The sun pushed down, bright and insistent, on the bridge above the encampment. Following a dirt path on the north side of St. Elmo Road, we dropped to a cool, shaded space. Figures reclined on a concrete skirt under the bridge. The concrete ran somewhat level for 8 feet, then sloped steeply to a dead drop, 10 feet above railroad tracks. Down in the channel below, refuse lay in a continuous stream along both sides of the rails.
Puma, a thin, 47-year-old homeless man, stood talking in the shade with Alfredo Reyes, a worker with the advocacy group VOCAL-TX. Puma and his friends had found a notice zip-tied to a tree near the bridge two days earlier. The notice announced the city’s intention to clear the camp – or, in the words of the homeless community, to sweep it.
“Camping in this public area violates Texas Penal Code 48.05 and Austin City Code 9-4-11,” the notice read. “All personal property must be removed by the service time and date noted below.”
The date noted was the day of our visit to the camp, May 14. The planned sweep was part of a new program, what city officials describe as “a revised homeless encampment management plan.” Under the program, sweeps are happening more frequently than before, on a daily schedule, Monday through Friday. Workers at the city’s Homeless Strategies and Operations Department warn homeless people 72 hours before a sweep is to occur. On the day of the sweep, unhoused people are allowed to take one backpack and one bicycle out of the camp. City workers are directed to confiscate or destroy everything else they own. In a series of sweeps this past October, homeless people say they lost tents, clothing, medications, identification documents, and other items crucial to their existence.
Reyes had arrived to watch the sweep and provide support to the community. Puma told him that 10 to 12 people lived in the camp, but most had left early that morning, fearing harassment, taking what they could carry. He said he had been living in the camp for four years and that it had been swept twice since the winter, most recently two months ago. At that time, he said, city workers carried some items away and pushed others down the concrete incline, onto the sides of the railroad tracks, where they could still be seen.
Puma led us down a path above the tracks. It was littered with refuse – clothing, trash bags, plastic bins, empty cans. Shiny artificial colors against the brown dirt. Across the way, through the trees, enormous homes rose over the canopy. Puma showed us the site of his previous house, as he called it. It had been swept months earlier. “You see the trash?” he asked. “All that is not trash. That’s all stuff that I had that they just destroyed. They just destroyed it and threw everything here. It was looking nice. It was looking like a little paradise.”
We walked on and Puma pointed to other spots where homeless people had created dwellings, now marked by debris. He brought us to his new place. It was a tarp stretched over bare ground. Inside, it was quiet and orderly, with spaces to cook and sleep. “I got stability here, where you don’t have to worry,” Puma said. He gestured to the tarp. “There’s no water that comes in here. I’m trying to be comfortable. I think it shows: I want to have a house.”
We walked back to the bridge. Puma’s friends, Betty and August, talked about the most recent sweep, which they said happened in March. August said eight city workers came through, trashing people’s belongings but offering no services that the unhoused community wasn’t already using. She said she and her friends have been on waiting lists for city housing since the COVID pandemic or longer. She talked about the central contradiction of the sweeps – that the city forces people out of camps but has very few beds available in shelters for those who are displaced. She said she’d been living in the St. Elmo camp since winter. She described it as an area where people can find odd jobs, scavenge for food, and visit the Sunrise Navigation Center on Menchaca Road.
“I sleep every day in this relatively safe spot,” August said, “where I have my homeboys over there on that end, and my homeboys over here on this end, and my dog is right here. So where are you going to put me?”
Puma talked about the Marshalling Yard, the large warehouse at the southeastern corner of the city, where some people swept from camps have been given shelter. He said he would be reluctant to stay there, if the city made the offer, because he fears the Marshalling Yard’s rules would separate him from Betty, their dog, and the camp community.
“We’ve become a big family here,” Puma said. “I don’t want to be separated from my family. I mean, with me and her” – he gestured to Betty – “they’re going to try to get us not to be together. My dog, my service animal – I mean, don’t take somebody’s dog. I get it that you want us off the street. But if you can throw our stuff away, then tell us where you want us to live. Help us. Don’t throw our stuff away and expect us to magically have another house or another place to stay.”
