Austin's new homeless strategy plan includes encampment cleanups 5 days a week

AUSTIN, Texas - The City of Austin will soon launch an updated process for clearing homeless encampments.

Currently, if you place a 311 request, there's no specific process for homeless encampments. The city will be changing that so there is one, and they'll test that later this year.

The backstory:

Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations (HSO) will start doing homeless encampment management five days a week instead of three starting in mid-May.

There is a six-step process designed to clean up camps and connect people to help.

When sites pop up, a team will put them in order of priority, do outreach to the people in them, and give them a 72-hour notice of pending closure. If there's severe weather, they warn them about that, too. Then comes abatement and enforcement. HSO says if no outreach is done, they won't go forward with closing a camp.

What they're saying:

David Gray, director of Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations, says the current model doesn't allow for consistent follow-up. Currently, crews only cover one region at a time, and staffing is insufficient to cover the approximately 700 service requests a month.

He said in a presentation to City Council that there are currently only 45 open shelter beds, but more are coming. He says they're committed to expanding services, but they have to follow the camping ban.

"We want to do that work to honor the law, but also do it in a way that speaks to our values and our ethos by ensuring that folks get connections to those shelter and service opportunities before the cleaning crews show up," Gray said.

Big picture view:

There will be six teams with the new plan. Austin police officers will be on five of those teams to protect city staff. If someone refuses to leave a camp, an officer might issue a citation.

The Homeless Encampment Management teams will be split up like this:

• HEM 1 – North Austin (APD and Austin Resource Recovery)
• HEM 2 – Central Austin (APD and Austin Resource Recovery)
• HEM 3 - South Austin (APD and Austin Resource Recovery)
• HEM 4 – Roadways (APD and Austin Transportation & Public Works)
• HEM 5 - Waterways (APD and Austin Watershed Protection)
• HEM 6 – Litter Abatement (Austin Parks & Recreation)

"APD is not going in with the intention of making arrests or making citations. They are there to maintain decency and decorum," Gray said.

A map shows the approximate locations of homeless encampments that will be cleaned. A dashboard will be built up, so people can see which phase a cleanup is in. 

Gray says there are three goals with these plan updates.

"The first is to provide the public with a clear and consistent understanding of what encampment management is going to look like. The second is to make sure that everybody who's unhoused gets a meaningful connection to a shelter or a service opportunity. The third is that once the city cleans up an encampments that we're able to maintain that progress and keep those areas clear," he said.

The other side:

Some homeless advocacy groups are calling for a pause to the cleanup plan, saying there needs to be more coordination with service providers. 

"You're not just outlawing camping, you're outlawing survival. Where are we supposed to go?" JoAnn Causey with VOCAL-TX said.

"When I can't exist anywhere without breaking the law, and there's no housing, no support, no services, where would you go? What would you do?" Tony Carter with VOCAL-TX said.

In response to the concerns, Gray says, "The encampment management work is one piece of our department's portfolio. We're also committed to growing the services in our community. Today, we have 400 more homeless shelter beds than we had two years ago. We've added over 1,100 units of permanent supportive housing to our community in the last three years. We're committed to making sure that anybody who's on our street has access to shelter, and housing, and the other services that they need."