Austin cleans more than 300 tons of debris from homeless camps
City of Austin homeless camp cleanups
In May, Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations launched a new plan to clear homeless encampments.
AUSTIN, Texas - In May, Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations launched a new plan to clear homeless encampments.
What they're saying:
A city memo says from mid-May to the beginning of June, Homeless Encampment Management teams visited 127 camps and removed 303 tons of debris.
David Gray, director of Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations, says they wanted to have a consistent, coordinated process for cleanups.
"One of the challenges that we identified is that residents will call 311, the city will go out and clean an encampment. It would stay clean for a day or two, and then people would reappear. From a resident's perspective, it looked like the city was really doing nothing," he said.
When the plan was announced, homeless advocacy groups pushed back, saying there needs to be more coordination with service providers.
Austin's new homeless strategy plan includes encampment cleanups 5 days a week
The City of Austin will soon launch an updated process for clearing homeless encampments.
Gray says the process is done with compassion. There will always be outreach to people in a camp before a clean-up happens.
Data shows 35 people were connected to shelter. Gray says there was capacity for all of them. Nine people accepted other non-shelter support services. Forty-four did not accept shelter.
Five camping citations and four criminal trespass notices were issued. There were no arrests.
Cleanups are driven by 311 requests, of which there were 852. That includes duplicates for the same camps. The memo says the average time from a 311 request to site assessment is 4.9 days.
The memo says 28 percent of camps have people come back.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Austin's homeless strategy plan update
The City of Austin will launch an updated process for clearing homeless camps. But homeless advocacy groups are worried there aren't enough services and shelters to accommodate those pushed out of the camps.
"When we launched his new initiative, we launched it with the goal of revisiting encampments to try to keep areas clear. For the large part, we're seeing that about three-fourths of the encampments that we've addressed through this initiative have remained clear. There's about 28% that haven't," Gray said.
There is no estimate on how much the cleanup efforts cost yet. That will be in a future update.
"Every department that participates in the initiative is using money from their operating budget to make this happen, and a lot of those dollars tie back to different parts of the city budget. It's really important that we give the residents an accurate accounting of how much money is being spent on this initiative ," Gray said.
A dashboard is still in the works, so people can see where cleanups are happening. The cleanup initiative is still ongoing.
Dig deeper:
In April, FOX 7 did a story about residents who were concerned about a massive homeless encampment under the bridge at St. Elmo and Vinson.
The city told us then that the clearing of items near the bridge abutment is handled by the city, and the train operator maintains the area by the railroad track.
South Austin residents frustrated by large homeless encampment
Residents in a South Austin neighborhood are frustrated with homeless encampments that keep popping back up, even after they're cleared. They want the city to do more to address the issue.
When FOX 7 went back out on July 8, there were fewer items near the bridge abutment than in April, but there was still some trash, personal belongings, and at least one person sleeping under the bridge.
The area right by the railroad track is still full of trash.
The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin's Angela Shen