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AUSTIN (KXAN) – Austin Mayor Steve Adler admitted the city of Austin made mistakes when it lifted the city’s camping ban two years ago, and stated in a lengthy interview on Tuesday’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience “Which she should have done instead.
Homelessness has been in the spotlight lately, with the majority of Austin voters choosing to reinstate the city’s camping ban, making it a criminal offense – a Class C offense that comes with a fine – if you’re seated , lie down or camp in public property.
“We should have realized at this point where people are going and cannot go. And we didn’t do that. “
Austin’s Mayor Steve Adler
The stated goal of the reintroduced camping ban is to end the tent cities that have popped up across Austin. Adler said the camping ban is not a real solution. Although it takes people out of sight, he says it won’t really solve the bigger, underlying problem.
Mayor Adler admits that the city made mistakes in lifting the camping ban
Rogan, a comedian and podcast host known for having millions of followers and interviewing people from all walks of life, is an Austinite himself.
After voters in the largely liberal city overwhelmingly reintroduced the city’s camping ban, Rogan asked Mayor Adler if he believed the city had made mistakes. Adler said they did.
In the detailed interview of 1 hour and 18 minutes, Adler explained what the city should have done differently when it largely decriminalized camping and panhandling two years ago.
“The mistake we made was that if we did something that meant people were coming out of the forest and the streams, at that point we should have realized where people could and could not go,” said Eagle. “And we didn’t do that. We haven’t managed the public spaces, the common spaces, as we should have done. “
How do you help the homeless without promoting this lifestyle?
Rogan said places like San Francisco have tolerant homelessness policies that could encourage homeless people to move there. He asked Adler about the “fine line” between helping and promoting a lifestyle.
“They prefer that kind of vagabond life. Is there a line that you don’t have to cross, where you don’t make homelessness easier for them? ”Said Rogan. “You want to encourage them to take advantage of these things that you have set up. How do you make this distinction? “
“In general, the vast majority of the people who are homeless in our city are people who have become homeless here,” said Adler. “The people who come to our city mostly come from the immediate vicinity.”
“We made it work with veterans and then I tried to expand what we did with veterans, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend the money. And that was partly because people didn’t see the challenge. “
“A guy came up to me … and said, ‘You’re mayor – fix that. And if not, I have a gun and I’ll fix it myself.'”
Austin’s Mayor Steve Adler
No easy solutions, even as Austin goes back to 2019
Mayor Adler said two years ago most homeless people were crowding around the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, the ARCH, in downtown Austin. Austinites told him to fix this problem, but said it wasn’t a problem with a simple fix.
“People wanted that to go away. The problem with making this go away, this challenge isn’t one that you can just make go away. You can move it, but if you close it somewhere, people won’t go away. “
Adler said veterans are a little easier because they have federal funding like rent supplements. Veterans can get coupons for large apartment buildings, and if they vandalize one of the units, the apartment complex can get a check from the federal government to fix the problem.
Adler said it was more difficult with the larger homeless population because those resources weren’t there, but he said we had to act now to fix the problem so Austin doesn’t end up like Los Angeles or Portland.
“If you hide this challenge, it will keep growing until it is so big that you can’t hide it anymore, but at that point it will be too big to be really meaningful to.”
Adler said that if put into a resource-rich home, there is a 90-95% success rate that the person can be reintegrated into society and sustain themselves in a positive way. He added that you can’t get rid of homelessness entirely, but you can find a balance where the number of people entering homelessness is equal to those who come out of homelessness.
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