The SAFE Alliance is preparing to
make millions of dollars in cuts
starting this summer.
That includes closing a downtown
shelter and the end of services that
provide additional housing
assistance to people leading an
abusive situation.
We've got that story, and after
public outcry over the unexpected
demolition of a former cafe in East
Austin, the developer of the land
has committed to maintaining what's
left of the historic building it
originally promised to preserve.
The problem?
Well, there's only a single wall
left standing.
More about that coming up on today's
show.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
Plus, what is the Texas
rap anthem?
We've got a decent selection to
choose from across the state.
The fellas over at the breaks are
seeking the one true anthem.
We're gonna talk to them about it.
That's up next, right here on Austin
Signal.
Howdy out there, this is Austin
Signal brought to you by Community
Powered Public Radio, KUT
News.
I'm your host Jerry Keconnell, thank
you for making us part of your
Thursday.
It is April 9th and
rain chances are moving back into
the Austin area, the National
Weather Service giving us a 40%
chance of some showers today,
60% on Friday, 40%
on Saturday, 50% on
Sunday. And it looks like these rain
chances could stay with us into
next week, of course it's always a
little too early to tell, but we're
going to keep you updated on the
latest right here on Austin Signal
and over at KUT
News.
Each year the SAFE Alliance provides
help to thousands of survivors
of domestic violence and sexual
assault.
That includes places to stay,
counseling, and other services as
needed. But now the organization
is dealing with a drop in government
funding, which could lead to the
end of several programs.
KUT's Luz Moreno Lozano has the
story.
The organization provides about 20
programs to families leaving
domestic violence and sexual assault
situations.
Four of those could be forced to
close this year because of a lack of
funds.
Those programs help house women and
children who've escaped dangerous
situations, programs that
keep children safe, and one that
performs forensic exams on sexual
assault victims.
The nonprofit says it's lost about
$4 million over the last year.
That includes two million from
local, state, and federal funds.
Pierre Beresine is the executive
director for the SAFE Alliance.
If an organization were operating
just a domestic violence shelter,
they wouldn't have access to
that whole ecosystem from
Planet Safe to Eloise
House to Bridge to Safety
to health care navigation,
court accompaniment, children's
services, therapeutic and counseling
services.
And I can just go on and on and
because survivors have complex
lives.
He says it's what makes the safe
program model so effective, and
without it, people and children
could suffer.
He says beyond government funding,
private donors are feeling the pinch
of the rise in cost of living.
Quite a long time now, the SAFE
Alliance has provided some core
services that
benefit austenites
and benefit systems
that now are
under threat if we don't
have an appropriate multi-party
investment in our services.
One of those investments is the
overnight emergency shelter the
organization operates in downtown
Austin that helps families and their
children. Without funding, the
facility could close in October.
Currently, right now, we have 55
children in
that shelter.
55 children whose parents
experienced domestic
abuse, physical abuse.
And what happens if that shelter
closes is that you
have 55 and their
mothers, for the most part,
who have nowhere else to go.
Makani Kauck was one of those
mothers. For years, she endured
abuse from her partner before
becoming pregnant.
She couldn't turn to her family, so
she ended up living in a tent with
her then two-year-old daughter.
After her abuser threatened their
lives, Safe stepped in, offering her
and her daughter shelter.
They lived there for several months.
So we ended up using lots of
different services. We used
supportive housing, which
was great because it came with the
added security, it came the added
case management.
Today, Calc's daughter is 13 years
old. She visits her dad on some
weekends through a secure child
exchange program called Planet Safe,
another program that could close
this summer without funding.
A lot of us as survivors are
co-parenting with our rapists and
our abusers.
Planet Safe is so crucial to
that. They actually
retrieved my child when
they were kidnapped at one point.
But I still co- parent with my
abuser and it's
scary, it's really scary.
The Safe Alliance doesn't just focus
on getting people away from their
abusers and providing shelter.
Another program that could close
this summer works to keep families
together.
Jo Meyer and her daughter were able
to be reunited with help from Safe
Futures.
As a young mom, she had started
doing drugs, which resulted in her
daughter being removed from her
custody.
She had to work to get her back, but
she did it.
She got sober, she got a steady job,
and with the support of her Safe
Futurs advocate, she was able to
navigate the court system and her
CPS case.
Myra says the outgate was one of the
only people.
She trusted.
She was somebody who was not, did
not work for the court system or
CPS.
That was like an outside entity that
I could like tell everything
to about what had
happened and what's going on and
like just like literally
anything and like she was able
to like help me in
ways that nobody else could.
Beyond those specific
program's funding cuts could mean
just less help can be offered.
