Dear Mayor Ron Nirenberg, City Manager Erik Walsh, and City Council,

The San Antonio DSA Mutual Aid Committee, endorsers, and supporters are writing to your office in hopes that San Antonio will halt the sweeps (termed “abatement” by the city) and hostile architecture that purposefully restricts and infringes on the health and wellness of our citizens. Below is a list of demands required for unhoused citizens to thrive.

We understand the City of San Antonio (COSA) and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) have been in recent communication concerning highway 281/37, near Hays Street Bridge, and have decided to forcibly remove people using the area for shelter and erect hostile architecture in the form of a fence. This is an area of Texas state-owned land between the borders of COSA Districts 1 and 2, the residents of which are respectively represented by Councilman Bravo and Councilman McKee-Rodriguez.

Unhoused community members have been forcibly displaced from various spaces across San Antonio for years, sometimes even without honoring the required 48-hour abatement notice period. This is an extremely inappropriate response and ultimately inhibits many from accessing permanent housing in the long term. Violent sweeps and hostile architecture hinder the ability of those in our community to live in safety and prevent them from securing housing by removing access to resources and personal possessions. Hostile architecture, such as fences under overpasses, spikes, and studs near shaded public buildings, “No Loitering” signs, benches with armrests, bus stops with no shade, etc. restrict behavior of those who rely on public spaces. Sweeps and hostile architecture are not sustainable solutions. Unhoused community members have described the sweeps and hostile architecture as “dehumanizing,” “painful,” and “humiliating.”

Such harmful responses prolong and intensify the underlying issues at hand. When sweeps led by city officials and police are performed and fences are implemented, the people of San Antonio are displaced to another area that will eventually be swept and fenced. Where will our community members end up when they have nowhere else to go?

Abandoned lots and buildings downtown continue to be fenced off and inaccessible, only to sit vacant for years. Police heavily patrol and criminalize transient people who are forced to wander the streets. Haven for Hope, an option many cite as an ideal resource for unhoused people, consistently struggles to provide adequate care and accessible resources to those in need. To illustrate this, allow me to share some quotes from citizens of San Antonio about Haven for Hope:

"We came to [Hays Bridge] encampment from Haven for Hope. We left with less than we entered with. All of our belongings were stolen while we were housed there. Our shoes, phones, brushes…everything. We have nothing. We have been trying to get work, but we can no longer do that since our phones were stolen." -Joe and Wendy, Houseless Couple

"[...] Case manager after case manager laughed at me. They said they'd help me every step of the way but did not provide me any real resources" - Destiny, single parent, now housed by UTSA's Housing First

"My dad has been [at Haven for Hope] the last 2-3 years, as well as a few other South Texas rehab facilities. [Haven for Hope] does not help you get back onto your feet whatsoever after your program is over, despite having people there specifically for that service." - Jade, housed, on her father, who has a substance use disorder

Even with Towne Twin Village, San Antonio will fail to keep up with the demand to provide consistently safe and clean housing, the bare minimum for any project attempting to address this issue. According to the South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless, San Antonio's homelessness has risen 77% since 2020 despite the efforts of the city and other organizations. For moral, economic, and social reasons, it is in the city’s best interest to address the material needs of our unhoused neighbors. Fencing off and revoking access to shade and rest under highways will cause unhoused neighbors to seek safety in other, equally unsustainable areas. These alternatives may include areas with higher tourism, causing the city to receive less revenue due to people’s discomfort and the stigma associated with unhoused people. Other areas include the outskirts of town, which lack easy access to resources and where it would be harder to protect unhoused citizens from weather, famine, and crime.

San Antonio's current plan for their unhoused citizens is not reliable or sustainable. It has been illegal to encamp in San Antonio since 2005; however, this has not done anything to prevent the growth of the unhoused population. The ordinance must be reassessed due to our growing community crisis and its failure to address the causes of homelessness. Hays St Bridge under highway 281/37 is a place of safety and promise, with many resources within walking distance. These include a gas station, bodega, CAM services, Corazon Day Center and health clinic, a park, and bus stops. Several mutual aid groups come to this area throughout the week to provide meals, hygiene, clothes, trash pick up, etc. which makes this location an integral part of the community. Destroying this encampment and displacing its residents means that the city would be spending more on resources to provide worse outcomes. Trying to provide services to a population that is more dispersed and transient throughout the city is nearly impossible, and does not provide a sustainable plan of action to address this crisis.

