Austin City Leaders could start restricting camping, sitting, and lying around the city later this month.
A memo put out by city staffers Friday (August 30th) recommend council try to restrict camping away from areas with high foot and or vehicle traffic. While the UT campus was not specifically named in the memo, Councilmember Kathie Tovo believed it qualifies, “The Drag definitely falls into a high pedestrian traffic area. And so I think that is an area where we should absolutely consider banning camping for the public safety risks it poses.”
The memo also acknowledged some homeless camping under large overpasses and large roadway concrete islands are technically safer than those that sleep on roadsides and sidewalks. Despite that both Councilmember Tovo and Austin’s Mayor Steve Adler say housing the homeless is the primary goal and that they don’t want to see people camping on the streets either.
In the past Mayor Adler has said, if the city is going to tell the homeless where they can’t be, they need to tell them where they can go. But according to his read of the memo, he doesn’t think camping is the answer, “What we don’t want to do, and what i think the memo said, is not move to formally sanctioned camping areas.” Adler continued, in other cities where temporary homeless camping grounds were created, it became to difficult to shut them down even though they were designed to be temporary.
Adler said the number of Austin’s chronically homeless has dramatically risen and sees those counts decreasing as council starts to act. Both Tovo and Adler Adler hope council will act on staff recommendations at their next regular session September 19th.
City staffers recommended new restrictions on where homeless people can’t camp. Staffers wrote, the city should consider restricting where homeless people can leave their belongings like the city does with dockless scooters. The said it would be to prevent the obstruction of pedestrian traffic and to allow for at least a yard of clearance for accessibility in high traffic areas. As for roadways they recommend Council consider limitations on areas where pedestrians are the most risk of getting hit by moving vehicles, like medians, median islands and intersection islands. And since Austin is flood prone, staffers added the city should bar camping in regulatory floodplains.
(Photo:Shutterstock/Srdjan Randjelovic)
