While city construction crews lay down the infrastructure for a complex of trailers that will become a 44-unit transitional housing facility to provide safe shelter for as many as 88 unhoused people, the owner of Summit Power Tools, on the opposite side of Third Avenue, is worried about what that means for the future of his business.
“They keep throwing these band-aids at the problem, there’s no way the city should agree to have to pay half a million dollars to another failed idea,” Taylor said. “People don’t want to go into because you can’t bring your stuff with you, there’s some rules to follow, the whole thing seems headed in the wrong direction.”
“By creating all these rehab programs but not forcing people into it you’ll never get them there, that’s been proven,” Taylor said. “The socialistic government direction that we’re going in has failed every single time. You have to give them a chance to go to rehab and if that doesn’t work out then you have to do some jail time, and after jail time you have them another chance for rehab. We have to do something different than this.
Taylor has had numerous issues in his 12 years of operating his business with people climbing over the fence to steal items. One enterprising thief stole a picker truck from the nearby scrapyard and used it to grab two lawn tractors and a side-by-side quad from Taylor’s yard. Since then he’s invested in high-tech security cameras and software system which depends on algorithms to detect intruders.