Operational Modifications
The public got its first briefing on the new sweeps at a City Council meeting on May 5. The Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations Department said it was creating six teams to clean camps Monday through Friday, each consisting of two APD officers and several employees from Austin Resource Recovery. Three teams would clear out camps in parks, green spaces, and neighborhoods. Two more would clear camps near highways, bridges, and waterways. A sixth would thoroughly clean the areas where camps had been located. HSO emphasized that the city intends to prevent homeless people from returning to camps once they are cleared.
Before the briefing, three dozen homeless people and advocates spoke to Council, asking its members to pause the plan. Jennifer Miller said that she had been unhoused for three years and had lost personal documents and medications in a pair of sweeps. “People just don’t understand,” Miller said. “We have to start over. And when we start over, it makes it complicated and real hard on us.”
Paul Tardie, a staffer at the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, spoke about how the loss of IDs impacts homeless people. “Identification is needed to obtain housing, get other forms of ID, establish employment, receive food stamps, and get disability or retirement benefits,” he said. “A person is only allowed 10 Social Security cards and birth certificates in their lifetime, and the loss of identification can take time and money that some people don’t have.”
Speakers said the sweeps would have a disastrous effect on the health of homeless people. Loren Perkins, another THRA staffer, said they would “increase overdose deaths, disrupt medical access, and fracture networks people rely on to survive.” Others pointed out that homeless people suffer disproportionately from conditions like schizophrenia, diabetes, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and COPD. They recounted instances in which medications were destroyed during sweeps, as well as family photos and heirlooms, the ashes of loved ones, tools used in day labor, and musical instruments.
Again and again, the speakers asked Council why the city is expanding sweeps when it is well known that they have no beneficial effect on homelessness. Matt Mollica, who works closely with city leaders as the executive director of the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, praised Council for its work to expand access to housing. Still, he did not fail to emphasize the central point. “The data here is known to all,” Mollica said. “It’s obvious that encampment sweeps and raids do not end homelessness. In fact, they exacerbate it.”
After two hours of comment, HSO’s leader, David Gray, spoke about the sweeps. He said they are an effort to balance compassion with city and state laws that ban camping. He said the city’s cleanup crews are trained to never trash people’s medications and IDs; that police officers are included in the sweeps to keep the ARR staff and the homeless people safe; that HSO’s street outreach team would be on-site during sweeps to offer resources and support. He also presented a map showing the approximate locations of planned sweeps.
When Gray finished, Council Member Mike Siegel expressed doubts about the plan. He, and all the Council members, are quite familiar with the data on the city’s homeless population. According to ECHO’s research from June 2025, nearly 4,000 people are living unsheltered in Austin. Siegel told Gray that the city only has one bed for every five people without homes. “So for those people who aren’t coming in, who don’t have a bed or program to take advantage of, it seems like we’re just making their lives worse – less safe, less supported, less dignified,” Siegel said.
CM Ryan Alter picked up the numbers argument, asking Gray to say exactly how many beds were available in the city’s shelters for the thousands of unhoused people. “As of today, we have approximately 45 open beds across the system, with an additional 30 beds that will be opening in the coming weeks,” Gray responded. The HSO director then made a surprising promise: “That’s also why I made the commitment that if somebody wants a shelter and a bed is not available that day, we will not deploy encampment cleanup.”
When the briefing ended, the homeless people and advocates filed outside for a press conference in front of City Hall. Members of VOCAL-TX, Austin Mutual Aid, the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, and other grassroots organizations denounced the sweeps to members of the media. As the speeches continued, Gray walked out of the Council chambers and sat on a limestone block across from the demonstration, watching with a look of exhaustion.
A Sweep and Its Aftermath
The St. Elmo camp was swept on the morning of May 21. The Chronicle arrived at the bridge over the camp as workers with Austin Resource Recovery were hauling up items. The larger ones, especially those made of metal, were placed in the back of an ARR pickup truck. Garbage bags with less substantial items were thrown into a large trailer behind the truck.
