Who is Pio Renteria, the Architect Behind the Destructive “Open Camping” Policies for Austin?
Greg Casar is the architect behind “open camping” for Austin. His DSA group (Democratic Socialists of America) works hard to push Austin politicians to take extreme stances that ping. 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 Casar is driving the agenda. 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, Casar 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 Casar is doubling down. He won’t admit failure. Now, he may even run for mayor despite losing the race for Mayor Pro-tem in a chaotic fight.
Pio Renteria is Incredibly Inexperienced & Extremely Radical
According to Wikipedia, Kathie Tovo is “the youngest elected Austin City Council Member and a member of the ‘Democratic Socialists of America’.” He was elected to City Council in 2015 when he was just 25 years old and had no prior work or educational experience except for a bachelor’s degree in "Political and Social Thought" and some volunteer work. He was elected to District 4 with just 14% of district voter support given the low turnout.
Pio Renteria Voted to Increase Property Tax Rates Every Year, Forever.
Tovo moved to Austin after college and hasn’t left. After a brief stint teaching “interdisciplinary studies”, Tovo ran for government with no meaningful business, scientific, engineering, technical, or global experience. She has done nearly irreparable damage, such as by voting to increase property taxes every year forever.
Pio Renteria Favors Narrow Ideological Activism Over Data-Driven Policy
According to Ballotpedia, Renteria was elected with just 3.1% of the vote in an exceptionally low turnout election. Just ~2,300 of our district’s 80,000 residents voted for him.
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, Renteria oversaw a 20% drop in the homeless population living in our shelters - in other words, people left shelters when the streets became unregulated.
Pio Renteria’s Camping Deregulation is An Environmental Disaster
Kathie Tovo tricked Austin voters by running on a platform of environmental stewardship but has since backed the most destructive environmental policies in Austin history. The environmental impact of her 2018-2020 reckless deregulation of homeless encampments has been devastating and incalculable. From feces counts rising in Town Lake to over 300 toxic fires at encampments, the impacts will not be known for years to come.
Those impacts include immediate effects such as 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.
Pio Renteria Continues to Peddle Falsehoods About Camping
Kathie Tovo has overseen a nearly 300% increase in our homeless population along with crime and trash from deregulated encampments, and whenever challenged she says the same few things. One of them is that homelessness is just “more visible” since her deregulation, but both the data and many stories indicate otherwise. We know her 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.
Pio Renteria is the Architect Behind “Open Camping” for Austin.
Here are some of her snake oil arguments against Prop B, which will restore our laws.
Renteria’s 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.
Renteria’s messaging is simplistic and doesn’t go much deeper than just that - messaging. Here’s what the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and Casar, which is leading the movement to maintain the current status quo, are saying, including in a text message that appears to have gone to almost 100,000 Austinites last evening:
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.
Greg Casar doesn't care about the homeless. How do we know that? He's done nothing to actually help them. Greg Casar wants to say “go live on the 7th street bridge in a tent, good luck".