In previous articles I have said that Proposition B would not put an end to homelessness in Austin. It was not intended to do that. It was intended to protect the health and safety of people living in the high-density areas of downtown and the University of Texas, and force the Austin City Council to address the issue of homelessness, rather than perpetuate it. You would think that City Council Members would have understood the message. It was advertised everywhere.
On a Sunday morning news program one day after the election, Mayor Adler said, “If you talk to people on both sides of this proposition it was everybody’s highest priority to get people out of tents, everybody’s, on both sides. And I think that’s right”. OK, we are on the same page. Then one day later, Councilwoman Tovo authored a proposal to create city-authorized encampments. The City Council unanimously passed the proposal on May 6. While the City will probably need to help relocate the homeless population, there was no mention of what else needs to be done to end the crisis. So, people will still live in tents.
Then, also on May 6, the City built a homeless tent camp along the sidewalk in front of the City Hall Plaza. This encampment is in violation of the current city ordinance which prohibits camping on sidewalks as well as the Proposition B ordinance that takes effect May 11. It is a clear expression of contempt for the majority of Austin citizens who voted for Prop. B. If you think that was not intended, look at the signage displayed in the photo above.
If the Austin City Council simply intends to address Proposition B by moving the tent encampments, there is a simple solution. Move the encampments to the following parks:
- Tanglewood Neighborhood Park
- Walnut Creek Park
- Bull Creek District Park
- Dick Nichols District Park
- Cherry Creek Neighborhood Park
These parks are all larger than 10 acres, so there is plenty of room. Also, there is plenty of room at Emma Long and McKinney Falls. You could even convert nine holes at a couple of the municipal golf courses. Golfers do not need 18 holes to play golf.
The people who live in the neighborhoods near these parks, and who use these parks for family activities would never allow homeless encampments in these locations. So why have residents of the downtown area had to put up with encampments in our parks downtown? If the homeless are not a risk to health and safety, why not share our parks with them all over town?
Kathie Tovo’s proposal and the City Council’s approval to relocate tents would seem like an emergency response to an unexpected outcome in the May 1 election. It should not have been unexpected since the Save Austin Now PAC raised almost ten times the contributions during the pre-election campaign as the opposing PAC, Homes Not Handcuffs. Regardless of the election outcome, the mayor and others on the City Council had acknowledged during the past year that the Action Plan to End Homelessness adopted in 2018 has failed. Not really a surprise as it is an exact copy of failed programs in numerous cities, mostly in California. In addition, the City Manager report from July 2020, found that “the City, ECHO, and their partners can be more effective through stronger coordination, more purposeful investments, and data-driven and collaborative decision-making” (Investing for Results Report Release and P3 Homelessness Task Force Update, July 22, 2020). So, what was the plan if not to provide coordination, purposeful investment, data-driven and collaborative decision-making? City Auditor reports year after year have documented that despite massive funding, service providers have failed to meet about half of their contracted metrics, are not serving the highest-risk populations, provide uncoordinated and ineffective case management, and have not adequately determined the needs of the population they were contracted to serve (Homelessness Assistance Audit Series: Outcomes of City Efforts, February 2019).
The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition Amendment of 2009 created a single grant process for organizations to apply for federal funds to provide services and assistance to homeless individuals and families. The Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) applied to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2009 with the support of Austin and Travis County, and became the lead agency for the HUD Continuum of Care (COC) Program. ECHO created its first plan for ending homelessness in Austin and Travis County in 2010. It has been revised a number of times, clearly without success. City of Austin audits consistently show that ECHO has failed to meet objectives under the Austin/Travis County plans. It is not at all clear who pays for what. ECHO receives grant funding directly from HUD, and is also paid by the City of Austin. The City of Austin also receives federal grants. Money allocated to Austin from the 2020 CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act went to the homeless service providers and was used to purchase motels. Even the City of Austin Audit Department does not know how much money the City is spending on the homeless.
Clearly, the plans ECHO has created for the City of Austin over the past decade with the goal of ending homelessness have been an abject failure. I would assume that Austin and Travis County can ask HUD to revoke ECHO’s contract as the lead agency for the COC Program. It is time for the City of Austin to get a new partner who can create a new plan for ending homelessness. It is also time for the City of Austin to provide transparency in the spending for the homeless population. More in the next article on what the City of Austin should look for in a HUD COC partner.
In the meantime, the Austin City Council should enforce Proposition B as an ordinance lawfully created by the citizens of Austin.
Waterloo to Austin 
You say that a majority of Austin voters were in favor of Prop B, but in fact only 20% of the eligible voters even voted and only 12% of the total number of eligible voters approved Prop B. If the issue of criminalizing extreme poverty is to be determined by an election, it should be voted on by a much larger percentage of the City’s eligible voters to actually represent the desire of the citizens to implement this draconian proposition. This is a rerun of the election that banned ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft from our City. It is a classic case that highlights it is not the issue that decides elections, it is the decision to pick an election that will have a very low voter turnout where financial influence in advertising can polarize the ones who will vote since there is scant opposition organized to defend any alternative position. You are admitting that Prop B did not fix homelessness, so what was the goal?
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Robert, thanks for your comment on the article Homelessness in Downtown Austin Part 5. I supported and voted for Prop B to clean up downtown Austin and UT neighborhoods and make it safer for all of us who live in these two areas. Prop B does not criminalize homelessness. It does require the enforcement of restrictions on where people can camp permanently.
From a simple, objective point of view, it makes no sense to concentrate homeless people in downtown Austin or around UT. If you want to find affordable housing for the homeless population, you will not find it in these two areas. What you will find is access to drugs and the opportunity to commit property crime. We all agree that the homeless should not be living in tents. There are likely 3,000 to 5,000 people living in tents in Travis County. The City of Austin and ECHO have pursued housing people in tents for a decade, finding permanent housing for a few hundred while the homeless population has grown by thousands. It is time to address the root causes of chronic homelessness: mental illness, substance addiction, habitual criminal behavior, and physical disability. Perhaps Prop B will cause the City to change its focus.
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Robert, one more thing. Regarding your comment on the small turnout for the May 1, election and the fact that it may not be representative of all Austin Voters, perhaps you were not aware that the Save Austin Now PAC filed a petition to put the Proposition B ordinance on the ballot for the November election. That petition was not approved by the City Auditor, claiming that a sample of petitioners showed that there were not enough valid signatures. There is still a lawsuit pending agains the City on this decision. When the Auditor announced the refusal to validate the petition, I asked Kathie Tovo to propose a Council resolution to put the ordinance proposal on the November ballot. She refused.
Statements from Council Members indicated that they did not want the petition on the November ballot. Was this because they thought Save Austin Now would give up and not start a new petition? Or did they think that they could muster opposition to defeat the ordinance proposal in an off-cycle election with limited turnout? I think that they probably considered both to be preferable to having 70% of Austin voters vote on the ordinance in November.
In any case, I am quite sure that Save Austin Now and their supporters would have been happy to have a larger turnout for the election. 90% of Republicans voted for Prop B (a minority of voters in Austin), 70% of Independents, and 40% of Democrats. Without the Independent and Democratic voters, the measure would likely not have passed.
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