Who is Greg Casar, the Architect Behind Austin’s Destructive “Open Camping” Policies?
Greg Casar is the architect behind “open camping” for Austin. His DSA group (Democratic Socialists of America) works hard to push Austin politicians to take extreme stances that alienate Austinites such as radical open camping. The majority of Austinites are moderate. A very slim number are DSA-affiliated - about 6,000 out of our population of 1.3 million - yet Casar is driving the agenda. His camping idea, which 78% of Austinites disagree with, was to try to build support to make housing a “permanent human right” by making homelessness “more visible”. The result, as we know, has been an unmitigated public health and safety disaster for our beautiful city. Upon completely deregulating “camping” in our public parks, trails, sidewalks, and other sacred areas of Austin, Casar oversaw a 20% drop in the homeless population living in our shelters - in other words, people left shelters when the streets became unregulated. This led to the disaster that we’re seeing today - both for Austinites and the homeless - and Casar is doubling down. He won’t admit failure. Now, he may even run for mayor despite losing the race for Mayor Pro-tem in a chaotic fight.
Greg Casar is Incredibly Inexperienced & Extremely Radical
According to Wikipedia, Greg Casar is “the youngest elected Austin City Council Member and a member of the ‘Democratic Socialists of America’.” He was elected to City Council in 2015 when he was just 25 years old and had no prior work or educational experience except for a bachelor’s degree in "Political and Social Thought" and some volunteer work. He was elected to District 4 with just 14% of district voter support given the low turnout.
Greg Casar Became a City Councilor with No Prior Experience
Casar moved to Austin to do “community organizing” and, according to financial disclosure filings, he was using “gifts” to pay for his “living expenses” at age 25 when he ran to become a council member.
Greg Casar Favors Narrow Ideological Activism Over Data-Driven Policy
His camping idea, which 78% of Austinites disagree with, was to try to build support to make housing a “permanent human right” by making homelessness “more visible”. The result, as we know, has been an unmitigated public health and safety disaster for our beautiful city. Upon completely deregulating “camping” in our public parks, trails, sidewalks, and other sacred areas of Austin, Casar oversaw a 20% drop in the homeless population living in our shelters - in other words, people left shelters when the streets became unregulated.
Greg Casar’s Camping Deregulation is An Environmental Disaster
The environmental impact of deregulated homeless encampments has been devastating. Those impacts include erosion, destruction of native vegetation, debris accumulation, water quality issues, habitat destruction, public health issues (including hypodermic needles and possibly E. coli fecal coliform bacterial contamination of the creek and its tributaries), and discouragement of public use of parks and green spaces.
Greg Casar Continues to Peddle Falsehoods About Camping
Casar has seen our homeless population balloon along with crime and trash, and whenever challenged he says the same few things. One of them is that homelessness is just “more visible” since his deregulation, but both the data and many stories indicate otherwise. We know our lax approach to homelessness has created a magnet for people all over Texas and in fact the country.
The sister of Edward Macintosh, a homeless man who attacked a woman on 6th Street unprovoked, spoke out to CBS Austin. She said that her brother moved to Austin from a group home once the ordinance was lifted.
“In addition to reconsidering the city's homeless ordinance, she says her hope is that city will look at more resources for the mentally ill and those who struggle with addiction. "There's more people like Edward who have chosen to leave their homes because now they can," said Janet. "And with that, there are going to be more Ms. Karli's. There is going to be more victims."
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This Isn’t the Austin We Love.
We could go on and on, but you get the picture.
Greg Casar is the Architect Behind “Open Camping” for Austin.
Here are some of his snake oil arguments against Prop B, which will restore our laws.
Casar and the radical fringe movement that is seeking to maintain the status quo - a situation where Austinites, by a wide margin, have said they feel unsafe walking their trails and parks and ashamed of their city - is indeed just that - a radical fringe.
Casar’s messaging is simplistic and doesn’t go much deeper than just that - messaging. Here’s what the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and Casar, which is leading the movement to maintain the current status quo, are saying, including in a text message that appears to have gone to almost 100,000 Austinites last evening:
Save Austin Now is not trying to “criminalize homelessness”. In fact, aside from the semantic power of that tagline on an advertisement, it’s not actually possible, if you think about it, to make a crime of something like not having a home. They are trying to convince Austinites that if we restore our 2019 laws that removed all restrictions on camping in public thoroughfares, on our trails, and in our beloved parks, we’re “heartless”. Nothing could be further from the truth, and in fact, they’re being dishonest. Their policies have led to more people leaving shelters and living on the streets than any other policy the city has implemented in decades.
They say that we all “deserve” to “see” the homelessness around us rather than “hiding” it so that we will “do something about it”.
This arrogant response assumes two things.
First of all, it assumes who “we” are who “deserve” our public thoroughfares, trails, and parks denigrated and our crime rate skyrocketing. Is it “we” who have shared hundreds of personal stores and videos here about home break-ins by groups of people, sexual assaults on our trails, or putting up with regular, day-by-day harassment while walking our sidewalks? Or is it “we” as in the Mayor and City Council, who have had 2 years and spent $163m taxpayer dollars - $163 from each of the 1 million Austinites and an estimated $32,000 per homeless individual - supposedly dedicated to housing the homeless, but have just 2 contentious “homeless hotels” to show for it. That’s why we’re demanding an audit of the city’s finances to see where that money went.
Second of all this claim assumes that laws don’t have consequences. It is based on the naive idea that by removing all laws related to an activity, you won’t impact how much of that activity you get. No, we’re setting up commonsense restrictions that we, as a society, agree are best for public health and public safety.
Greg Casar doesn't care about the homeless. How do we know that? He's done nothing to actually help them. Greg Casar wants to say “go live on the 7th street bridge in a tent, good luck".