How Change Happens
August 17, 2010: Richard R. Troxell and House the Homeless at the Austin City Council meeting.
When the words “City Council meeting” are mentioned, many people, for one reason or another, tend to zone out. But stick around, and you will hear an amazing thing. Last August, the philosophical position of House the Homeless was made clear by Richard R. Troxell and published by Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which also supplied a description of the circumstances, as follows:
Today as this blog posts the Health and Human Services Committee of the City of Austin is debating whether to amend the no sit/no lying down ordinance to exclude people with verifiable known disabilities… there is a lot of opposition…
The purpose of the session was for Richard to state the case, and for the Council to discuss it and mull it over. So, here is the amazing thing. Look at the signs. They say “Thank You.” The House the Homeless folks arrived with signs saying “Thank You,” as if the City Council had already decided to do the right thing. That is So. Extremely. Cool. Any young person interested in changing the world would be well advised to become an apprentice or intern for this organization. There couldn’t be a better education.
House the Homeless takes part in such meetings frequently, and Richard often speaks. Take a look at his health survey testimony from July 2010. Or his testimony earlier this year on the No Sit/No Lie Ordinance (which is also paradoxically known as the Sit/Lie Ordinance). House the Homeless went so far as to obtain a Memorandum of Law from TRLA (Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc.), which emphasized the difficulties faced by the targets of the ordinance, and opined that, if reasonable accommodation were not provided for the disabled homeless, the city would be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities act. That is another interesting group, by the way. Its homepage, http://www.trla.org/, proudly quotes a frustrated bureaucrat:
I think that [TRLA] is the problem because they’re supplying these people with the information and they’re telling them all about the federal laws and everything.
Just when it seemed that progress might be made, someone changed the wording in Austin’s proposed Sit/Lie Ordinance, applying it only to physical disabilities. The Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit group that fights for economic and racial justice for the poor, weighed in with a letter which Richard has also contributed to. Addressed to the Mayor and the Council, it emphasized that an ordinance which only protected people with physical disabilities would be discriminating against those with mental disabilities. It said,
We are of the opinion that all persons with disabilities should be exempt from fines and penalties under the ‘No Sit/No Lie’ ordinance, including those who are temporarily sitting down because of the effects of their disability.
James C. Harrington ended the letter with a reminder that the Texas Civil Rights Project would be happy to litigate the issue, but hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. Meanwhile, HtH suggested amending the ordinance with clearly stated exceptions, and the training of police officers to recognize those exceptions, and offered to provide officers with plastic cards listing the acceptable disabilities.
Eventually, after three “stakeholder” meetings and many televised City Council committee meetings, Richard decided,
I will take 50 guys and ask City council to Not give Austin a Black Eye. We will all have one black eye.
You would be astonished at the total number of hours and the amount of sheer tenacity required to win even a partial victory on this one issue alone. To learn how it came out, please see “Austin’s Revised Sit/Lie Ordinance,” in which we mentioned an article by the Austin journalist Andrea Ball, titled “New rules allow homeless people with disabilities to sit on sidewalks.” Imagine what Lenny Bruce would have done with material like that.
When “New rules allow homeless people with disabilities to sit on sidewalks” is a piece of good news, something has gone desperately awry. To get even this far, the city had to be reminded of human priorities and, perhaps more relevantly, of the possibility of a lawsuit. Imagine how many months and meetings it could take to convince the city to put more benches out there.
As Richard says,
The City also has the resources to mitigate the situation by merely providing benches for all citizens. The City Council chooses not to provide this alternative because the downtown business operators are afraid that people will use them. They probably wouldn’t mind… but it might not be ‘their’ people. So we end up with both selective enforcement and the withholding of resources (tax payer dollars) because we can’t selectively ensure that the recipients will be the ‘deserving folks.’
Meanwhile, nationally, why not just cut to the chase, and do something to end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers, and prevent economic homelessness for all 10.1 million minimum-wage workers? That would be the Universal Living Wage, and more information about it is available on this page.
Reactions?
Source: “Austin,” Mobile Loaves & Fishes, 08/17/10
Image by House the Homeless.
