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Comment by SaintGhurka | Hacker News Reader

To add some missing details on this, in 2018/19 the city council passed some ordinances that removed the criminality of some homeless activities. Specifically, they made it explicitly legal to camp in most public spaces (excluding parks) and they permit panhandling, sitting and sleeping on public sidewalks.

So there's a lot of "campsites" downtown. A lot of tents, or just people in sleeping bags on the sidewalk. A lot of people peeing against the buildings.

It's hard to score the upsides and downsides without starting an argument, but it feels like much of Austin has soured on the "decriminalization of homelessness".

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Worth noting, before the city council legalized homeless camping there were literally zero tents.

Did you have no homeless people, or were they still sleeping rough, just without a tarp to keep the wind and the rain off their heads?

There was always a homeless population but they would stay in shelters or camp deep in the woods and keep to themselves. Now homeless are leaving the shelters and choosing to live in the streets.

since 2019 (when the camping ordinance was passed):

* homelessness has increased 11%

* Un-sheltered homelessness is up 45%

* Numbers in shelters and transitional housing is down 20%

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200519/austin-sees-11-incre...

Why do you think homeless people are choosing to sleep rough, rather than stay in shelters?

I live in a completely different area of the country, but around here the shelters are all very strict about drugs and alcohol. You can't bring them in, and you also can't be drunk when you arrive. That's one reason why folks here choose to not be in a shelter if they have another option.

Consider that millions of well-adjusted, middle and upper-class people, with jobs, children, access to doctors, therapists, friends, support networks, and, really everything they could ever wish for... Struggle with, and die from drug and alcohol addiction.

If those people can't stop using drugs, it's hard to expect someone lacking all of those resources to be able to do so.

If you make shelter conditional on sobriety, you're unlikely to get more sobriety.

Sorry, to be clear, I wasn't making a judgement either way. Simply that for many homeless people (I volunteered with homelessness organizations for many years), being intoxicated and sleeping on the sidewalk is their favored option over being in a bed and sober.

Whether or not this is the best situation, this was (and likely still is) the reality.

I imagine numerous cities have been spending countless millions on studies and consultants to figure out an answer to that one.

Personally, it's the lifestyle they choose. They make little micro houses out of rubbish and tarps equipped with couches and mattresses. They make comical signs such as "need money for booze" for laughs and get free food from charities or shelters. There are some that have no where else to go but a non-trivial number are there because it's cool these days to live a nomad hipster life.

Downtown Austin is/was somewhat of a party area with numerous bars and clubs and it gets so popular on weekends that the police shut down some of the streets for pedestrians only. It was a festive place to hang out -- which is part of the attraction.

In most cities areas that get taken over by the homeless become blighted places regular people never venture to (i.e. skid row in LA). The reason that people are so freaked out in Austin is that downtown is full of residential and commercially office buildings which results in people having to walk through these areas trying to get to/from work.

I doubt the mentally ill or addiction-riddled choose to be homeless because it's a "hip trendy easy going lifestyle"

There's many reasons why the homeless may choose not to sleep in shelters or certain types of low income housing.

People may be forced to give up property or pets, may be separated from companions. The indoor housing could be unhealthy and vermin filled. It could be an unhealthy environment and den of drug use that the person is trying to avoid.

In Vancouver reporting on the homeless that have chosen to live in Strathcona Park (some 200+) a park resident noted that they were offered a spot at a Single Room Occupancy hotel, but he left because there were "crazy people with machetes" running around.

It's incredible but many of these options for the homeless are so substandard that sleeping outside is a better, healthier and safer option.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903468 for another good reason.

It's more homeless people [1]. I mean, it's really a lot of people. It's pretty unmistakable.

The tent cities do make them more noticeable, though. Also, the police used to be able to roust people illegally camping, so if you had somewhere else to go, you'd have to go, or else go to the shelter.

Now people have the option to refuse the alternatives. So maybe visible homelessness has climbed more than actual homelessness.

[1] https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2020/05/austin-sees-10...

> if you had somewhere else to go, you'd have to go, or else go to the shelter.

You left out the dominant reality - people who have no shelter option and nowhere else to go. Given that likely realty, what does one do?

Any ideas why it seems like tech hotspots start passing laws like this? I'm thinking of San Francisco, Seattle, and Austin. I feel like there is some correlation, but I do not know what it is. My perspective is that maybe it seems more compassionate to not outlaw street camping, but I do not see how it is helpful to anyone including the ones on the street to allow this to continue.

Probably has something to do with much of the tech scene leaning left politically, so more lax homeless restrictions.

In the end, it doesn't solve the root cause of homelessness (probably makes the situation worse locally since it attracts homeless from elsewhere), but it's not like anyone in the US has some serious plans to tackle the issue at scale.

I don't know, but San Francisco, Seattle, and Austin are all pretty similar politically, falling to the left of the democratic mainstream. I don't think that's a new development since they became tech hotspots.

As for whether it's compassionate, I'd just note that at the extreme, compassion stops being a virtue.

I'm not sure about the "tech hotspot" angle, but https://www.econlib.org/homeless-camping-in-austin-a-modest-... while somewhat satirical may well have a point about the "why"...

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