Austin News

Austin has a well-deserved reputation for being a bit "weird," but allowing hundreds of homeless people to camp in the city was a step too far for many city residents.

On May 1, Austin voters approved Proposition B, which made sitting, laying or camping on public property a Class-C misdemeanor. The ballot measure, which also placed tighter restrictions on panhandling, passed 90,428 to 66,292, or 57.7% to 42.3%.

Texas Public Policy Foundation Chief Executive Officer Kevin Roberts moderated a discussion on the camping ban and other quality of life issues in American cities on Monday with Austin City Council Member Mackenzie Kelly and Matt Mackowiak, the co-founder of Save Austin Now.

Kevin Roberts | Texas Public Policy Foundation

Roberts said when he moved to Austin 22 years ago, “it certainly was a left-of-center town” but there was a lighter spirit to it, encapsulated in the motto “Keep Austin Weird.” But he said it’s clear matters have gone too far, driven by what he called “exceedingly ideological and partisan activity” by the Austin City Council.

“We like the fact up to a point that there's some weirdness here, but it's gotten a little strange, too strange over the last few years,” Roberts said. “Here we are, nine blocks north of one of the most beautiful urban riverfronts in America. If you've not been to downtown Austin, you need to visit. But you could walk down Congress Avenue from the state capitol down to Town Lake. You could walk or run on the wonderful trails that surround the lake. And what you would see would be dozens, if not hundreds of tents put up on public lands, some private property as well.”

That’s why Austin voters reinstated the camping ban. Kelly said Mackowiak and Cleo Patristic deserve the lion’s share of the credit, while she served to help spread the word.

She said her entrance into public life — she was elected to represent District 6 in the northwest section of the city in a Dec. 15 runoff — has been eye-opening.

“City Council is pretty interesting. I went in there thinking it was going to be me versus them. And thankfully, that's not been the case,” Kelly said. “I went in with an approach of collaborating with my colleagues on the council dais and trying to find some commonality with that. I have been an outspoken advocate for both public safety and about the homelessness issue. And along the way, I've learned quite a bit about what got us to where we are.”

She said the council, the city manager and city staff all played a role in helping this crisis develop. Now, she said, in large part because Proposition B passed, problems with homelessness and housing will be addressed and, hopefully, corrected.

Kelly said she wonders why the city is slow-walking enforcement of the camping ban, instead starting off with an educational program.

She said the city will create designated camping spots, talk with homeless people and, as a last-part resort, issue citations.

Mackowiak said the election sent a clear message to Austin officials.

“We believed from the beginning that this city is headed in a direction that a majority of the citizens don't want,” he said. “And fundamentally, the opportunity for the average citizen to make their voice heard has not been there. And I have to give Mackenzie credit, a mutual admiration society here but, Mackenzie is one of the rare members of the City Council ... that actually listens to her constituents, that makes an effort, that goes out and meets with the police, that wants to hear from people that post on Facebook groups asking for feedback about what you want to see in the next police commissioner.”

Mackowiak said in the past, it was difficult for him to even make a statement at council meetings. At times, he had to wait 13 hours to offer three minutes of testimony. That is why Save Austin Now was formed, Mackowiak said.

“This is not about ideology. It's certainly not about partisan politics,” he said. “There are no partisan races at the state level. You don't run as a Republican or a Democrat. There's no primary. These races at the local level are nonpartisan and the issues really are nonpartisan. MacKenzie’s brought that kind of spirit, I think, to the council. You know, it's not that she's partisan. It's the hard-left members of the council that are very partisan. They tried to make this R vs. D, they failed and they failed because ultimately a majority of the city realized this policy was a disaster.”

Roberts said the Texas Public Policy Foundation wants to work toward ending homelessness by putting people rather than housing first.

“As an example, housing first sounds great,” he said. “We all want houses, but what the city has done, and they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars doing this, is just to find housing for homeless people and just leave them. They're not addressing any of the upstream social, emotional, mental issues. I say that with the greatest charity, that are besetting these people, thousands of people in Austin.”

Roberts said third-party entities can partner with the city to reduce the number of homeless people. Alan Graham’s faith-based ministry has made a significant impact, he said.