The Chronicle did not see any member of HSO’s street outreach team. A pair of APD officers stood on the bridge, waiting for the workers to finish. Officer Niedzielski confirmed that the camp was now deserted. He said one person had been there when the officers arrived and had been advised to leave, taking a backpack. He told us that he and his partner were only working in the area around the bridge and would not be going down the path along the tracks, because it wasn’t city property. He said he had been overseeing camp sweeps all week. “We really haven’t had any issues,” he said. “And if somebody needs resources we kind of steer them in the right direction.”
As we spoke, Reyes, Puma, and Betty approached from the east side of the bridge. Reyes held up his phone to record the interaction. Puma asked the officers if they remembered him. He said he’d spoken with them the day before, when the officers made a preparatory visit to the camp. He asked about the services the city says it promises to homeless people during sweeps. “Unfortunately, we don’t have that information for you,” Niedzielski said.
The ARR workers brought up a last load. They spoke with the officers, got in their truck, and pulled away from the curb. The officer said he and his partner would be monitoring sweeps along the I-35 corridor for the rest of the day, starting at Cesar Chavez and working north. They got in their cruiser and were gone.
We followed Reyes, Puma, and Betty back across the bridge and onto the trail. It looked little different from the chaos of the week before. Puma told us that the people in the camp had scattered when the police arrived. He said the ARR workers had destroyed their possessions. “They ripped the tents up and some of the stuff was thrown down there to the bottom,” he said, gesturing toward the tracks. “I think that you can probably see right now from this side, you can see that there was actual tents that were thrown down right there. Instead of them picking it up, they went and threw it down.”
We walked the same path, muddy from rain that had fallen the night before. Puma made a running commentary on the things that had been destroyed. We came to his living space. The tarp over it was intact. Inside, it was in disarray.
“All they did was just take stuff,” Puma said bitterly. “I had lawn chairs thrown down. I had clothes, good clothes. They took the good clothes, and then they threw the rest. They just piled it up. That suitcase right there, brand-new, had good stuff in it. It all got thrown down there.
“And then they still leave the place standing, so I can still come back. It’s like a harassment type of thing. It’s like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna wait till you gain more things and then we’re gonna come back and take the good things and have you leave.’ I’m tired of it. We can’t do it no more.”
Puma said there had been no HSO outreach worker present during the sweep. He said the officer he spoke with had assured him that the city would offer resources but that, during the sweep, the message had been different. “I said, ‘Sir, you specifically told me that there was going to be some help. But now you have no answers for us.’ If you’re gonna throw us out and take our stuff, you should at least try to help us to get resources. What we want is, we want you guys to help us. Help us. I mean, somebody’s not getting together on this.”
Puma said he didn’t think the city was serious about clearing the camp. “For the people that are struggling, they’re not really telling them to leave,” he said. “They’re basically just running them off till they get the stuff, and then they come back. Whenever they do this, it separates everybody for a little bit. But once they see that we’re not gone – because I tell them I’m not leaving, I’m still here – they’ll come back. They start all over again, little by little. A week goes by, and then they start rebuilding again.”
Another Sweep
We met Reyes on June 1 at the Gus Garcia Recreation Center off Rundberg Lane, as another sweep unfolded in the park behind the facility. By 8am, Austin Resource Recovery’s equipment – a garbage truck, a box truck with a crane, and a trailer with a Bobcat – sat staged in front of the rec center, ready to move. ARR workers in yellow and orange vests waited for police officers to arrive.
Reyes bounded out of his car and walked briskly to the back of the rec center, where trails wind through acres of Central Texas scrub. Firewheels, black-eyed Susans, and lemon beebalm bloomed in the grass. A creek ran on the west side of the property. At least half a dozen individual camps sat under trees at the ends of dirt paths, each with a tarp tied to branches and poles, with places to cook and lounge.
Reyes is a compact man with a white beard and hair who radiates a boyish energy. As we walked between the camps, he told us that VOCAL-TX works to address four things: homelessness, the drug war, people impacted by HIV and AIDS, and mass incarceration. He said he ticked off all four boxes. He is HIV positive, has spent time behind bars, was addicted to methamphetamine, and was homeless for seven years, despite having served his country in the Army in the late 1980s.
