Cognitive Dissonance

Video Transcript:

MASSAN The cities across the country are struggling with homelessness, Austin, Texas is among them. Two years ago, it decriminalized activities related to homelessness. Then this year, citizens voted to reverse that. The Texas legislature also banned public camping statewide. Stephanie Sire reports. Until very recently, this spot under a north Austin bridge was home for Freddie Williams. That's where you were living? This is it. For two years, the 47-year-old camped here, until getting in a fight with another camper that escalated. He says he left to avoid arrest. So this is just kind of what was left and then people kind of rummaging through to see what they could find a value. A former oil worker, William, says he wants had a job, a home and a family. But his divorce led to drinking, which led to losing his job. He committed forgery, which landed him in prison. Since getting out, he says he's struggled to find work and housing and continues to struggle with drug abuse. I felt like I had everything. I had it all figured out. Everything together, man, it didn't get that monkey wrench thrown in there, man. You figure out that you really don't know what's going on and try to plan stuff, man, and plan to never work out. What would it look like for you to have a second chance with that be housing? With that be a job? What do you need? Both. A house and a job. One of the country's fastest growing big cities. Diane is also one of its least affordable, with a median home price that recently hit almost $575,000. As the city has grown into a tech and culture hub, the problem of how to help the more than 2,000 unsheltered people here has divided Austin. The most important thing in getting people sheltered at a house is having shelter or housing available. Diana Gray oversees the city's efforts to address homelessness. We asked to speak remotely and miss to surge in COVID cases. The thing that is most correlated with increase in homelessness is an increase in housing practices. And so, well, lack of affordability isn't the sole cause of homelessness. It is what we see drive increases over time. You had also an amendment to $184. Two years ago, Austin's Liberal Leaning City Council effectively made it legal to camp and sleep in some public places and panhandle. It was part of an effort to stop the revolving door from the jails to the streets and to better help unsheltered residents connect with services. That move, along with COVID-19, which reduced capacity at shelters, made the city's homeless population visible to all. Many Austinites recorded. Well, the city of Austin will re-instate its homeless camping ban. For the weekend, voters passed Proposition B. In May, voters by a wide margin approved a measure which prohibits unsheltered people from sleeping in public. Something avic could say they can't help but do. Now, Austin police can issue citations with fines as high as $500 for sleeping on the streets or even lying on a park bench. If violators fail to move or show up in court, they could be arrested. What we've seen has caused trauma and caused all sorts of unwarranted and unwanted chaos on our streets and in our city. Amanda Rios supported Prop B. She and her husband have lived in their home in Northeast Austin for around 14 years. Because of their proximity to the highway, there have always been some homeless people nearby. But after the city stopped enforcing ordinances against public camping, she says things got much worse. I go to the library and I see trash. I can't go to the park because there's homeless tents, there's drug needles, there's drug deals going down in the middle of the day. In front of our home, we heard and saw a woman being sex trafficked and we saw the men going in and out of her tent. And we saw her and we heard her cries and my children's window is close to the street and they heard her. There are laws against drug and sex trafficking and the enforcement has no direct connection to Prop B. But Rios says criminals exploit the homeless and hide among them. I know people who were in drug trafficking, they were arrested and it started an avenue for them to get help. And so they went to jail and because of jail, they were able to change their life around. When Amanda's home, we met Cleopatraisek, who last year co-founded Save Austin Now, a bipartisan political action committee that got Prop B on the ballot and is now suing the city to enforce it. She's a Democrat and former probation officer and says low-income communities like this one face far greater impacts from allowing homeless people to set up camp. We spoke to her in a park where an encampment had cropped up. She says the homeless themselves shouldn't have to live like this. I felt like no one was being served by the inhumanity of the conditions that they're in. This is not California, this is Texas. We have high heat and we have frozen winters. We have had homeless individuals freeze to death and we've also had homeless die from the heat. In Los Angeles, the city's new mayor, Karen Bass, has declared a state of emergency over homelessness. It's her first official act as city leader since being sworn in Sunday. I will not accept a homelessness crisis that afflicts more than 40,000 Angelenos and affects every one of us. It is a humanitarian crisis that takes the life of five people every day. Anna Scott covers housing from member station KCRW in Los Angeles, Hianna. Hi, Ari. So this is a humanitarian crisis, but it's not a sudden or new crisis. What's the reasoning behind declaring a state of emergency? Part of this at this point is about making a statement. Bass wants to signal that she's willing to use the bully pulpit of her office, I think, to call for solutions to this crisis, which is definitely something that the former mayor Cagarsetti was criticized for not doing. Also though you just heard Bass say more than 40,000 people are experiencing homelessness in the city. She points out in her written declaration that that's more people than were displaced during the Northridge earthquake here in 1994. And the rate of people dying on the streets in LA has grown dramatically over the last decade. A 200% increase. That's due to a number of things, including heart disease, overdoses from drugs like fentanyl and even homicide. So for all of those reasons, Bass is calling homelessness an emergency and LA's city council members agree with her. They approved this declaration yesterday. Beyond the statement, what does it actually do? And what are the limitations as well? Yeah, I will start with what it doesn't do because that is more clear. It doesn't bring in any money, so LA is not going to get millions of dollars from FEMA. Like it would if there were hurricane, for example. It doesn't mean the city is going to get an army of social workers or any new resources really, but it does give Bass some power to lift red tape around things like building affordable housing and shelters or investing in services and resources without going through a competitive bidding process like you would under normal circumstances. But we don't know yet how she plans to use these powers. And one big question is how far she's going to go? Is she going to push projects through in different city council districts, for example, that maybe don't want new affordable housing or new shelters? That was again a criticism of the previous mayor that he really let the 15 city council members each have their own approach to homelessness. So one thing I'm watching for is whether Bass is going to have a more unified strategy, which he has promised. And if these emergency powers are going to help her do that. What are you hearing from advocates for unhoused people in LA? How are they responding? A lot of people are taking a wait and see to see when more details come out. But I have definitely heard concerns that this could lead to a lot of enforcement against people camping on the streets, which might put them out of sight, but isn't going to solve homelessness because the truth is no mayor is going to fix LA's serious affordable housing shortage, which built up over decades in a year or even in an entire four year term. And that lack of affordable housing is at the root of the homelessness crisis. So it makes some advocates nervous to hear big promises about cleaning up the streets quickly because where are people going to go? Has the mayor said what her next step on this front is going to be? Yeah, so she is expected to come out any day with a more detailed plan on homelessness called Inside Safe. We expect to see her lay out her whole strategy and how she's going to use these emergency powers. She did promise on the campaign trail to move about 17,000 people off the streets during her first year. So very tall order and we'll see. This housing reporter Anna Scott of the First Station takes the RTO. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much.