AUSTIN (KXAN) — After the city of Austin launched a citywide effort to clear homeless encampments and get people connected to shelter, we now have more information about how much that three week effort cost and what it produced.
David Gray, the man in charge of Austin’s homelessness response effort, said the cleanup effort:
- Resulted in 669 sites visited (some may have been repeats)
- More than 1,200 people engaged
“There is some duplication here too. We might have engaged somebody at a site on Monday, maybe they migrated to a new site. We happened to be at that site on Thursday and so we engaged with that person again,” Gray said.
- 181 people were connected to shelter
- 87 additional were connected to services
“Where did everyone else go?” Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter asked. “What is the theory just move to a different camp or what just…?”
“In general … a lot of times folks were just like okay, I’ll leave and just kind of disappeared on us and hopefully we’ll run into them again,” city staff responded.
- 71 people were given citations by APD
- 22 people were arrested, mostly for outstanding warrants
- Hundreds of tons of debris was collected
- 369 city staff utilized
Which brings us to the price tag: An estimated $838,753…