by Kayte VanScoy
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The council scheduled Thursday’s public hearing to help inform decisionmaking from the dais, but what they got instead was, not surprisingly, a polemical barrage on an age-old problem. For the past two months, Austin has been hopping with talk about homelessness. First, Jackie Goodman and Gus Garcia began a post-election push to repeal the camping ordinance. Then someone on the Community Action Network’s (CAN) Homeless Task Force (HTF) leaked information to the Austin American-Statesman about three possible sites for a homeless campus. The campus project was handed off to the newly formed Capitol Area Homeless Alliance (CAHA), headed by former Mayor Frank Cooksey, who initially implied that CAHA had an accelerated timeline for the campus’ construction. Instead, last Tuesday, Cooksey and Mayor Kirk Watson called a surprise press conference to announce that the campus was being put on hold indefinitely in order to encourage a broader conversation about the root causes of homelessness.
Speaking of root causes, the Statesman ran their third anti-campus cover story on the morning of the press conference. “I don’t think the task force ever intended for 95% of the media focus to be on a [campus] location, but for the Statesman in particular, that’s been the primary focus, and it’s a negative focus,” concedes Watson.
Meanwhile, Garcia has promised an October 16 vote on the camping ordinance, but the chances for repeal do not look nearly so rosy now as they did in the afterglow of the elections. “I wouldn’t use the word `comfortable’ in any discussion dealing with the camping ordinance,” says Garcia, admitting that there is still disagreement among the usually united councilmembers over the issue. Garcia had specifically linked the repeal to the opportunity to offer an alternative to public sleeping — i.e., a homeless campus. Without the campus process online, a repeal will be difficult to justify.
Protesters of the ordinance say that a repeal needs no justification, since outlawing life-sustaining actions, like sleeping, is unconstitutional. Ordinance supporters, on the other hand, say that the prevalence of disruptive transients in parks and downtown has significantly decreased since the law was passed. In all the debate, only one thing is certain — homelessness is guaranteed to be a hot-button issue for the new council well into next year.
“Is it tacky to say that the room reeks of alcohol?” wondered KTBC’s reporter Erin Fletcher, formulating her lead on the hearing for Thursday’s 10pm. With 103 speakers signed up, Fletcher’s was not the only wrinkled nose in the house. All the stench couldn’t be blamed on the unwashed masses, however; surely three-martini lunches had been consumed by a few of the business attendees who made up the majority of the gathering, wearing their bright green stickers like badges of honor.
“It’s not just a bunch of downtown suits,” boasted Lucy Buck, associate director of the Downtown Austin Alliance (DAA), displaying a list of 26 neighborhood groups and community organizations joining the DAA in asking council to keep the ordinance. “When [the repeal] first came up we were quite puzzled. Why would anyone want to repeal the ordinance?” wonders Buck. “It’s very significant that the HTF, CAHA, CAN, and the Salvation Army are not calling for the repeal of the ordinance. It’s a clear indication that there is strong support throughout our community for it,” said DAA Board Chair Tom Stacy.
According to homeless spokesperson Richard Troxell, it was DAA’s representative to the HTF, Allen Kaplan, who was responsible for the press leaks. “We really packed them in. I think we blew our cover,” giggled Kaplan with his DAA cohorts. Max Nofziger, who originally voted in favor of the ordinance as a councilmember last year, put in an appearance to support his new DAA buddies, as did Richard Oppel, Editor-in-Chief of the Statesman, who recently wrote about his assault on the hike-and-bike trail at the hands of a homeless person.
Garcia opened the hearing, saying that he wanted to “have a conversation as a community, as a family.” Mayor Watson then announced that those in favor of keeping the ordinance would speak for the first hour, followed by those in favor of repeal. (The following day, Watson admitted that he immediately regretted the decision. “I started out with `who’s for it and who’s against it’ and it just doesn’t work that way,” says Watson, who intends to bring the University of Texas’ Dispute Resolution Center into the process at some point.)
So, as bedless protesters patiently waited their turns, pro-ordinance speakers drained from council chambers one by one and headed home to sleep. Sensing the trend, Garcia changed the rules mid-stream to allow speakers from both sides to alternate.
Losing privilege was not something the pro-ordinance speakers were prepared to take in stride, however. “Point of order,” piped up DAA member Marlene Fowler. “I need to go home. It’s past my bedtime.” Pro-ordinance speaker Eric Anderson questioned Garcia’s protocol. “We signed up to speak under one set of rules and we expected that those would be followed,” he said. Garcia paid little attention to the complaints, however, and moved on with hearing both sides of the story.
“There is a smell in this room and it’s not coming from the homeless,” began Troxell, launching into the kind of characteristically intense speech that makes the well-heeled squirm. “The smell is fear and it’s on me too. It’s a fear for my city,” he said, proceeding to outline ways to address the root causes of homelessness. “Somebody here is selling drugs to our people!” he bellowed, suggesting that the city curb the sale of fortified alcoholic beverages, like Thunderbird wine. He went on to suggest that Austin follow Houston’s lead in attempting to raise the city-wide minimum wage. “If I work a full-time job at McDonald’s and a full-time job at Wendy’s, I still can’t afford to get a one-bedroom apartment in Austin,” he fumed.
Later, Watson applauded Troxell’s willingness to brainstorm for solutions. “I don’t know if those things will happen, but, man, I’m happy to have some suggestions thrown out to explore,” he says. No vote or action was taken last Thursday, but a follow-up hearing is scheduled for August 14.
In a dramatically different style from the previous council, Watson did not please anyone when he adjourned the hearing at 10:30pm, cutting off over 50 scheduled speakers and refusing to run into the wee hours to accommodate them. Watson says he hopes the followup hearing will be more of an “honest give and take” between participants. “What is the positive?” muses Watson of the contentious debate. “Just the fact that we’re talking about human beings should be of value,” he suggests.
This article appears in August 8 • 1997 and August 8 • 1997 (Cover).