Everything from emergency support to
ongoing care.
Makani Kalk not only benefited from
the SAFE Alliance, but she is now a
peer support specialist.
She gets to help others heal the
same way she did.
And it was peer support that really
started to heal my heart and
my spirit.
And I think at the heart of peer
support, it's about connecting with
people that have been there and that
are going through and living through
the same situations.
And so we are mutually
vulnerable in a lot of ways.
SAFE CEO Pierre Berestine says
he's still working to find the money
needed to keep those programs
running. He's met with city and
state leaders and now local
hospitals.
It's not on the city alone to figure
out. It's none of the county alone
to figure out, right?
This is why we are in active
conversations with the hospitals
right now to ensure that these
services stabilize because we
prevent folks from
coming inappropriately
to the emergency room.
Austin City officials and the
hospital systems have been working
with SAFE to find a path forward.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson says he is
optimistic about finding a solution
to keep all four programs running.
I'm Luz Moreno Lozano in
Austin.
For years, the coffee shop and
eatery Cenote occupied what many
considered to be an iconic Austin
structure built in the late 1800s.
Over the years, owners made efforts
to preserve the historic site while
also maintaining their business, and
when they vacated the property,
they did so with assurances that the
next tenant would have the same
viewpoint and preserve the building,
and so did the city of Austin.
But with nearly all of the property
now bulldozed over, with just
one wall left many
austenites are left wondering what
happened.
For more, we're speaking with Sam
Stark, government reporter at Austin
Current. Great to have you back,
Sam. Yeah, thanks for having me.
So walk us through the story a
little bit. Who first noticed that
something was wrong when they looked
at this plot of land after
construction at?
Started already.
Yeah, so it was actually the former
Cenote owner who is
now operating her cafe out of
a restaurant just a couple of
blocks away from the original site.
But she saw that the
building was reduced to essentially
just one wall, the facade
of the historic building.
She knew the developers who were
moving in after she vacated.
It was a South Texas developer.
Who purchased it, planning to bring
a Southern California-based chain,
Earth Cafe.
They applied for a permit
saying at the time they would quote,
or the quote, intent would be to
preserve as much as possible of
the shell, but that's clearly
not what ended up happening.
Yeah, seeing that one wall just
there was pretty jarring.
What were the original work
parameters that the city gave to the
new tenants?
The city told them, or
they were okay with their
plans to essentially renovate
and reconstruct a lot of the
facade, but as soon as they saw how
much they demolished, they
issued a stop work order and which
still remains in effect this week.
Okay, well this destruction has
gotten a lot of people upset.
What is the reasoning behind that?
Is it because Austin is already
changing so much and here's one more
piece of Austin that's gone away?
Or is it more so a focus
on this iconic home that was in East
Austin?
Yeah, well, this this structure
specifically had people had
their eyes on that for being
preserved, it was on a list
of buildings with a high priority
of being preserved.
But especially on East Austin, where
a lot of historic and older
buildings have been demolished,
people are sensitive to when
something like this occurs.
But the developers actually had to
go back in front of the historic
landmark commission last week
and the historic Landmark
commissioners did not hide their
disappointment from the
developers.
What did you hear at that meeting?
So the developing team
told them that when their
intent was to preserve as much as
the building as possible,
but when they started demolishing
it, they realized that the damage
was far beyond what they
expected. And they had to demolish
what was there in order for
it not to collapse.
But the commissioners did not
necessarily buy this excuse.
They said if they were well versed
in preservation.
They would have recognized that
these are common issues one might
encounter when working with older
buildings.
They said instead of proceeding with
the demolition, they should have
consulted with a preservation expert
or with the commission for advice
if they were serious about
preserving the structure.
There is now a stop-work order on
this property. What does that mean
for the?
Future of the land?
So the developer actually will go in
front of the commission's
architectural review committee this
afternoon, or Wednesday afternoon,
to outline the proposed rebuilds.
Without official historic
designation though, the
commission power is limited to
giving advice, so after they present
their plans, it is expected
that they will be able to proceed
with building that new cafe.
Okay, there are certainly lots of
upset feelings around this story
and many people are calling for
consequences.
Is that likely to happen?
I mean, is it even possible for
consequences in this kind of matter?
Yeah, so one group with a vested
interest in this type of stuff is
Preservation Austin, and they were
very disappointed in
this process.
They told me that they think it's
time that we figure out a way
to make sure something like this
doesn't happen again, calling it
unacceptable.
Right now, however, there is no
indication of a new ordinance or
code to prevent this from happening
in the future.
But they said just getting the word
out about situations like this is
helpful.