Mackowiak said some people accuse him of wanting to throw people into jail. In fact, he claims to want to keep people out of police custody, and the city’s ban on public camping, in effect for 23 years, was doing just that, with 93% compliance when people were asked to move on.

“Those people aren't being thrown in jail. They were being cited,” he said. “If they're not able to pay a citation, yes, jail has to be an option. If we don't enforce laws, we might as well not even have laws. We can all live in Mad Max Thunderdome and hope we'll survive. I don't think that's a system we all want. And I do want to be part of the solution, but I'm not going to do is use my time, my energy, our resources, our donors, our volunteers to support things that don't work.”

Mackowiak said the homeless population has risen from 2,500 to 5,000, although some estimates put that as high as 10,000. 

Other cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Honolulu have tried to deal with a growth in the homeless population through various means that haven’t worked. But some promising ideas and efforts are underway in Austin, Mackowiak said.

“Haven for Hope in San Antonio, which is not perfect, but it is a good model. It is a centralized, regulated campground that the city and associated nonprofit run itself. It’s self-enclosed and has police on site,” he said. “It has services like electricity and toilets and water and showers. It has job training on site. It has a mental health treatment, drug and alcohol abuse treatment. That's a model that we need to help the city with.”

Mackowiak said tiny homes and micro-homes can and do work. Community First! Village, a program of Mobile Loaves & Fishes. offers affordable, permanent housing. It has announced a plan to create 1,400 small homes for displaced people, which he said is the most effective program in the nation.

“Now, these people who go there sign a contract, they pay rent in some cases not very much, but everyone pays rent,” he said. “They live by rules and they live by the laws that apply on that property. Now they're going to, I think, triple the number of structures they have on site over the next two to three years because of private support. Unfortunately, the city doesn't really provide private support. They don't like a faith-based mission.”

A state campground in southeast Austin known as “Camp Esperanza" is operated by the Other Ones Foundation, opened in 2019. A second, called “Camp R.A.T.T.” is run by ATX Helps.

Mackowiak said the growth in the homeless population is a symptom of deeper issues.

“If Alan Graham was here right now, he’d tell you, homelessness is not a problem of money, it's not anything else, it's a problem of community,” he said. “It's a problem where an individual gets to the very end of their rope. They have no one else in their life that's going to help them. Think about what you would do, any of you out there. What would you do to not be homeless? Who would you not call? What couch of your friends would you not sleep on to prevent yourself from taking that step? Right?

“It's almost unimaginable. But for these individuals, it's become very real and it's because they don't have community. And, so, we look at Community First Village. They've created a tremendous facility where everyone has to work here to work on-site, work off-site. Everyone has to work. So, this to me, we want to be part of solution with these kind of models.”

He said the city has invested $161 million on the problem in the last two years with dismal results. It plans to spend $500 million over the next three years, but no permanent housing has been created, and the problem has only grown worse.

“That math doesn't make sense,” he said. “And they're going to double down on strategies that we know don't work and not invest the strategies that we know do work. That bothers me. And we're going to spend some time focusing on that and using our platforms to raise these questions.”

Kelly said she has requested an audit on how much the city spends on homelessness and was pleased when a Democratic council member agreed to co-sponsor her proposal.

Mackowiak said he became involved in this issue on July 17, 2019, two and a half weeks after a new camping policy took effect. He launched an online petition that collected 10,000 signatures within a week and 25,000 in a month.

“And I started to personally feel a responsibility to the army of people that did sign our petition,” he said. “So, we started advocating, we got changes in September, didn't go far enough, made clear that we had a petition effort. We did two petition efforts to get on the ballot. So, I do believe we're going to look back two years from now and May 1, 2021, is going to be a watershed moment in our city. And that's because this is not the only issue where the council is on the 20% side of an issue.”

He predicted a statewide camping ban will pass in the Texas Legislature and become law.

“That’ll be a very good step. I didn't start this so that we can make Austin safer and make all the surrounding areas less safe,” he said. “That's not my goal. My goal is to make the entire area, the region of central Texas, safer. But so, these petition drives are difficult. They're arduous. We are getting better at them."