After a months-long campaign of smearing Austin’s homeless as violent and disease-ridden, Governor Greg Abbott announced Thursday he was designating 5 acres of state-owned land in southeast Austin as an authorized homeless encampment. The same day, with Abbott’s support, the Austin Chamber of Commerce and other business leaders announced they were fundraising for a 300-bed “mega-tent” shelter to be built at an undetermined location. The decisions, which were made public three days after the state began clearing the homeless from the capital city’s highway underpasses, were made with virtually no coordination with the city’s existing homeless service providers.
“There’s not been collaboration with the local homeless crisis response system, and that’s counterproductive,” said Eric Samuels, president of the Texas Homeless Network. He hopes such unilateral moves won’t become a trend. “It’s not something that we want to see happening around the state in the future,” he said.
Advocates aren’t opposed to the camping site or the tent shelter per se, but they’re wary of the governor and chamber’s approach. Austin, like other cities around the country, has been trying to move toward a “housing first” model, which aims to move the homeless into permanent housing as fast as possible. The city passed a $250 million affordable housing bond last year, and more than 500 homeless Austinites have been housed since August, according to the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO), the federally-designated lead agency addressing homelessness in the city.
