Who is Chris Harris, the Person Behind Austin’s Destructive Defunded Police & Open Camping Policies?
Harris was ‘appointed’ Austin’s “Public Safety Commissioner” by a city councillor, and has since proceeded to dismantle public safety. He is behind “open camping” for Austin and “defund the police”. His DSA group (Democratic Socialists of America) works hard to push Austin politicians to take extreme stances that alienate Austinites such as radical open camping and cutting the number of police officers that we have. The majority of Austinites are moderate. A very slim number are DSA-affiliated - about 6,000 out of our population of 1.3 million - yet Harris is driving the agenda in the background.
His defunding of the Austin police and resultant reduction in the number of officers we have even as our population balloons have directly led to death and killing. The murder rate in Austin increased by 143% in the last several years. Defunding and shrinking the people who solve murders and prevent murders is killing Austinites, and Chris is the chief defender of the policies.
And on camping, the result, as we know, has been an unmitigated public health and safety disaster for our beautiful city. Upon completely deregulating “camping” in our public parks, trails, sidewalks, and other sacred areas of Austin, Chris Harris oversaw a 20% drop in the homeless population living in our shelters - in other words, people left shelters when the streets became unregulated. This led to the disaster that we’re seeing today - both for Austinites and the homeless - and Harris is doubling down. He won’t admit failure. Now, he’s trying to keep camping by leading the campaign to vote “No” on Proposition B.
Chris Harris Favors Narrow Ideological Activism Over Data-Driven Policy
His camping idea, which 78% of Austinites disagree with, was to try to build support to make housing a “permanent human right” by making homelessness “more visible”. The result, as we know, has been an unmitigated public health and safety disaster for our beautiful city. Upon completely deregulating “camping” in our public parks, trails, sidewalks, and other sacred areas of Austin, Chris oversaw a 20% drop in the homeless population living in our shelters - in other words, people left shelters when the streets became unregulated.
Chris Harris’s Camping Deregulation is An Environmental Disaster
The environmental impact of deregulated homeless encampments has been devastating. Those impacts include erosion, destruction of native vegetation, debris accumulation, water quality issues, habitat destruction, public health issues (including hypodermic needles and possibly E. coli fecal coliform bacterial contamination of the creek and its tributaries), and discouragement of public use of parks and green spaces. Chris Harris doesn’t care.
Chris Harris Continues to Peddle Falsehoods About Camping
Chris Harris has seen our homeless population balloon along with crime and trash, and whenever challenged he says the same few things. One of them is that homelessness is just “more visible” since his deregulation, but both the data and many stories indicate otherwise. We know our lax approach to homelessness has created a magnet for people all over Texas and in fact the country.
The sister of Edward Macintosh, a homeless man who attacked a woman on 6th Street unprovoked, spoke out to CBS Austin. She said that her brother moved to Austin from a group home once the ordinance was lifted.
“In addition to reconsidering the city's homeless ordinance, she says her hope is that city will look at more resources for the mentally ill and those who struggle with addiction. "There's more people like Edward who have chosen to leave their homes because now they can," said Janet. "And with that, there are going to be more Ms. Karli's. There is going to be more victims."
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This Isn’t the Austin We Love.
We could go on and on, but you get the picture.
Chris Harris is the Architect Behind “Open Camping” for Austin.
Here are some of his snake oil arguments against Prop B, which will restore our laws.
Austin’s Chris Harris and the radical fringe movement that is seeking to maintain the status quo - a situation where Austinites, by a wide margin, have said they feel unsafe walking their trails and parks and ashamed of their city - is indeed just that - a radical fringe.
Harris’s messaging is simplistic and doesn’t go much deeper than just that - messaging. Here’s what the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and Chris, which is leading the movement to maintain the current status quo, are saying, including in a text message to Austinites:
Save Austin Now is not trying to “criminalize homelessness”. In fact, aside from the semantic power of that tagline on an advertisement, it’s not actually possible, if you think about it, to make a crime of something like not having a home. They are trying to convince Austinites that if we restore our 2019 laws that removed all restrictions on camping in public thoroughfares, on our trails, and in our beloved parks, we’re “heartless”. Nothing could be further from the truth, and in fact, they’re being dishonest. Their policies have led to more people leaving shelters and living on the streets than any other policy the city has implemented in decades.
They say that we all “deserve” to “see” the homelessness around us rather than “hiding” it so that we will “do something about it”.
This arrogant response assumes two things.
First of all, it assumes who “we” are who “deserve” our public thoroughfares, trails, and parks denigrated and our crime rate skyrocketing. Is it “we” who have shared hundreds of personal stores and videos here about home break-ins by groups of people, sexual assaults on our trails, or putting up with regular, day-by-day harassment while walking our sidewalks? Or is it “we” as in the Mayor and City Council, who have had 2 years and spent $163m taxpayer dollars - $163 from each of the 1 million Austinites and an estimated $32,000 per homeless individual - supposedly dedicated to housing the homeless, but have just 2 contentious “homeless hotels” to show for it. That’s why we’re demanding an audit of the city’s finances to see where that money went.
Second of all this claim assumes that laws don’t have consequences. It is based on the naive idea that by removing all laws related to an activity, you won’t impact how much of that activity you get. No, we’re setting up commonsense restrictions that we, as a society, agree are best for public health and public safety.
Chris Harris doesn't care about the homeless. How do we know that? He's done nothing to actually help them. He wants to say “go live on the 7th street bridge in a tent, good luck".