It is time to decriminalize the lack of housing and create a safe place for the unhoused. San Antonio is their home, just as it is for the housed.

These are our demands:
1. We demand self-determination and a seat at the table. To meet this demand, we need honesty, clarity, and communication from the city about the policies and hostile architecture implemented in San Antonio. Unhoused citizens deserve to be consulted about sweeps, fences, and policies that impact their well-being and daily lives. People deserve deliberative, democratic control over the decisions which affect their lives, to the degree that their lives are affected. This is true in people’s governments, in their workplaces, and—particularly relevant for unhoused people—in their living situations.

2. We demand homes. Learn from groups like Towne Twin Village about how the city may support noninvasive housing options. Declare a city-owned portion of the property as a sanctuary for unhoused citizens, by passing an encampment ordinance until a sustainable solution for permanent housing is available to the unhoused people of San Antonio. According to SanAntonio.gov, there are several vacant lots owned by the city that can be dedicated to this demand.

3. We demand to end the sweeps. The people are here to stay. Sweeps are financially draining for COSA, as well as dangerous and traumatic for its residents. Money spent on sweeps throughout the year should be put towards safe, clean, permanent housing. Per Bloomberg, major cities across the nation spend between $1,600 and $6,200 per unhoused person to conduct sweeps throughout 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-12/the-high-cost-of-clearing-homeless-encampments.

Stable living areas allow people to develop systems of accountability and care to keep community members safe and defuse conflict. Sweeps are inherently violent acts because they rob people of their only forms of shelter, medicine, clothes, and other basic necessities. Immediately after sweeps, the community is forced to compete over what remains of these basic resources, which can escalate into violence. Sweeps also discourage people and make them feel less stable and secure. This increases people’s likelihood to use dangerous coping mechanisms like drugs—even if they were clean before. These are the actual results of sweeps, not abstract arguments.
Until the sweeps are ended, we demand that the city notify people of imminent sweeps through physical signage, posted at least 48 hours beforehand. Often, some people are unaware that (or when) a sweep will happen if these notices are only given verbally. This is partly because residents may not be near the encampment at the time the city chooses to notify the community of upcoming sweeps. Physical signage is the only way to provide parity of information access and to allow the community to prepare for displacement.

4. We demand water. Water is a basic necessity, without which people cannot survive, regardless of circumstance. We demand easy access to potable water as well as the expansion of city services promoting basic sanitation for all unhoused citizens in the interest of public health. This necessitates a massive increase in easy, straightforward public access to resources such as clean drinking water, mobile showers, public restrooms, laundromats, regular trash collection, noncoercive mental healthcare, and personal hygiene items.

5. We demand jobs. At encampments, community members frequently express the need for job leads to facilitate upward mobility and permanent housing. Because some people aren't comfortable in the housing currently provided by the city, some of these people may be served better in the short term by skipping the ‘housing first’ strategy to put a greater focus on jobs. Ideally, these jobs will give people enough money to achieve basic stability, and ultimately lead to different housing solutions that suit their individual needs better. Paid job training—with empathetic recognition that people’s presentation and timeliness are affected by their living situation and mental health—would be immensely helpful. City-paid bus passes would give people the ability to attend interviews, secure jobs, and better help them access resources in general. A more efficient process for attaining and safely storing identification documents is also necessary; as well as accessible banking solutions to allow people to safely store their money.

Mutual aid work attempts to have people's backs when they need it, in the ways they ask for help. Nonprofit workers do a lot of critical work every day—the problem is that the city’s current provision of resources is simply not enough. People need and deserve more. This letter is an urgent call to the City of San Antonio to trust our community’s informed deliberation and reflection—over time, we have built up a good understanding of what people urgently need.

All this said, we condemn the arrangements to sweep and fence off the underpass near Hays Street Bridge. We defend the right to safety and security for all San Antonio residents and communities, sheltered or not. The City of San Antonio ought to do the same.

Thank you for your time. We look forward to a future in which our city is able to democratically recognize and affirm the dignity of all its residents.