{"id":6037,"date":"2016-06-27T14:42:37","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T20:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.parkrag.com\/?p=6037"},"modified":"2016-06-27T14:42:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T20:42:37","slug":"transit-center-or-transient-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/27\/transit-center-or-transient-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Transit Center or Transient Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you frequent Kimball Junction, you may have noticed an increase in the number of\u00a0panhandlers. Particularly interesting is the mom that sits on the way out of Smith&#8217;s parking lot with her three kids. Perhaps it&#8217;s just the summer, but it also seems the number of hitchhikers is up too.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a different feel to what&#8217;s going on in KJ, this year.<\/p>\n<p>I may be callous, but ever since I witnessed how the business of begging is done in Salt Lake, I don&#8217;t have as much compassion as perhaps I should. You can make a fine living by panhandling. I just don&#8217;t choose to participate in funding those &#8220;entrepreneurs&#8221; &#8230;\u00a0but many do.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, when you go by Pioneer Park in SLC, it is different. It&#8217;s not a job, it&#8217;s an unfortunate way of life. Pioneer Park is a hub of the downtrodden. It&#8217;s a little scary and\u00a0sad. When I drive by I am reminded of how lucky I am. Many of the folks hanging out<a href=\"http:\/\/www.good4utah.com\/contact\/don-hudson\/pioneer-park-homeless-salt-lake-city-don-hudson'\"> have no other place to go, are drug abusers, are homeless, and have a myriad of problems<\/a>. It&#8217;s not a great place.<\/p>\n<p>Ever since construction began on the Transit Center in Kimball Junction, I\u00a0can&#8217;t help wonder if it may be our version of Pioneer Park. It will offer a &#8220;great&#8221;\u00a0location, one that is\u00a0close to\u00a0I-80, nice covered benches, and an indoor\u00a0facility that will be nice during those cold weather months.<\/p>\n<p>This facility is the first of its kind in KJ. As a car driver\u00a0and E-Bike enthusiast, I hope it encourages thousands of people to ride buses, so the roads are wide-open for me. However, what I really wonder is whether it will encourage an entire different type\u00a0of people that weren&#8217;t contemplated when the transit center was planned.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.parkrag.com\/transit-center-or-transient-center\/homeless\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6038\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6038\" src=\"http:\/\/www.parkrag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/homeless.jpg\" alt=\"homeless\" width=\"1024\" height=\"678\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you frequent Kimball Junction, you may have noticed an increase in the number of\u00a0panhandlers. Particularly interesting is the mom that sits on the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}