Here’s a sour-hearted Texas situation that could change at any moment. Nobody has yet been arrested for camping in that state! When we first heard the news in May that camping had been banned in the entire state1, it seemed a wild overreach in order to prevent people who are homeless from sullying the sidewalks and parks of state capital Austin.
This event occurred even as the city government of Austin was attempting to find practical solutions as well as acceptable locations for tent encampments in the city.
At first, it appeared to be a penny-pinching version of “give them bus fare and send them to another state,” a time-honoured tradition of putting local and regional legislator heads in the sand. (This latest brainwave did not even include paying for bus fare.)
However, news of a lack of arrests so far would seem to suggest that Texas is slowly catching up with a reality: when a homeless person has nowhere left to go, there’s no real point in going anywhere. And the threat of fines and arrests have little impact on those without the money to pay for their supposed crimes and misdemeanours.
Meanwhile, authorities are being forced to face an uncomfortable reality: maintaining a single homeless arrestee in jail runs into the tens of thousand dollars per year. You can read this article discussing the cost of incarceration in all fifty states in Vera – The Price of Prison: Prison Spending in 20152
Welcome, Texas, to the impotence of a camping ban useful only for chasing away tourists. None of this solves the pressing problem of homelessness in city or state. Read/hear more at KYUE: No arrests made in enforcement of homeless camping ban in Austin, report says
Footnotes
- Try: Kansas City Flops A Flap — Urgent Clearing of A Homeless Tent “City”
- See also this article from the Marshall Project, which discusses prison costs that are not paid by the state, but by family and friends: The Hidden Cost of Incarceration
