Homeless forced out in Austin
A woman named Harvest goes through her items before TxDOT workers arrive to clean out the area in Austin, where Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered homeless camps cleaned up.
AUSTIN — Many of those living under Texas 71 here had left by the time workers in neon vests and thick gloves arrived Monday afternoon to begin clearing debris and trash from the encampment.
As workers hired by the Texas Department of Transportation threw bags of abandoned belongings into dumpsters, William Rainey sat on the concrete. He surrounded himself with Walmart carts piled high with a tarp, blankets and a cooler and said he wouldn’t leave. Michelle Chauvin stood nearby, guarding a pile of things for friends who were at work.
“This is our home. We’ve built a sense of community,” she said. “They’re bullying us.”
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the intervention Monday, as he follows through on a threat to address Austin’s homelessness issue after months of sparring with city leaders over a policy that lets people camp in public.
The effect of the cleanup, however, remains to be seen, as the city already clears trash and debris from under highways using the same contractor as TxDOT. And the state can’t keep people from returning to the camps once the cleanup is complete, as some residents said Monday that they plan to do. Between the city and the state, however, the 17 major encampments could be cleaned up to five times a month.
Abbott has spent months posting on social media about crimes allegedly carried out by homeless people in Austin and pictures of unsafe conditions be
neath highway overpasses, claiming it as evidence of a crisis.
“Today the Texas Dept. of Transportation began cleaning under bridges in Austin. It’s a slow process and won’t be completed in one day, but steady progress is being made,” Abbott said Monday on Twitter, posting pictures of the work. “Our goal is to make Austin safer while also providing better alternatives for the homeless.”
Whether he’s succeeding in his effort to shame Democratic city leaders and show their policies are a threat to public health is another matter.
“If you take it from a satellite view, Abbott can be seen as promoting a policy that is essentially doing something about the homeless problem in a liberal city that has refused to act,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University’s Baker Institute
“This is our home. We’ve built a sense of community. They’re bullying us.”
Michelle Chauvin, at the homeless camp under Texas 71 in Austin
for Public Policy. “If you look at it in the details, he really isn’t doing all that much other than making the sites a little cleaner, but using TXDOT resources to do it.”
Advocates argue that homelessness isn’t worse in Austin but rather has become more visible since people have started camping in public places. The city loosened bans on camping, sitting or lying down on public sidewalks, and panhandling, with supporters saying it would stop criminalizing homelessness. Mayor Steve Adler’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Over the three months since the camping policy took effect in June, there had been an increase in reported crimes involving the homeless, Police Chief Brian Manley told the City Council last month. But the uptick in reported crimes in which people experiencing homelessness are victims or perpetrators involves a handful of cases over those reported in the same period last year.
A spokeswoman for the city’s health department said there haven’t been any changes in rates of communicable diseases among the homeless.
The state cleanup was set to begin early Monday. But crews didn’t start until the afternoon and cleared out trash at just one camp in South Austin, causing confusion among those in other camps who had packed up their belongings, only to sit around and wait.
At a homeless camp at U.S. 183 and Burnet in North Austin, Shawn, a 50year-old who declined to give his last name, said he sees the fight between Abbott and Adler as a power play.
“Unfortunately, you get a lot of hardworking individuals down the line that have to pay the price for it,” said Shawn, who was wheeling a cart of his belongings toward his job at a nearby convenience store. Though many at his encampment planned for a cleanup Monday, crews had not arrived by early afternoon. A sign on white poster board taped to a column of the overpass said “Mr. Abbott protect the homeless.”
“I am sure they really do want to clean it up,” Shawn said, “but not as much as they are putting it out there.”
Thousands of people experiencing homelessness live in Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. But Abbott is targeting Austin specifically. Beside ordering TxDOT to carry out weekly cleanups at 17 encampments, he has asked the city’s health department to submit detailed reports on infectious disease within the homeless population.
At the camp under Texas 71, one of the largest, Rainey said he does not blame the state for coming in. When winds are strong, as they have been lately, trash and lightweight items fly onto the roads. Rainey said it’s this, coupled with a few people who just can’t seem to keep their areas clean, that gives the camp a bad reputation and brings in the authorities to take care of the mess.
Rainey has a lingering hope that people will learn to keep their camps tidy. It can be hard to do this — he said the city doesn’t come by to pick up the trash that people leave in a designated spot at the camp. But maybe if they do, the state won’t be forced to come in anymore. He would appreciate that.
“We wouldn’t have this problem,” Rainey said. “I’m not mad at them. I’m mad at us.”