Who is Paige Ellis, the Architect Behind Austin’s Destructive “Open Camping” Policies?
October 13th, 2022
By Save Austin Now
Paige Ellis was the architect behind “open camping” for Austin. Her DSA group (Democratic Socialists of America) works hard to push Austin politicians to take extreme stances that ping. 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 Ellis is driving the agenda. Her 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, Paige Ellis 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 Paige Ellis is doubling down. She won’t admit failure. Now, she’s trying to run for another term. Let’s not let her get away with it.
Paige Ellis is Inexperienced & Radical
Paige Ellis Became a City Councilor with No Prior Experience
Paige Ellis Favors Narrow Ideological Activism Over Data-Driven Policy
Paige Ellis’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.
This Isn’t the Austin We Love.
We could go on and on, but you get the picture.