“You never know what it might take to become homeless,” Reyes said buoyantly, with no trace of bitterness. “I used to own my own company, I had 45 employees, I always gave money to the homeless. I said, ‘I’ll never be homeless.’ All it took was one bad relationship. And then, after that, I got diagnosed with cancer. So it was like I was going down, down, down. It got to the point that I gave up.”
We followed a trail to a large camp. Items were strewn all about. A half-dozen pit bull puppies swarmed up, licking our ankles. Two people were in the camp, Mike-Mike and Brianna. Mike-Mike sat under an open tarp, preparing to feed the dogs. Brianna moved quickly 50 feet away, hustling her belongings into rolling suitcases. Reyes told them the camp was about to be swept, that the city had arrived. Mike-Mike said he knew. Brianna didn’t respond.
We moved to another camp further back on the property. Reyes called ahead as we approached: “Hey, they’re about to sweep the camps.” A man with a trimmed beard and a high forehead stepped away from his tent, wary. Reyes spoke low and fast. “I want to make sure that everybody here knows what’s going on. They’re here to sweep the camps and take everything out.” The man was uneasy. He tested Reyes: “How y’all feel about APD?” Reyes responded in a way that reassured him. He gave Reyes his name and contact information.
We walked to another section of the encampment. Reyes talked about how the sweeps destroy people’s medication. He said it had happened to him. “They took my HIV medication and the mail-order company wouldn’t prescribe it again for 90 days. I was telling David Gray, ‘They will not prescribe it again.’ I know that – I went 90 days without my medication, and I called every doctor to see if they could refill it again. So what were they doing? They put my life in danger.”
The next camp sat in a bend of the creek, in deep shade. A partially collapsed oven made of field stone stood to the side of the tarp. One person remained at the site, a young man named Joey, who told us he had degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering. Joey said he’d been swept 10 times over the last six years. He said he lost his ID and other important items in the first sweeps, before realizing how fast they could unfold. He said he would fade to the periphery of the property during the sweep, and then return. He said he didn’t mind losing his possessions. “My mentality is everything out here belongs to the woods. I came with a backpack, I’ll leave with a backpack.”
We returned to the rec center. More members of VOCAL-TX had arrived – JJ Ramirez, Eli Cortez, Cate Graziani. The police had arrived, too. Brianna had dragged several suitcases to the rec center’s plaza, so they wouldn’t be trashed. “These things are like money to them,” Ramirez said of the items collected by homeless people. “They’re like a savings account. They plan to sell these things.”
The ARR workers moved into the first camp we had visited. One of them told us the police officers would probably give the unhoused people 10 minutes to gather their things and leave. He said that representatives from the HSO street outreach team had arrived. “They’ll come out here, talk to them, and figure out who wants housing, because a lot of them refuse it,” the employee said. “We can’t touch nothing until HSO talks to them.”
Four policemen were suddenly in the camp. They ordered us onto the gravel path ringing the property, where we wouldn’t be able to see the operation. As we stood there, the ARR workers brought in their trucks. The box truck disappeared into the trees around the camp. A worker backed the Bobcat off the trailer and followed. An officer stepped out from the trees and ordered us to get away from the remaining vehicles. As we did, a car drove up and two HSO employees emerged. We asked to speak with them. “No thanks,” one replied.
At the rec center, Brianna squatted beside half a dozen suitcases, waiting for her boyfriend. She said the police had threatened to arrest her if she went back for more belongings. “They need to be more courteous and allow people to get everything they can,” she said. “A lot of these people, just because they’re homeless, doesn’t mean they don’t have a job, that they don’t pay for their stuff. They pay for this stuff. And then the city comes in and destroys it. And that’s really not fair.”
A young couple, Angel and Jazz, sat on the rec center’s concrete patio, their backs against the block wall, their possessions spread in front of them. Angel told us he worked the night shift at a nearby fast food restaurant. He said the HSO workers had offered the couple shelter at the Marshalling Yard. They were thinking about it, he said, even though the Marshalling Yard is an hour and a half by bus from his job. The larger concern was the fact that it is a congregate shelter, with rows of beds separated by gender, requiring couples to sleep apart.
