On a concrete pillar beneath an overpass in a gentrifying part of East Austin, someone has written in bright-orange spray paint: “Bad place to camp or do drugs—Leave.” It’s one of few reminders, aside from some orange syringe caps, that a community of the unhoused lived here for much of last year. In late August, under threat of citation or arrest, the destitute campers were flushed out by police and city contractors.
Many gathered what they could and simply shuffled to a park across the street. They pitched their tents—a shred of privacy and shelter from the elements—and resumed surviving. Three months later, the cops and cleaning crews arrived again; the unhoused dutifully dispersed, some to a nearby strip of land between a railroad track and a poultry company, where they remained as of early March. Others fled to the shore of Lady Bird Lake, where they were cleared out in February.
This is daily life for more than 2,000 unsheltered individuals in Austin, a fast-growing tech hub where housing costs are suffocating the working class. A similar dynamic prevails in other major cities, but, for a time, things were different in Texas’ capital.
