The Gus Garcia Recreation Center might be Christina Ralson’s favorite place in Austin. Here things were so serene she could sit back and enjoy nature.
\n“It got so peaceful at night, and so quiet, literally all you’d hear are the birds,” Ralson says. “I’m gonna miss it.”
\nRalson is one of scores of people impacted by recent homeless encampment sweeps across the city. Major camp removal efforts have been taking place across Austin for almost a month. City officials say this is necessary to comply with state law and help people get into housing, but advocates say these sweeps are just pushing people into an underfunded system that doesn’t have enough space. Caught in the middle are some of Rundberg’s most vulnerable residents.
\n“Being homeless, it's not safe. It's really not,” Ralson says. “And having a safe place like this, it was great. And then the city goes and just takes it out from under us.”
\nThere are currently about six thousand people experiencing homelessness in Travis County. 125 people were counted in District 4 during last year’s Point In Time Count. But that number is most likely higher.
\nCity leaders have been trying to tackle homelessness in Austin for years, but this cleanup initiative is new. David Gray is the director of the city’s Homeless Strategies and Operations office, and he says the new initiative has two specific goals.
\n“First, it was to bring a consistent process to how we do homeless encampment cleanups around the community,” Gray says. “The second was to put more dedicated resources to the outreach and the cleanup process.”
\nGray says the city received hundreds of 311 calls about homeless camps, and that previous staffing levels have been inadequate to meet that demand. Under this updated Homeless Encampment Management model, HSO staff will partner with Austin Resource Recovery, Austin Police Department, and other city divisions to create six teams working throughout the week. Three are assigned to specific geographic areas of town. Individual teams are assigned to waterways, highway infrastructure and post-cleanup abatement.
\n“With the new staffing, we'll have a much better chance of being able to keep up with the pace of calls,” Gray says.
\nDuring a City Council meeting on May 5, Gray outlined how the new encampment management models would work. First, the camp is identified by city officials. Then HSO staff and outreach specialists are supposed to go to the camp and offer to connect people with resources. After that, the Austin Police Department comes to the camp and posts a notice that the area is going to be cleared, usually after three days. Finally teams of APD officers and Austin Resource Recovery workers go to the camp, and start loading items into trucks.
\nGray has said the goal of the camp sweeps is to connect people with resources. But advocates have pointed out that those resources are dwindling.
\n“In our community, we have one bed for every six people experiencing homelessness,” says Mark Hilbelink, executive director at the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center. “Even if we want to … offer everyone shelter, we really just math-wise don't have the ability to do that.”
\nGray says they have other resources they can offer unhoused individuals that don’t include shelter, like connecting them with family members or offering one-time investments to get into housing. But budget crunches could impact those services in the future.
\n“You've got some double whammy situations going on right now,” Hilbelink says. “Homeless services were extra-invested in for several years under ARPA coming out of Covid. And so a lot of that money is starting to roll off. And in addition to that, the city budgets, have had to be cut.”
\nARPA stands for the American Rescue Plan Act. It was a COVID stimulus package passed in 2021. And a lot of cities used that money for housing. Austin in particular allocated about $96 million dollars for different homelessness initiatives. But those were one-time funds that have to be used by the end of 2026. Meanwhile, Austin is facing budget constraints due to falling tax revenue. And last year voters rejected a tax rate election that would have sent money to homelessness services. Now council members are working on the new budget, and they’re eyeing $17 million in cuts to social service programs.
\n“It's a little too soon to know exactly what the impacts of these different funding shifts will be,” Gray says. “I feel really optimistic, though.”
\nBut organizations like Sunrise are already preparing for fewer contracts with the city and less funding.
\n“I think for all major providers, including Sunrise, there are programs that we have that we already know are going to be cut in the next fiscal year,” says Hilbelink.
\nGray has said that a single camp cleanup can cost roughly $150,000. Some advocates say they are too costly and don’t help people out of homelessness.
\n“We're spending a lot of money on something that's just pushing people to different areas of town,” says Eli Cortez. Cortez is a community organizer with Vocal TX, an organization that has been pushing back against the camp sweeps. Team members have filmed some of the sweeps, including the one at the Gus Garcia Rec Center. He says they have seen individuals scrambling to fit all of their most important possessions into just two backpacks.
\n“Folks are losing IDs, documentation, Social Security cards, MAP cards,” Cortez says. “It's been a very discouraging approach that isn't giving us really any results to reduce the number of people that are living outside right now.”
\nSome individuals like Ralson received something during the sweeps: a ticket for public camping.
\n“Right after they gave us the heads-up, they came three days later and wrote everybody tickets that they ran into,” Ralson says. “Now I got to worry about paying the fine. So it's more trouble on top of trouble on top of trouble.”
\nIn 2021, the state of Texas passed a law that banned camping in public spaces. It was passed just after Austin voters approved Prop B, which banned sleeping or lying in public spaces. Now camping in public spaces is a Class C Misdemeanor, and can carry a fine of up to $500. Gray stated during his City Council presentation that APD officers would not be there to give out citations, though they may be given out through the course of their duties.
\n“It's not like a speeding ticket,” Gray says. “It's a referral to the community court where the person is directed to meet with the case manager and then start taking steps to resolve their homelessness.”
\nCamping violation fees are usually waived when people resolve them at the Downtown Austin Community Court. But getting there can be a challenge for people like Ralson. It takes roughly an hour to get from Rundberg to downtown. The Austin Police Department has issued more than 2,000 citations for camping in public spaces since 2021.
\nSome individuals say the sweeps have helped them start getting into housing. Ashley Rader and his partner Tracy have been camping in the Rundberg area for years. For most of that time, they’ve been waiting to get into housing. It wasn’t until sweeps hit their area that they were moved into the Northbridge facility.
\n“They put us on the list for rapid rehousing ten years ago, and it's been ten years, so that's not very rapid to me,” says Tracy.
\n“We're still on the list, but at least we got a foot in the door,” says Rader.
\nBoth say they hadn’t planned on being homeless, and Tracy expressed a wish that assistance had been offered before they had reached this point. But as funds dissipate for homeless outreach, there is also less money available to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. The City of Austin ended its rental assistance program in March. And a housing voucher program may be cut next year. At the federal level, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced they were winding down a Covid-era voucher plan roughly five years early. Advocates say they are preparing to see more families enter homelessness.
\n“As rental assistance goes down, as eviction prevention goes down, you're also going to see homelessness rise,” says Hilbelink.
\nCortez says increased cost of living will only exacerbate the problem.
\n“It's easy for people to forget that you can be like one paycheck away, one medical emergency, one family situation away from ending up being outside,” says Cortez.
\nThe city’s new homeless abatement plan calls for teams to continually check and clear old encampments. It's also adding more beds and continuing outreach efforts. And the HSO will present data from the new sweeps to the City Council at the end of June. But with limited space and funds, for the time being, there are a lot of people like Ralson who don’t know where they will go.
\n“I don’t know where I’m going,” Ralson says. “Just go find a piece of wood no one knows about. And hide, cause that’s all I’m allowed to do now. And here I felt like a human, like I was actually allowed to live.”
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