AUSTIN IS NOT YOUR PUNCHING BAG

As a resident and native Austin-ite I have grown familiar with the typical political complaints leveled against the city on all sides. Particularly the charge that Austin is some decaying hellscape because of the City Councils recent ordnance “legalizing” homelessness in the Capital city. First lets give a little context, I was born in Austin in 1993 and became aware of “homeless people” as early as 7 or 8 years old, so roughly 2000/2001. I have seen documentaries on Austin in the 70’s and 80’s and there was a homelessness problem during that time as well, including well documented civic icon Leslie, a cross-dressing homeless man who lived in Austin for many years. All this is to say that homelessness in Austin is not a new phenomenon. Homelessness has been here through multiple administrations and there have been multiple attempts to “solve” the problem. To my knowledge harsher measures did not “solve” homelessness and has only served to obscure the problem, which I suspect was their true purpose all along. So I commend the Austin City Council for being open to new solutions despite the political firestorm it was sure to kick up.

To pretend that homelessness is some new phenomenon foisted on the city by the current council’s decision’s is pure fiction. The only thing Councils recent ordnance affected was APD’s issuing of tickets for camping in the city. For people experiencing homelessness, people presumably on the edge of poverty, paying city tickets seems like just one more barrier to them ever improving their situation. The ordinance has had the effect of making homelessness more visible so I can understand why some might perceive this as an “increase” in homelessness in the city but it is not. Unfortunately Austin doesn’t have a lot of spare housing to go around these days, due to the much ballyhooed “growth” that Texas has experienced over the last several decades. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/29/report-abbott-boasts-record-unemployment-economic-growth/

Of course it is this growth that the Texas GOP is quick to trumpet that is a major contributor to homelessness in large cities like Austin. Increased growth and an influx of wealthy people from around the world have made affordable housing in Austin close to impossible to find. People who might be on the edge of getting off the street and into stable housing are further pushed back due to ever-increasing rents and home-prices. It is of course the large-cities across Texas: Houston, DFW, Austin, San Antonio, the places in the state that reliably vote Democrat, that have experienced the largest percentage economic growth of the last several decades. Many parts of rural Texas remain impoverished and face many of the same hardships small town and rural communities face across the South and the nation.

There are many reasons for the urban/rural divide politically across this country. Of course cultural divides can’t be ignored entirely with the diversity of the city encouraging a more liberal worldview as opposed to the more insular and traditional mores of country life. My main point is that cities seem to occupy a central contradiction in modern life. The Texas GOP sees the growth of the economy in Texas as proof that their free-market orthodoxy is working splendidly whilst ignoring the fact that most of the growth has occurred in a few large sectors that never vote for them, at the expense of everyone and everything else. They have also hamstring cities abilities to deal with the problems of modern life during the current crisis. https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/texas-supreme-court-blocks-enforcement-of-austin-travis-county-restaurant-restrictions/

The fact is that GOP leaders have nothing but distain for the residents of the majority of their state despite those residents being the reason they can brag about the “great Texas economy”. After all when Elon Musk decided to flee liberal California for “conservative” Texas he decided to move his new Tesla factory right into “liberal” Austin. All this is to say that leaders in the state of Texas mostly ignore the wishes and voices of the the people of their most successful cities and only seem to address them to score political points in the small towns and rural county’s that elect them, and to this I say, enough is enough!