Okay Sam, before we let you go, in
your role at Austin Current you also
work hand-in-hand with Austin PBS on
the show Austin Insight that airs
Thursdays at 7 p.m.
What are you working on this week?
Yeah, so my story is on the
cumbersome rollout of the new
short-term rental regulations.
On July 1st, all short-terms rentals
on sites like Airbnb and VRBO
will need to have a license listed,
but some of the short- term rental
operators I spoke to say the
convoluted process is likely to
make some operators miss the
deadline.
All right, that is on Austin Insight
that airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
We have been speaking with Sam
Stark, government reporter for
Austin Current, our partners in
covering the city of Austin.
Sam, it's always great to talk with
you. Great to be here.
We'll be back after a break.
This is Austin Signal, welcome back.
Model railroading has been a popular
hobby pretty much as
long as trains have been around.
Steven Jacobs has been fan for
about half a century now.
He spoke with Mike Lee about it for
the This Is My Thing podcast.
Going over the bridge, you're going
to turn the shift.
And this is something you've been
doing for decades.
My dad passed on a train set
to me when i was ten years old it
didn't take for him as a hobby but
it took for me every boy needs an
obsession at that age and i found a
good one least i think i thought
So what do you think it was about
that first train, when you
were 10 years old, that just kind of
grabbed your brain and made
you love it?
So I think it was that I
could create a
whole complicated world,
that I could really track work
such that it would move in
complicated ways and
could simulate what real trains do,
which move with purpose.
It was something I could always
go to and add in terms of
details, whether it was building or
painting cars,
learned about electricity, learned
about woodworking.
I learned a little bit about
metalworking, I could
create things.
So we are in our spare
room which I share with my wife and
what we have is it's about 11
by 14 is
a built over time a
shelf that holds the trains
halfway around the room so
what you're looking at is a
mythical might-have-been railroad
that would have run between
Austin and Taylor
northeast of here was
a big railroad town Taylor was and
that's where we started.
So we'll start over here.
When you were 10, how long did it
take between opening that box and
realizing you were a train guy?
It didn't take very long.
This is up in Northern Wisconsin.
We lived in a city called superior
on Lake superior.
And it's cold up there for 10
months of the year.
So guys are down in their basements
with their model railroads began
spending a lot of time at the hobby
shop by time was 14.
I was spending so much time there
that they hired me.
So
You're going to be there anyway.
I was going to be there anyway and I
did not take much money home, got
paid a buck and a quarter an hour
and didn't even take that home, but
I took a lot of product home, some
of which I've still got and still
put to use today.
And you'll hear...
And to see what looks to be possibly
a work in progress over here of a
boxcar.
We have a, yep, we have
a box car in progress, it's in the
paint booth.
You'll hear an
exhaust fan and a compressor,
we'll fire it up, do that quite
a bit here because one of the things
I really enjoy is...
I know that you can go into a hobby
store and buy little
buildings and things to put in
a train layout.
Do you buy some of yours or I know
you make some as well?
So, the part that really attracts
me, gives me energy,
is the creative part, you
know, this little myth I made up
about Austin and Taylor, that's one,
but the other is fashioning
something that didn't exist
before.
To be honest, I don't buy anything
without improving
it. Absolutely nothing is
as it would have come out of the
box.
Did you know that you needed
that sort of creative outlet or
did that just sort of come?
Good question.
So a lot of people
like things settled.
I'm not someone that
likes them settled and if they are
settled my instinct is
to unsettle
it.
I've always been of the mind that
things can be improved and
maybe it's because I was the
youngest of five and the job
description is you have to be the
rebel. The older ones are the rule
makers and you want to be the rule
reshapers.
You must come from a very wholesome
family if you're the family rebel,
and as a teenager you were working
at a hot shop and
building model trains.
Not a wild child, I admit.
There are plenty of ways to rebel.
Yeah, that's right. They don't have
to be destroyed.
That's right.
That was model railroading
enthusiast Steven Jacobs speaking
with Mike Lee for the This Is
My Thing podcast.
We're going to have a link in our
show notes so you can listen to the
full episode that is This
Is My Things.
Brackets for this year's men's and
women's NCAA basketball tournaments
wrapped up in the past couple of
days, but there is still one
competition looking to crown its
champion.
For more about that, we are talking
with the hosts of The Breaks, Fresh
Night and Confucius Jones.
Welcome back to the show, fellas.
Thanks for having me. Thanks.
Thanks for having us. I feel like a
regular.
You are becoming regulars very
quickly very quickly.
So let's talk about that
competition. I mentioned y'all been
playing that out over the last few
weeks on the breaks What is the
competition?
