The city will close and clean a south-side homeless camp after a shooting injured a man.
SAN ANTONIO — Just over 24-hours after a shooting in a south-side homeless camp, the City of San Antonio says the area will be closed and cleaned.
A sign posted on the lot in the 100 block of West Amber Street, near Pleasanton Road, announced the abatement action will begin Wednesday at 8 a.m.
The advisory says the action is being taken due to health and safety concerns.
San Antonio Police were called to the area around 10 p.m. on Monday, where responding officers found a 36-year-old man who had been shot in the leg.
The victim told officers another person in the camp shot him and then ran away. The victim was taken to the hospital where he is expected to recover.
The camp is about 100 yards from a Bexar County Tax Office and BiblioTech library location.
Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector Albert Uresti, visited the location Tuesday morning to assess the situation.
“There’s a lot of homeless around this neighborhood,” said Uresti. “We do not run them off. They have nowhere to go in the daytime so we let them be.”
The downtown tax office, located on Pecos-La Trinidad, shares the same challenges, according to Uresti.
“A lot of these people are mentally ill,” he said. “Nobody wakes up in morning and says ‘I want to be homeless. I want to sleep in 100 degree heat or 20 degree cold.’ It’s just not like that.”
Uresti said after watching the local community come together for flood relief in the Hill Country, he wishes he could see a similar compassionate response here.
“I saw Bexar County band together in order to help the people in Kerr County, so this is another opportunity to address a problem,” Uresti said. “There are a lot of organizations out there trying to help the homeless but I think we need a master plan, a community-wide plan.”
Uresti said he applauds the efforts made by nonprofit organizations but seeing the suffering on the streets outside his offices, he said he believes a different approach is overdue.
“We do need to come up with a new idea, with a new plan, a better way to address this problem,” Uresti said. “Bring all these groups together to address it on a city-wide or county-wide platform to see what we can do.”
Uresti said most of the people he encounters are not dangerous but they desperately need outreach.
“Most of the homeless are people like you and me. They just want to get along. Most of them are good, decent people who are struggling in their life,” he said.
The city does provide a hotline to offer services to anyone who may be experiencing homelessness. It is 210-207-1799.
You can also learn about city resources and more information related to homeless services at the website here.