A New ‘Civility Ordinance’ Makes Swaths of Houston Permanently Off Limits to Homeless People—Pushing Poverty Out of Sight, Not Out of Existence
Houston’s dystopian-sounding “civility ordinance” has been extended so that several areas of downtown are now off limits to homeless people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The ordinance now bans sitting, lying, or placing possessions on the sidewalk in 12 areas across downtown Houston and East Downtown at any time, day or night—effectively pushing unhoused people out of downtown Houston entirely.
It’s a cruel but unsurprising move from the city administration headed by Mayor John Whitmire, who said in a press conference, “Our goal is to get the homeless off the streets of Houston.”
That’s a very specifically worded goal. Not get people housed, not make it so that there are no more homeless Houstonians anywhere, not even to simply get people off the streets, but to specifically push anyone homeless out of the city.
Expansion to Follow
Mayor Whitmire’s administration has alluded to this expansion of the civility ordinance as a kind of pilot program for changes that they hope to make across the entire city eventually…