TX Observer: “Many gathered what they could and simply shuffled to a park across the street. They pitched their tents—a shred of privacy and shelter from the elements—and resumed surviving. Three months later, the cops and cleaning crews arrived again; the unhoused dutifully dispersed, some to a nearby strip of land between a railroad track and a poultry company, where they remained as of early March. Others fled to the shore of Lady Bird Lake, where they were cleared out in February.
This is daily life for more than 2,000 unsheltered individuals in Austin, a fast-growing tech hub where housing costs are suffocating the working class. A similar dynamic prevails in other major cities, but, for a time, things were different in Texas’ capital.
In mid-2019, Austin City Council rolled back its ordinances criminalizing camping, begging, and sitting or napping downtown—a rare move in a country that’s increasingly made homelessness illicit for 30 years. In response, unhoused Austinites emerged from hidden crannies of the city and pitched tents, largely in highway underpasses. Tickets, warrants, and arrests evaporated. But less than two years later, after a relentless campaign by the police union, local TV media, and right-wing politicos, Austin voters approved a ballot measure to restore the old anti-homeless policies.
Since last summer, the city’s cleared underpasses and road medians all over town. In response, campers have moved to parks, creek beds, and wooded areas—where the displacement now repeats. Criminal citations are increasing again, with more issued in the final three months of last year than all of 2020. Without adequate affordable housing or shelter space, Austin’s poorest scramble from area to area, searching out a place where they’re allowed to survive.“