Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
Stopped for breakfast at McDonald\u2019s at University and Marion, a couple of blocks West of the Capitol. \u00a0\u00a07:00 a.m. and already, there are scruffy people carrying backpacks, strolling aimlessly around the parking lot, sidewalks, sitting on the lawn.\u00a0 Not school kids waiting for the bus \u2013 I passed them at their assigned corner, every eye glued to a cell phone.\u00a0 These were people with nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to do it with, watching me get out of my car.<\/p>\n
Inside, the restaurant is staffed entirely by employees with Hispanic name tags, speaking to each other in Spanish.\u00a0 The food appears promptly, the order is correct, the dining area is immaculately clean, but it\u2019s also totally deserted.\u00a0 The drive-through does steady business.\u00a0 Nobody wants to get out of the car to dine in, for fear of being panhandled, or worse.<\/p>\n
This is the picture of an area in decline.\u00a0 Providing food and shelter for homeless people attracts homeless people, same as putting out bird food and building birdhouses attracts birds.\u00a0 How hard is that to understand?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Note to Mr. Doakes;\u00a0 Please address this to the city’s Resiliency staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Stopped for breakfast at McDonald\u2019s at University and Marion, a couple of blocks West of the Capitol. \u00a0\u00a07:00 a.m. and already, there are scruffy people carrying backpacks, strolling aimlessly around the parking lot, sidewalks, sitting on the lawn.\u00a0 Not school kids waiting for the bus \u2013 I passed them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67965,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67964\/revisions\/67965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}