A couple of months ago when I exited the bus at Seaholm station, a lone dog was wandering the sidewalk. The driver warned caution, and of course. But the dog didn’t bother me at all, just trotted down the hill to the tent city, causing me no harm and probably bringing a little companionship to one of the humans there who probably needed it.
As a young professor at the University of Texas, I first came to Austin in the 1990s.
At that time, community activists…some I knew because our kids went to school together…and surely some generous donors, built a resource center, ARCH (Austin Resource Center for the Homeless), across the street from Caritas where I volunteered at the pantry window. There always was a long line outside ARCH of people seeking help.
My son and I still have original artwork from a show and sale there…proceeds to the artists…back years ago. He’s got his, found items assembled by “Mr. Bear”. The conversation at the show, between my six-year-old and the bulky bearded sixties-maybe artist, is one of my best motherhood memories. My gorgeous painting by an unhoused person who I did not get to meet is in storage in Illinois right now but I will get it back as soon as I can.
When I moved back to Austin in 2020 the profusion of tents and what all (grocery carts stashed with, probably at least sometimes, all a person’s life possessions) stunned me.
Commentarian John Oliver (fan-girl here) did one of his best segments ever on Sunday, on homelessness (or I guess as the term now goes “unhoused”), and featured Austin’s horrid haters of others whose luck, for whatever reason, has gone bad. Oliver is so spot-on most always but this I’m re-watching and taking notes.
These awful haters, calling themselves “Save Austin Now” probably are very slushy comfortable (and probably not Austin natives) but had not and probably do not, have a single policy idea to help anyone but themselves.
And they think it “their” Austin. (One interviewed in the piece was a slightly but not very embarrassed “I shouldn’t say this” but did anyway woman…”they (meaning people down on their luck) are not like us”.) Sorry, but not sorry, lady you seem so such worse a person than those you judge. And now you are on YouTube forever. Karma.
Whose Austin….what the what?
This group passed an ordinance in May to clear the tents with no kind of solution for the people living in them. Many, almost all, tents gone now.
As a result, city staff, probably overworked and probably underpaid, are scrambling to find places for people who need somewhere to stay. And winter, even in Austin, is coming. Yet no one knows where those folks are or what will become of them.
Tents are OK in the Hill Country or Big Bend for recreation (for those who can afford that fun) but not under I-35 for survival during winter.
And that poor little dog is maybe still looking for his human.
Dayna Finet 