Austin City Council members walked in Friday morning poised to update homeless camping restrictions in the wake of their controversial decision to rescind bans in June.
By lunchtime, the effort had fallen apart.
Instead of a vote on any provision, the council punted action to Oct. 17 after confidence in the process to pass an ordinance put forward by Mayor Steve Adler and Council Members Greg Casar, Ann Kitchen and Kathie Tovo collapsed.
"This has been such a contentious issue and hard issue emotionally in a variety ways," Council Member Delia Garza said. "I can’t see any of us walking out today feeling good in a tiny way."
The decision was a stunning anti-climax to the political rift that has grown since the council repealed and limited ordinances related to camping, sitting, lying down and panhandling on June 20. The increased visibility of Austin's most marginalized community in the streets has created a fervor of frustration from many who wish things would go back to the way they were.
"Some of us feel like (the council) pushed the homeless out into communities and used them as pawns," said Cleo Petricek, a leading organizer of the effort to bring back camping bans. "Now we got to wait till Oct. 17. That's extremely frustrating. And for me, it's never been about the eyesore or about a homeless person looking a certain way, it's about actual harassment threats."
For now, the tents will remain.
The delay came after the council spent hours listening to testimony this week from a community sharply divided over the situation with homeless camping. Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison likened the hearings to the council having "their teeth kicked in," as she pleaded for unity from the dais Friday.
Several proposals to update the homeless camping ordinance were on the table at the outset of Friday's meeting. They included possible camping bans on streets in West Campus and downtown as well as under overpasses and in creek beds.
Deliberations began with an ordinance cobbled together from two dueling proposals that council members made two weeks ago as they approved next year's city budget, which contains a record $62.7 million dedicated to measures to address homelessness.
Adler, Casar, Kitchen and Tovo — the four council members behind the proposed ordinance — had identified six main points of contention to discuss, including whether to allow camping on sidewalks, the extent "no camping" signs should be deployed and allowing camping in high fire risk areas. It appeared Adler intended to have each council member indicate where they might land in each point and then vote.
However, it quickly became clear that some council members were either fundamentally opposed to the whole exercise or had serious concerns outside of the six issues identified by the ordinance's four authors.
Council Member Jimmy Flannigan reiterated his preference that the council wait for the city's newly hired homelessness strategy officer to give input before it takes any action.
"A week and a half into her job and we are going to dictate to her how to do it?" Flannigan said. "We should not be doing this right now."
After Garza signaled her opposition to passing anything, Adler appeared to doom any action when he concurred with postponing a vote.
Kitchen then suggested that the council move forward with a resolution to direct city staffers to study how to address the city's two most notorious homeless encampments at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless and under Texas 71 near Packsaddle Pass.
Garza made a motion to pass a version of the homelessness ordinance put forward by Casar, which contained the loosest camping bans of all proposals. The move ultimately left the council with two choices: vote on Casar's ordinance or punt the decision to another day.
They punted. The vote was 9-1 with Flannigan against and Council Member Alison Alter off the dais.
On social media, calls for some council members to resign or be recalled emerged as news of the vote to postpone spread.
But at City Hall, the council continued to discuss some of the ins and outs of the issue.
One concern was with how Austin police would enforce any new laws. Police Chief of Staff Troy Gay said police have only issued three camping citations amid about 300 complaints since June 20, adding that he would like to see specific boundaries to camping bans so officers would not have to rely on judgment calls when issuing citations.
Under questioning from Alter, police leaders did dispel rumors that officers have not been able to enforce a host of other laws.