Austin’s Revised Sit-Lie Ordinance
Recently Andrea Ball, a journalist with The Austin American-Statesman newspaper, wrote about changes made to Austin’s “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance. There had already been a sit-lie ordinance since 2005, one that included exceptions for people camping out to buy concert tickets, or watching a parade. When you look at it from a certain angle, that’s cold and harsh. Sitting on the sidewalk was okay for music lovers (with money to spend) and parade-goers (who cheer as politicians ride past and wave), but not okay for some homeless person who might have just gotten out of the hospital, or gone weeks without a decent night’s sleep. Ball writes,
Under the new rules, people with medical problems — such as diabetes, mental illness, heart problems or cerebral palsy — can sit or lie down for up to 30 minutes. If someone receives a ticket, they must to prove to the court that they have a disability and were experiencing a medical problem that forced them to rest at that moment. People can also sit down if they are in line to receive services…
Actually, anyone who receives a ticket is urged to bring it to Richard R. Troxell at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH). It says so on the laminated list of guidelines published in English and Spanish, and distributed by House the Homeless. The guide spells out the law, and gives examples of the types of disabilities that might make a person need to sit down once in a while, and enumerates the kinds of documentation that could prevent a legal jam. On the day when they went into effect, Ball told her audience how the new rules came about:
Efforts to revamp the sit-lie ordinance began in the spring of 2010 after homeless people were ticketed for sitting down in line while waiting for service at a downtown health clinic… Homeless advocates claimed the practice was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act because some of the people being ticketed had disabilities and the city needed to make reasonable accommodations for them.
Despite assurances from civic leaders that Austin does not criminalize homelessness, the sit-lie ordinance was enforced mainly against that population. Very many people who would not otherwise have been involved with the criminal justice system were ticketed and punished under this ordinance, for the crime of not having any other place to be. Ball goes on to relate how Richard and his colleagues counted the 2009 sit-lie tickets, and found that 96% of them had been issued to people experiencing homelessness. (Richard adds, “It is my belief that 100% of the people receiving these tickets were perceived to be homeless at the time of ticket issuance. I was only able to verify that 96% were experiencing homelessness at the time of the ticketing.)
This is a clue to why House the Homeless is such an effective organization. It herds the ducks into a row and presents facts to back up its claims and demands. For examples of the group’s thorough information-gathering methods, and how Richard uses the numbers to make strong cases, please see the “2011 Health Sleep Study” and “No Sit/No Lie: Troxell’s Testimony.”
The title of Andrea Ball’s article, by the way, is “New rules allow homeless people with disabilities to sit on sidewalks.” When we can read a sentence like that and not even blink, it’s indicative of a sad state of affairs. If a dictator were in charge, it would be tempting to sarcastically say, “Wow! People who have nowhere to live, can rest on the ground for half an hour if they’re sick. What a guy! Give that man a Nobel Peace Prize!”
But it wasn’t a dictator, it was a whole city. An entire city needed to be shamed and threatened with a lawsuit so that a disabled homeless person might officially be allowed to sit down. When a special dispensation is needed for that, society is really out of kilter. When the granting of such a permission is hailed as progress, it’s a sign that things have gone terribly wrong. Not to single out Austin — it’s like this in too many cities. As Richard says, “These laws are all over the country, and none of them make allowances for people with disabilities.” Homelessness is the new leprosy.
This point of view is amply reflected in some of the comments added by local readers to Ball’s story. “Filthy… stench… drunk… drugged… insane… junkies… psychotic… human scum…” One commentator would prefer to see Sixth Street napalmed, then bulldozed, all in the name of decency, of course. Others take the opportunity to rag on the sons and daughters of the Lone Star state. “Amazonbob” says,
Texans love to think of themselves as rough-tough cowboys…but somehow nothing seems as frightening to them as a bum. No wonder they need legislation allowing them to carry a glock in each hand and a machine gun in their rear end… there are homeless, emaciated, ragged bums in the world!
“GFWright” adds,
As for homeless people, if all Texans can do is focus their considerable hatred… at the most vulnerable people in society, they deserve their national reputation as cruel, crude, buffoons.
And a level-headed citizen called “Parkhill” says,
My friends, we live in perilous economic times: be careful whom you loathe because no one is immune from hard times.
Reactions?
Source: “New rules allow homeless people with disabilities to sit on sidewalks ,” The Austin American-Statesman, 04/30/11
Image by Ed Yourdon, used under its Creative Commons license.
No Sit/No Lie: Letter from Texas Civil Rights Project
The following is a letter from James C. Harrington, Director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, to the Mayor of Austin, Texas, and the members of the City Council, supporting House the Homeless president, Richard R. Troxell’s, testimony that the “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT
1405 Montopolis Drive
Austin, Texas 78741-3438
(512) 474-5073 (phone)
(512) 474-0726 (fax)
James C. Harrington, Director
February 27, 2011
Mayor Lee Leffingwell and Members of the City Council
City Hall
Austin, Texas
Re: “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance
Dear Mayor and Members of the Council:
This follows up on the letter I sent you on February 1 and outlines what I believe are two deficiencies in the currently proposed ordinance such that they would be violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
First is the apparent omission of mental disabilities or less than full coverage, as Richard Troxell has pointed out. The ADA and Section 504 cover both.
Second is affirmative defense in criminal cases. Both the ADA and Section 504 require that the City accommodate people who have a disability, whether mental or physical, when that disability is known or apparent. Not to do so is a violation of federal law.
Subjecting someone to criminal prosecution because of their disability, whether or not there is an affirmative defense, is not an accommodation. In fact, it would be a discriminatory act. This is all the more so since a person charged with a Class C misdemeanor is not entitled to an attorney.
