Is the restoration of our commonsense laws regarding public “camping” and aggressive panhandling a “criminalization of homelessness”?
No.
AUSTIN, TX— 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.
Their messaging is simplistic and doesn’t go much deeper than just that - messaging. Here’s what the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), which is leading the movement to maintain the current status quo, is saying, including in a text message that appears to have gone to almost 100,000 Austinites last evening:
They’re claiming that Save Austin Now, the citizen group which collected 26,000 signatures to restore our commonsense laws, is a “Republican” group that is trying to “criminalize homelessness”. Neither claim passes the smell test.
Answer: Save Austin Now is a bipartisan group. Its board of directors, for example, is composed of 2 Democrats, 1 Republican, and 1 Independent.
Answer: 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. To elaborate on this point further, 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.
They say that we all “deserve” to “see” the homelessness around us rather than “hiding” it so that we will “do something about it”.
Answer: 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. If we have laws related to not allowing 12-year-olds to drive cars, are we “criminalizing driving”? No, we’re setting up commonsense restrictions that we, as a society, agree are best for public health and public safety. Public health and public safety are being dramatically harmed by the current situation. Does that naivety also assume that if we say anyone is allowed to camp/live in our beautiful city - in our public parks and along our thoroughfares, and that anyone is allowed to aggressively panhandle Austinites at stoplights and on our sidewalks, that those experiencing homelessness or who are homeless by choice, will not see Austin as a preferable place to live? Do those who make this claim really think that laws don’t have consequences and that the growth of our population of “campers” is simply because they’re now “visible”? The facts say otherwise, as does anecdotal evidence from a great number of Austinites such as a nurse who shared that “I worked at the Psych Emergency Room downtown, and many homeless came in. They reported that Austin is "the best place to live for the homeless" and has more "resources for them". I heard this story all the time - every day.”