By Austin Current
On a January afternoon, Tony Carter returned from work to a South Austin encampment he had called home for six months, only to find much of his and his friend’s belongings gone.
“I was devastated,” Carter, 66, recalled. “Even though it was a tent, it’s still a house … That was my house. They took my house.”
Carter had an apartment for a year, but despite working two jobs, he said he was evicted after he couldn’t make rent. He’s been unhoused since, now sleeping under a bridge in Southwest Austin, and has been on a waitlist for city affordable housing since February.
“If you’re going to come in and sweep us, move us into something that y’all got already up and going,” Carter said. “We still have to pay taxes … Just to come in and just knock us out like that. That ain’t right.”
Austin voters reinstated a ban on public encampments in 2021, but the sites remain widespread throughout densely wooded areas or under bridges across the city. Homeless officials report they field hundreds of 311 calls related to the encampments each month. Now, as pressure to enforce the ban continues, the Homeless Strategy Office is advancing a new plan to expand encampment abatements, even as the city acknowledges it lacks enough shelter for those displaced.
It’s a complex issue facing major Texas cities, each responding differently and under different constraints. In Dallas, officials recently reported a surge in 311 complaints tied to encampments, while the city has comparatively fewer funding limits when it comes to creating housing for people displaced from those sites. In Houston, a city often cited for its homelessness response, its City Council approved an ordinance effectively banning homeless people from downtown sidewalks, a change that has led to more frequent citations for unhoused people, according to Houston Public Media.
A plan to expand enforcement without enough housing
Austin advocates and people experiencing homelessness argue the city lacks viable alternatives if encampments are eliminated. Citing funding constraints, city leaders acknowledge there aren’t enough shelters or temporary housing for everyone living unsheltered, raising persistent questions about where unhoused people are supposed to go.
“I think this is going to be the new normal. They’re planning to sweep people who have nowhere to go. The shelters are full,” said Cate Graziani, co-director of Vocal Texas, an advocacy group for people experiencing homelessness. “It feels like [HSO is] prioritizing planning for sweeps and not for housing, and we know that the best way to get people off the streets is through housing and health care services.”
According to a document obtained by Austin Current, the Homeless Strategy Office plans to establish full-time encampment abatement teams, with 42 city staff members across six teams. Three would respond to encampments in North, South and Central Austin, while others would focus on transportation corridors, waterways and encampment-related litter cleanup. The first five teams would include two Austin police officers, a move activists worry could increase citations and arrests of unhoused people.
Graziani is concerned that by including Austin Police Department officers, they will more often “issue tickets, do arrests,” she said.
Homeless Strategy Officer Director David Gray said APD officers must be included in these operations to ensure the safety of both cleanup teams and people living in the encampments.
“The second reason is that, if we go into an encampment and somebody is having a mental health crisis and they need to be transitioned to a mental health facility, by state law, [law enforcement] is the only entity that’s able to do a mental health evaluation followed by a mental health detention,” Gray said.
Funding constraints shape the city’s response
Gray said there are not enough shelter beds for everyone living unhoused in Austin. Had voters had approved Proposition Q, a tax rate hike on the November ballot, it would have generated more than $35 million to address affordability and homelessness.
“The citizens of Austin decided that that was not something that they wanted to invest in at the time,” Gray said. “Unfortunately, we’re not going to have a large net increase in new shelter beds by the time this operation begins.”
Gray said his office is still trying to expand options, including plans for a second housing navigation center and City Council’s recent allocation of state funding for more than 300 additional beds at the Esperanza Community.
“Prop Q failed, and that’s put the city in a position now where not only can we not fund an expansion, but we’re also at risk of maybe even having to cut some things,” Gray said. “Our office is trying to figure out how we navigate that while still upholding the voter-approved camping ban, but doing all this work with the spirit of getting people housed.”
Gray said HSO is trying to keep the cost of increased encampment cleanups low by reallocating existing staff to the new teams.
The plan is also not yet final. HSO will meet with city staff and community members in the coming weeks to gather feedback, and Gray is expected to present the plan to the Austin City Council at a work session in early May.
Another component of the plan is expanded staff training.
Carter said when city staff moved through his south Austin encampment, some important belongings, including his birth certificate, were lost or thrown away.
“They just start tearing up stuff and putting it in the dump truck,” Carter said. “When they take your identification, that’s hard to try to get back.”
Gray said staff are being trained to better handle people’s belongings, avoid discarding important documents and ensure sites are not cleared until outreach has been conducted.
“We want to make sure that we’re doing our part to do no harm,” Gray said. “That begins with training and preparation, making sure that we have experienced staff attached to each of these crews, so that they can also kind of monitor and make sure that people are doing the cleanups with fidelity.”
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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