It is a
March Madness Final Four style
bracket of the Texas
rap anthems.
So songs that we or
most Texan rap
fans would deem an
anthem for the state of Texas once
you hear it.
64 just like the
64 Texas rap anthem
I think the initial list we had
we were probably closer to 64.
Okay. Okay, I think we
Initially had maybe 40
to 50 songs.
Okay But we whittled it down to
16 which it took a lot.
Okay? So who were some of those 16?
16 we started with were little
flips. I can do that June 27th
by DJ screw
25 lighters 25 light years
DJ DMD most hit it
down by zero, which I am surprised
Okay, I was definitely gonna ask
y'all about about upsets
in the tournament, but were there
any Austin are there any, Austin
Texas rap anthems
Fortunately, there were
not.
It was very Houston heavy, because
I just think Houston is the
purveyor and steward of the culture
here in Texas, so most
of the songs that you would know off
the top of your head come from
Houston.
Okay, so you mentioned a song
that you didn't anticipate was
going to be knocked out.
What were the biggest upsets?
Most of the time, definitely.
I've been in parties before.
Fresh has been in a party where that
song comes on and everybody knows
the words to it.
I thought it would at least make the
final four, it didn't.
I thought maybe 25 lighters would
make it to the last two and
it didn't so that
was my two upsets.
I might have to think about it.
My biggest upset would be Mo City
Dawn, much like Confucius.
Like he said, we've both been in
functions where the song comes
on, and even before people
play the verse
from Zero, they ask you, like, if
you're not from Texas...
If you don't know this song, then
you're not from Texas.
I need to hear y'all say it." And
then the whole crowd will know
the song word for word.
And most people would probably say,
if you asked them what the anthem
for Texas is, they would probably go
to zeroes most of the time.
But fortunately, it was knocked out
of the first round.
Okay, okay, and who's been voting
on-
Just anybody who visits the KU T.
KUTX.org.
It's available for you to vote at
KUTx.org, so
shout out to the fans for going and
voting, man.
There's some upsets right like yes,
that's why you play the games were
you to say?
Were you gonna say something, Fishus?
No, I was gonna say, I thought
Riding Dirt by Comedian would go
further, too. That was a huge song,
but.
Okay, well you guys already
mentioned some big songs, so I'm
kind of nervous to figure out what
the Final Four are, where are we at
in the competition.
The final four are as
stands Mike Jones still tipping
featuring Slim Thug and Paul Wall
UGK with international players
anthem featuring outcasts
DJ DMD 25 lighters featuring
a little Kiki and fat pat and
Look Kiki solo with
Southside
Okay. Okay.
And you said that people can vote
over at kutx.org.
I was listening to your show on
Saturday and y'all were talking
about bootlegging albums, right?
Like songs that you heard way,
way, way before on a bootleg version
than you heard on the official CD
version. So of these 16 Texas
rap anthems, how many did you hear
on bootleg and how many you hear on
a CD that you purchased from a
store.
You know is it overwhelming on one
side to the other I see the list
again But if I had to put a
percentage on it probably 90% of
those songs. I heard
I was about to say the majority of
those songs I probably heard like
somebody downloading it from Lime
War and putting it on a burnt CD
first before officially
hearing it.
They spoon like Houston music really
heavily down here, too.
So I didn't get an actual real like
switch out CD for years
I don't think I've ever had a real
official Swisher house.
I didn't know where to get them at.
Every place I went to had the
bootlegs.
Okay, well that was part of what
y'all talked about on Saturday.
You also talked a little bit about
Jay Cole's recent publicity tour
that he's been going on.
You can hear the breaks every
Saturday from 10 to 1 a.m.
On KUTX and wherever you get your
podcasts. What are you all talking
about this weekend?
We're talking about this Gucci Mane
and Pooch Icedee altercation.
And we also have an interview
with Tiana Major-Nine,
an R&B artist from London who has
worked with Babyface, been Grammy
nominated, and is trying
to build up her profile here in the
States. Very cool, well
You know, it's not often that the
what happens on the brakes overlaps
with what happens in the KUT
newsroom But somebody asked last
weekend. Does anybody know who Gucci
Mane is? So like now I'm actually
Well, we'll have to bring you into
the conversation but check that out
again Saturday nights from 10 to
1 a.m And wherever you get the
podcast wherever you'd get
your podcast. We've been chatting
with Confucius Jones and fresh night
They are the hosts of the brakes.
Thanks guys. Thanks for being
regulars. Thanks
And thank you for spending the
Thursday afternoon here with us
on Austin Signal.
I'm your host, Jerry Quijano.
We will be back with you tomorrow.
Have a great day. Be safe out there.