“We don’t like to be around a lot of people,” Jazz said quietly, almost inaudibly. “And they said there’s 300 people in there.” Angel’s voice was also quiet. “I don’t want to be separated,” he said. “I need her beside me.”
Lack of Input
In his May 5 comments to City Council, after stating that sweeps worsen homelessness, Matt Mollica offered a vague explanation for the city’s new program, saying it is the result of “political realities.” “We understand budget shortfalls and we understand state and federal strategies,” Mollica said. “We know the pressure that this Council and community is under.”
The Chronicle asked Mayor Kirk Watson and HSO’s Gray if they could clarify what Mollica meant by “political realities” and “pressure.” Neither offered a specific example. Their replies did allude, however, to one well-understood pressure: the calls coming from city residents demanding that officials address the disorder of the camps.
“Every month, Austin 311 receives hundreds of calls related to homelessness and encampments,” Watson said. “Those concerns are real. And those calls are representative of many more people who don’t pick up the phone to call.”
Watson pointed out that the city and state have each passed laws that ban camping in public, and that the city is obligated to enforce those laws. He said homelessness is one of the most complicated challenges the city faces. He reminded us that he created the HSO when he came into office to bring coordination and accountability to a homelessness response system that had been spread across different city departments. He mentioned the increased financial commitment the city has made to address the issue, an effort he has led. He said progress is happening.
Then he returned to the sweeps, saying they are just one part of a complex strategy, one which includes constructing more housing and temporary shelter, providing behavioral health services, and funding programs to prevent people from losing their homes in the first place. He rejected an either/or framing of the services and the sweeps.
“Some people act as though cleaning up encampments solves homelessness,” Watson said. “It doesn’t. Others act as though encampment management shouldn’t happen at all. That’s not realistic either. I know this approach won’t satisfy everyone. But I believe good policy requires more than choosing sides in a debate. It requires balancing multiple responsibilities at the same time.”
In acknowledging that the sweeps will not satisfy everyone, Watson recognized the dismay of homeless services providers, who continue to condemn the program. Snehal Patel, an internal medicine physician who has treated homeless patients, told us the sweeps will “lead to a direct increase in worsening public health crises, including potential worsening of HIV transmission and hepatitis C transmission. It’s going to lead to subsequent increased emergency department hospital utilizations. It’s going to lead to larger complications for everybody that lives in Central Texas.”
Sasha Rose, an organizer with Austin Mutual Aid, said the sweeps will hurt her group’s ability to practice mutual aid and solidarity with unhoused community members. She said AMA is a grassroots mutual aid organization that relies on community support and grants to distribute essential survival supplies such as tents, blankets, clothing, food and water, and first aid kits. The sweeps force the group to re-purchase the needed items, she said, not just once but repeatedly. “How am I gonna find access to a thousand tents, a thousand blankets for all of these encampment sweeps that are gonna be going on over and over again?” Rose asked.
Lily Hughes, who works with the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, agreed that the sweeps are a terrible waste of resources, saying, “The plan is akin to lighting a dumpster full of money on fire, as well as having really horrific human rights violations.” Hughes said the sweeps will almost certainly contribute to the deaths of homeless people. “All that is going to happen is people are going to be harmed,” she said. “I’ve seen this over the four years of outreach experience that I have, how this has failed every single time.”
The advocates say they are disappointed in the community stakeholder meetings that HSO holds with service providers. These meetings, which we were told include approximately 30 different groups, are designed to increase communication and cooperation between HSO and the people who are in direct contact with the homeless community. But the advocates we spoke with said they feel HSO is not responding to their concerns and, in some cases, is not including them at all. “There hasn’t been engagement at the table in sort of designing what these sweeps look like,” Patel said. “It’s been more like, ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do.’”
