NO PLACE TO BE
DATE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
PAGE 21
The years living on the street showed in Alvin Sanderson’s weatherworn face as he approached the microphone at Austin City Hall last June. His bleach-white hair combed neatly back, the 64-year-old had come to urge the city council to roll back a 23-year-old ordinance criminalizing camping in public places, a law he said forced homeless Austinites into dangerous places like creek beds. He spoke of Suzie, a friend he said had been sleeping in a tunnel when a flash flood took her life. “She was a good person,” he said, his halting voice rising. “She surely didn’t have to die because of a camping ordinance.” He spoke of Sarah, a friend killed while resting in a dark corner of the city, and Doc, who drowned.
“I think a change like this strikes at the heart of the grand bargain of many cities as it relates to city leadership, the business community, and the police.”
The buzzer sounded—his allotted time was up—but he wasn’t through, squeezing in one more eulogy before returning to his seat. A row of activists arrayed along the hall’s back wall burst into applause.
Sanderson was the first of many to testify that night, most in favor of curtailing a trio of local laws that targeted homeless people. Just after 2 a.m., the council made its decision. Camping would now be allowed in many places in the city, including under highway overpasses; panhandling restrictions would be wiped from the books; and a ban on lying down, sitting, or sleeping in the downtown area would become, essentially, a ban on intentionally blocking sidewalks.
It was an unusual move. For three decades, cities nationwide have increasingly criminalized behaviors necessary for homeless people to survive, a law-and-order response to an unchecked affordable housing crisis. Other major Texas cities enforce suites of such laws, and Houston had passed a new camping ban just two years prior. Now Austin—Texas’ least affordable city—was
