Austin mayor looks at camping limits

Step into Ricky Johnson's tent at Neches and Seventh streets in the middle of the day, and the temperature drops significantly to something bearable.

Johnson, 61, has propped up several tarps to create a makeshift shelter for himself. The cozy square room has a bed and a couch; bags and clothing hang on the tarp's walls. He's just a few steps from the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, which provides a place to sleep for people who don't have one. But Johnson said he prefers his tent because it's more permanent and he can keep an eye on his belongings.

"This is home. I paid for this," he said, waving at the food and clothing inside. "I worked hard for this. It's not the best. But I ain't going to give it up."

Johnson doesn't have to pack up and move under Austin's current ordinance, which the City Council amended in June to allow camping in certain parts of the city that didn't specifically prohibit it, as long as people aren't endangering themselves or impeding the use of public property. However, that could change under suggestions Mayor Steve Adler made Thursday on an online City Council message board.

Adler called "for some level of ordinance clarification and corrective action" and said the city manager could do several things, including moving people outside the ARCH to better and safer places; requiring people to leave 4 feet of clearance on sidewalks and to stay 6 feet away from building entrances; and barring people from camping in areas that officials have deemed "the most unsafe."

Many, if not all, of these changes could occur without action by the City Council, which on Sept. 20 delayed any decision to update the camping and obstruction ordinances until October.

Austin police officers Vanessa Jimenez and Jose Rizo, who work downtown, said they still regularly respond to 911 calls about people camping, sitting or lying in ways that are no longer illegal. However, the calls do seem to have diminished as more people learn about the changes.

"Sometimes it feels like the whole city's mad at us for not being able to remove people, when we didn't make any of those rules," Rizo said.

Jimenez and Rizo said, under the previous ordinance, they rarely cited or arrested people for violating these city codes. They often used the threat of arrest or citations as a tool to get people to move along.

"We don't go out of our way to arrest people, especially for Class C misdemeanors," Jimenez said. "We would use warnings and get people to voluntarily comply. Voluntary compliance is our aim."

Still, Jimenez and Rizo said they would arrest or cite people when they wouldn't comply. Records show that Austin police handed out about 18,000 citations to people for violating the city’s camping, sit/lie or panhandling ordinances between 2014 and 2016, according to a city review of downtown Austin community court data.

Jimenez said it has been jarring to see so many tents pop up throughout the city.

"Before, I don't think we had this many people set up with whole houses out here, with bedrooms and snack bars," she said. "A lot has changed."

Rizo said he lately has been seeing and smelling more feces and urine downtown. In his message Thursday, Adler said people should be informed that they can call 911 if they see people urinating or defecating in public.

"Prohibitions of this kind of behavior should be enforced," Adler wrote. "Our residents should be encouraged to call 911 when they see laws being violated."

No matter what decisions city leaders make, Rizo and Jimenez said they always have adjusted accordingly whenever city laws have changed.

"Either way, I show up to work, and I enjoy what I do," Jimenez said. "It's really about what the citizens want. My job is to police, to answer the calls."

Johnson said he hopes the rules don't change for him, because he has finally had some semblance of stability since he has been allowed to set up his tent.

"If they take it away, they'll have to take me," Johnson said. "They'll have to put me in handcuffs. I'm going to jail. Because I ain't got nowhere to go."