Restoring the laws that we had for 23 years on where one can publicly camp is just the start.
Total deregulation isn’t working.
Crime is up - both against homeless residents and non-homeless residents - and Austinites have said the city doesn’t feel safe anymore. We don’t feel as safe using trails, parks, and sidewalks. Read hundreds of personal stories and videos here.
Sidewalk and Park Camping isn’t a “solution”. Here’s what is:
Designated Campgrounds.
Safe, secure areas where our homeless can access resources such as sanitation and be free from harm such as crime, traffic, and communicable disease.
More Housing.
Mayor Adler and Council Member Greg Casar have spearheaded a 2 year long effort to supposedly provide housing, but there’s literally nothing to show for it. Austinites are angry! We’ve allocated and spent $163 million, which is about $600 for every taxpaying Austin resident, or $32,000 per homeless resident, yet they only have 2 old motels to show for it. We need an immediate audit so we can determine what is going wrong and we can make sure we do this better than we are right now. If we don’t analyze, we won’t learn. Right now, this is just a slush fund.
Commonsense Rules.
We have laws to protect public health and public safety in hundreds of areas of our daily lives. Saying that we should have laws, as we did until 2019, specifying where one can pitch a tent, put a couch, or park a car, on our sidewalks, trails, parks, and other public jewels, is not, as the extremists are saying “criminalizing homelessness”. It’s just a commonsense public safety law. And laws have consequences. By removing all laws related to an activity, we impacted how much of it we got. We did have people move to take advantage of the lax laws, compounding our challenge. “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.”
