Together We Can Save Austin

By Matt Mackowiak & Cleo Petricek

We are two different people, who have lived vastly different lives. One a local Republican leader. The other, a lifelong Democratic party activist.

But in recent months we have shared a deep commitment to restoring public safety and public health to Austin by overturning the disastrous homeless camping ordinance which took effect on July 1, 2019.

A few months ago, we launched a nonpartisan nonprofit called Save Austin Now to educate and mobilize Austin citizens on these important standard of living issues.

Our online petition to reinstate the ban on homeless camping in Austin, which was launched on July 17, 2019 and to this date has still not been advanced with any paid advertising, is nearing 90,000 signatures.

We have tried to persuade the Mayor and the City Council that this camping policy has been an objective failure. But they refuse to listen.

Meanwhile The Austin American-Statesman recently reported that violent crime with homeless suspects ‘rose 10 percent last year’, the ‘largest increase in the past five years’. And keep in mind, the policy change only took effect in the second half of the year.

Perhaps most disturbingly, of these arrests, nearly three-quarters of those cases had a homeless victim of the alleged violent crime.

Today we are taking action. Enough is enough.

The Mayor and the City Council will not consider further changes or rescinding this ordinance. Now it is up to us.

This morning we are launching a coalition of organizations and individuals who will put reinstatement of the ban on homeless camping on the ballot in November.

To do this, we must turn in 20,000 hard signatures by mid-July. Citizens can find our signature petition here.

Our ordinance will do three things:

1. Reinstate the ban on homeless camping citywide.

2. Reimpose the sit/lie ordinance for downtown, the UT campus, and the off-campus area surrounding it

3. Ban panhandling at night citywide (from 7pm-7am)

Our coalition is made up of Democrats, Republican, and independents. We represent all neighborhoods in this city. This is an entirely nonpartisan effort.

We are not anti-homeless. We support the worthy efforts to expand housing and encampments around this city that are being made both by the city and private nonprofit organizations.

The homeless camping ordinance has been terrible for our city and terrible for the homeless.

It is now time for this experiment to come to an end.

We can restore sanity to Austin. We can restore public safety and public health. We can return to being a city where residents feel safe to walk at night. We can maintain our image as a thriving and welcoming city.

We must Save Austin Now.

Matt Mackowiak and Cleo Petricek are the co-founders of Save Austin Now, a nonpartisan 501(c)4 organization dedicated to educating Austin residents about standard of living issues. Their website is SaveAustinNow.com.