City staff ask for more time, direction on Austin’s plan to set up homeless encampments
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A preliminary plan to set up camps on urban land in Austin has stalled.
The city council instructed city officials last month to identify land for temporary camps after voters reinstated the ban on public camps. The original list was met with rejection, so staff asked to extend Thursday’s deadline to next month and start setting up temporary accommodation in the meantime.
Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison told city manager Spencer Cronk and staff at a briefing Tuesday that she wanted the introduction of a list of 45 potential locations to be more transparent, both internally at the town hall and to residents.
She said she found out about the list the day before it was released on May 18.
“I don’t think it does much for our constituents to represent (us) them well, although it’s pretty clear that we don’t have the kind of clear communication with the city administrator’s office that we should have,” she said . “I shouldn’t have to find out the day before.”
Last week, Harper-Madison and other black leaders suggested that the selection process not examine Austin’s history of racism and redlining. More than half of the proposed sites were on the east side, which was historically underserved by the city.
Ultimately, staff found that most of the 45 locations were unusable for a variety of reasons, and a bill passed by the Texan legislature could take the parkland off the table entirely.
Kim McNeeley, director of the Austins Parks and Recreation Department, told the council that only one site was viable under the bill that Governor Greg Abbott has signaled he would sign.
With that in mind, city officials suggested donating $ 4.2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to provide temporary accommodation at one of the hotels the city acquired during the pandemic To house Austinites at risk of Covid-19. With this money, said Dianna Gray, head of the homeless strategy, the city could operate the site for a year. The employees assume that it could go into operation in mid-July.
The council passed a resolution to investigate camps on May 6, instructing staff to find city-owned land that could accommodate 50 people on a 2-acre property or 100 people on a 4-acre property for a period of two years . Land had to have access to transportation and food resources and was not allowed to be in a floodplain or an area prone to forest fires.
In a working session following the publication of the list of 45 locations, the council members struck heavily frequented and environmentally sensitive park landscapes as well as land near schools or already in the development process of the city from the list.
In a memo prior to Tuesday’s briefing, Gray suggested that the criteria set by the council severely limit the city’s options. She asked the council to make it less wide to include more public land.
After that, employees could return to the council with options by July 1, the memo says.
This story was produced as part of Austin Monitor’s reporting partnership with KUT.
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