Hughes said she wants to be present during sweeps to directly help the homeless people who are being kicked out of their camps. But she said that HSO has been unwilling or unable to provide the locations of camps and when they were scheduled to be swept. “I directly asked how we can be there and was told by HSO leadership that we were basically not welcome,” Hughes said. Rose told us she feels betrayed by the city’s decision to include police in the sweeps. “We’ve repeatedly raised concerns about APD involvement in encampment sweeps and forced displacement and, I have to say, I feel like we’re ignored and dismissed,” she said.
Gray, in a written response to the Chronicle’s questions, echoed Watson in saying that the sweeps are just one part of the city’s approach to homelessness. Gray’s answers were thick with the official-ese that he speaks fluently, but buried in the bureaucratic words was an intimation of his moral center. “While the City is responsible for maintaining the safety, accessibility and usability of shared public spaces, Austin Homeless Strategies & Operations leads the Homeless Encampment Management Initiative to help ensure those efforts are carried out ethically, humanely, and in coordination with service providers and law enforcement partners,” Gray said. He added that the department will release the metrics associated with the sweeps – how many camps have been swept, how many people have been connected with shelter, how much the operation is costing taxpayers – in late June.
Staying Put
We returned to the Gus Garcia rec center three days after it was swept. In the lot, we saw the ARR vehicles – the box truck, the garbage truck, and the Bobcat. Two police cruisers were parked nearby. We didn’t see any city staff or officers.
We walked behind the rec center to Mike-Mike and Brianna’s former campsite. Bits of trash lay scattered on the ground – empty water bottles, plastic forks, fragments of tent poles. The tarp, the tables, the chairs, and all other large items were gone. So were Mike-Mike and Brianna. So were the dogs.
We passed along the trail to the camp where Reyes had persuaded the wary man to give him his contact info. The camp was erased, except for the fire ring. Broken branches, some with straps still hanging down, showed where the tarp had been tied to the trees.
We walked to Joey’s camp, beside the creek. The ruined oven was still there, along with a box of used spray paint cans, a random gas cylinder, and broken brooms. Blue and white shards of plastic flashed in the mud and weeds.
We walked back to the parking lot. The ARR trucks and the police cars were gone. Two mounds of belongings, each with 10 to 12 suitcases, sat unattended on the sidewalk facing Rundberg Lane.
We drove to the St. Elmo camp. A light rain fell as we made our way along the trail to Puma’s place. He met us outside. Betty was still sleeping, he said. We walked to the bridge to get out of the rain.
It had been two weeks since the sweep on May 21. Puma told us that after the officers left that day, he and Betty returned to their place. He said four or five of the people who had lived at the camp still visited at night, but left each morning, worried about the police. He said APD officers had come back to the camp three times, without the ARR workers. He said a pair of state troopers had come through four days earlier, harassing him and frightening Betty. He talked over and over about how the troopers had disrespected the couple, saying they had hate in their hearts, that people need to know what is happening. He said he told Reyes that he would appear at VOCAL-TX’s next press conference.
“I’m gonna do whatever they need,” Puma said. “I’m more than willing to stand up and talk about everything. I told Betty, I said, ‘Are you willing to go with me?’ She says, ‘Yeah, we’re going. We’re gonna stand there, hold hands, and we’re gonna express what’s happened to us.’”
Reyes revisited the St. Elmo camp on the morning of Monday, June 8. As he walked to the bridge over the tracks, he saw Puma handcuffed and in the custody of two Department of Public Safety officers. Reyes pulled out his phone and recorded the interaction, promising the troopers that he would take Puma away from the camp if they would release him. They reluctantly agreed, warning Puma that they would arrest him if he returned.
Reyes said that Puma and Betty stayed with him all day as he tried to arrange shelter with HSO, but that ultimately they were told there were no beds available. Puma and Betty spent the night in a parking lot near their camp. Reyes said he and other members of VOCAL-TX asked HSO for help again the following day. He said the department eventually found a place for Puma and Betty at the city’s Southbridge Shelter and that he dropped them there on the afternoon of June 9.
Editor’s note: The article has been updated to more accurately reflect Austin Mutual Aid’s mission.
This article appears in June 12 • 2026.
