“The times they are
a-changing…”
So wrote Nobel laureate Bob Dylan,
and so we can see in our very own neighborhood. The immediate neighborhood of
our parish church is changing in front of our very eyes. For better or worse,
the neighborhood is going upscale. We are shortly going to be a chichi
neighborhood. Instead of the funky and somewhat gritty neighborhood of “The
Drag” we have all known and more-or-less loved, we are becoming something upscale. There is no stopping it, and it is not clear if the good is going to
outweigh the bad, nor how we, as a parish community, ought to respond.
We have already seen two high-rise
upscale student dorms mushroom up on San Antonio Street just on the block north
of us. According to University Area Partners there are eight more construction
developments in our area already approved and on the books. The Rowling
Graduate Business School, now under construction on the corner of MLK and
Guadalupe, will have a huge impact on this area. The Marriott has announced it
is constructing a 320 room luxury hotel on the property where McDonald’s now
sits. That will supposedly begin construction this Spring and take two years. Truly,
“The times they are a-changing…”
Some people are anxious to
see this change happen. The developers and builders are, of course. But also
many in the University of Texas community as well. They find our neighborhood,
with its drifters, homeless, pan-handlers and street-youth a dicey-at-best and
rather dangerous place. They badly want the area “cleaned up.” This desire has
been increased greatly by the fear generated by the murder last spring of the
UT student Haruka Weiser, for which
Meechaiel Criner, a homeless teenager, has been charged with capital murder. Local
area pastors have received more reports than usual from those who work with the
street youth that they are getting more attention and pressure from the UT
police, who have extended their coverage into the West Campus area, to leave
the area. Also, due to APD and UTPD efforts, the use of drugs and
instances of crime have decreased in our area since last year, when a wave of
crime related to K-2 (synthetic drug) came through.
How should we as a Catholic parish
community respond? Should we just sit by and let it happen? Should we increase
our efforts to serve the street youth, the homeless and the poor in our area? Should
we encourage the efforts to make our area more middle class, even if we realize
this will change the character of the neighborhood? Given the forces at work
for change, can we even do much of anything significant?
This is an important discussion for
our Parish Pastoral Council and for the whole parish. It effects our worship,
our school, our possible development of our plant, our relations with our
neighbors, a whole lot of significant stuff. I don’t have the answer for this,
but I think it important that we not just sit passively by and let it happen. I
urge you to take this issue to prayer. If you have a suggestion on how we as a
parish can respond to this, let me or someone on the Parish Pastoral Council
know. The email address is pastoralcouncil@staustin.org.
Truly, “The times they are a-changing…”
No comments:
Post a Comment