The Austin city council is once again patting themselves on the back for a tremendous nonachievement. Without any change in strategy to serve the homeless population of the city, officials have decided to continue throwing money at the problem and hope that, this time, $350 million over ten years is the charm. The Council touts spending taxpayer money on housing and wraparound services, but these units are “low barrier,” meaning that there is no obligation for the homeless to avail themselves of these services.
While purchasing more housing and investing in providing services on its face seems like the best the city can do to help contend with the vexingly large homeless population in Austin, in reality it could be what is making the problem worse.
The problems that plague homelessness services in Austin and beyond are systemic and require a complete reevaluation of how cities approach the issue.
First, there is no real understanding of the scope of the problem. Point-in-Time (PIT) counts are notoriously unreliable as a method of estimating the homeless population in an area. Because it relies on counting only homeless individuals that can be seen on one day of the year there is no way to determine how many others who are sleeping in cars, couch surfing, squatting in abandoned buildings, or have set up camps in greenbelt areas that go overlooked. What’s worse is this is the method used across the country as the basis of homelessness strategy.
Second, there is a woeful lack of enforcement of the ordinances that are already in the municipal code. The lack of enforcement, whether deliberate or a result understaffed police department, has resulted in homeless camps that have been found to be full of drugs and garbage or have been cause of fires that have gotten out of control. In the urban areas, aggressive panhandling and open-air drug use has forced many private businesses to hire their own private security.
Finally, the current metrics that NGOs use to measure success will not lead to an end to the cycle of homelessness. Until homeless service providers focus on programs that lead to self-sufficiency as opposed to just housing taxpayer money will continue being thrown into a system where people exit right back on the streets in the same position they entered.
As the 89th legislative session begins there are many possible ways to use the state authority to address some of these fundamental problems. A systematic audit of homelessness services is absolutely necessary to determine why hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into the homelessness services system, but the homeless population continues to increase. It would be improper to allow a broken system to continue auditing itself, so an external auditor would be required. SB 399 has been filed requiring such audits.
The audit, as described in SB 399, would determine if service providers are working towards helping homeless individuals reach self-sufficiency. Additionally, legislation could be developed that mandates uniform data sharing across homeless service providers. Requiring participation with uniform methods of population estimates including keeping track of those individuals who use these services will help paint a more complete picture of the scope of homelessness.
The Texas legislature also needs to hold municipalities accountable for their pattern of not enforcing public safety ordinances like public camping. SB 241 is a way to address this issue. In this bill, the state could withhold funds from cities that fail to protect public spaces from vagrants and instead distribute those funds to the Office of the Attorney General and Texas Department of Public Safety to ensure that taxpayer money is being used on the enforcement of public nuisance ordinances.
However homelessness is addressed in Texas this session, it needs to be a drastic departure from its current approach. Publicly committing hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade makes for a great story for elected officials but continuing to throw that money after ineffective policy will not result in a happy ending.