctoral students from the school's interim vice president and provost, Daniel Jaffe, who wrote that the investigation was sparked by the July 24 closure of the Chinese Consulate in Houston.
He warned that the FBI may be reaching out to them about relations with the consulate and "efforts by the Chinese government to illegally procure research from American universities."
"We do not know whom the FBI intends to contact or what they plan to discuss, nor have we shared anyone's information or details about ongoing research with FBI agents," Jaffe said in the email. "It's not unusual for federal law enforcement officers to ask to speak with researchers if deemed necessary to support criminal or national security investigations."
Details of Jaffe's email to members of the university were first reported by the Houston Chronicle. UT is not the only university affected.
The closure of the consulate in Houston served as the latest development in the conflict between the Trump administration and China, which spans issues ranging from trade, espionage, the expansion of 5G phone service around the globe and, now, the country's role in the coronavirus pandemic.
The administration cited the need to protect intellectual property and American private information in closing the consulate—the same issues the FBI is now investigating at U.S. higher education institutions.
The day before the closure of the consulate, the Justice Department revealed indictments for two Chinese hackers accused of stealing information from "computer systems of hundreds of victim companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual dissidents, clergy, and democratic and human rights activists in the United States and abroad, including Hong Kong and China."
A press release announcing the indictment said the hackers stole for their own personal gain, in some cases, and in others acted on behalf of the Chinese government. The terabytes of data ranged from tech manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to gaming software.
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Confederate Ave., Dixie Dr.: Austin City Council votes to start renaming places linked to white supremacy
Confederate Avenue, in the historically Black Clarksville neighborhood, was also cited in Austin's 2018 equity report as a candidate for renaming.
The City Council unanimously approved beginning the process of renaming streets, parks and other locations around Austin tied to the Confederacy and white supremacy.
"It would be the height of hypocrisy to say, 'Black lives matter,' and not address the elephant in our streets: Confederate Avenue, Plantation Road and Dixie Drive," Harper-Madison said during the meeting. "These existing street names have no place in the city of Austin."
The resolution directs city staff to bring five to 10 possible "city assets" to the council in September. The renamings will then be under consideration over the following six months as the council discusses them and gathers public input.
However, despite including the possibility of renaming Austin, due to its founder Stephen F. Austin's staunch support of slavery, Harper-Madison told KUT that changing the city's name may not be on the table.
The city has already moved to rename some locations: Robert E. Lee Road and Jeff Davis Avenue, which were changed to Azie Morton Road in honor of an Austin resident who became the first African-American U.S. treasurer, and William Holland Avenue to commemorate a former slave who became a Travis County commissioner in the late 1800s.
"It is the stated goal of the Austin City Council to rename all City assets dedicated to the Confederacy and white supremacy to recognize esteemed state and local heroes, places, and concepts that uphold the noble ideals of liberty, democracy, and self-determination," the resolution passed Wednesday states.
The 2018 Equity Office report listed seven places as "high priority" for a rebranding: Littlefield Street, Tom Green Street, Sneed Cove, Reagan Hill Drive, Dixie Drive, Plantation Road and Confederate Avenue.
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