I believe that the current form of the ordinance would violate the ADA and Section 504. As I mentioned before, we would be happy to litigate this issue; but I hope we wouldn’t have to.
Cordially,
James C. Harrington
No Sit/No Lie: Letter from House the Homeless
The following is a letter from Richard R. Troxell, president of House the Homeless, to the members of the Austin City Council Health and Human Services Committee, informing them that the “No Sit/No Lie” ordinance violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
First, I would like to thank the Health and Human Services Committee and Chief Art Acevedo for all of your hard work on the No Sit/No Lie Ordinance. One of our collective goals has been to bring the Austin No Sit/No lie Ordinance in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (law).
Newly proposed city ordinance language requires that anyone who sits or lies down as the result of a physical manifestation of a disability, not limited to visual observation, is in violation of the ordinance and the offender must create an affirmative defense to prosecution.
Two comments. First, we believe the word “physical” should simply be omitted as it is confusing and suggests…that it refers to a physical condition as opposed to a mental condition. The Americans with Disabilities Act is not the Americans with Physical Disabilities Act… it is simply the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The second issue concerns the requirement that the accused present an affirmative defense. I repeat the unanswered question posed by City Council Member Laura Morrison at the last H&HS Committee meeting. When her husband, Phillip, sits down in response to his diabetes stating he feels woozy, and when his response is found to be unacceptable to a police officer because he did not see a physical manifestation, and a ticket is issued, how will he affirmatively prove to a judge that he was feeling woozy? That’s a simple question. It needs to be asked and answered. Or for the person experiencing schizophrenia, having visions and hearing voices, how will he/she create an affirmative defense four days or (more likely) four weeks after the event? Even if he could recall the event, what evidence will he produce (not to show that he is mentally disabled but rather) to show he felt woozy at that earlier time. So just answer this one question along with who is going to provide (and pay for) legal counsel for these folk sand we’ll call it a day.
By the way it would seem that we, the down-trodden, the disabled, the mentally ill are expected to affirmatively defend ourselves just because you can’t figure out how to prosecute us? The burden of proof, as with every other alleged violation in the ordinance, should remain with the state.
The “affirmative defense” language needs to be struck. There is no need to attack the mentally ill homeless and clearly, that is what this approach amounts to.
Respectfully Submitted,
Richard R. Troxell
House the Homeless
Austin City Council Discriminates Against the Disabled
On Thursday, January 27, the Austin City Council is preparing to change the No Sit/No Lie Ordinance. This ordinance allows for fines up to $500 for people who (even momentarily) sit or lie down in public places.
On January 1, 2011, House the Homeless, Inc., a grassroots organization fighting for the civil rights of all persons, conducted a health survey. The survey showed that 48% of people experiencing homelessness in Austin suffer disabling conditions that are so severe they are unable to work. Nonetheless, the No Sit/No Lie ordinance makes no exceptions for this group of people and continues to fine and jail them for the act of momentarily sitting and resting.
The City of Austin, at the encouragement of House the Homeless, recognizing that it is presently in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has set out to bring the ordinance in compliance with the federal law. To gain compliance, the City Council Health and Human Services Committee was preparing to present the full Council language that would exclude anyone with a disability from fines under the ordinance. Great! However, at the last minute, the committee has mistakenly inserted the work “physical” into the statement. Now, the language would basically read, “Anyone with a physical disability would be excluded from fines under the ordinance.” The effect of this one-word change is both dramatic and devastating.
It would mean that anyone with a mental health disability would be subject to fines and forced to enter the criminal justice system to defend themselves. Imagine the least capable among us, people with mental health disabilities, being steered into our court system and clogging it up just because they had a momentary respite. It is well documented in the journals of American Medical Association that people suffering with mental health disorders are routinely treated with very powerful drugs that often cause them to become woozy and dizzy. They often have sunlight and heat sensitivity that depletes them of their energy and causes them to need to temporarily sit and rest.
The promoters of this one-word change attempt to justify their targeting people with mental disabilities by saying that they would be protected under the language “physical disabilities” because they would be having a “physical” reaction to taking medication that causes them to need to temporarily sit down. Really? This sounds more like slippery lawyer talk and a thinly-disguised rationale created to persecute and prosecute people with mental health problems.
Hey — it’s not the Americans with “Physical” Disabilities Act. It’s the Americans with Disabilities Act, period. The basis of which is not physical problems or mental problems but rather medical problems.
In essence, the Austin City Council is also contending that it is absolutely, 100% impossible for a uniformed City of Austin police officer to identify someone who has a mental health concern. Really? Is it really so hard to read the label on a medication vial that says Haldol, Thorazine, Risperadol, or Zyprexa, and also see that someone needs to sit momentarily? Or to look at an individual presenting a letter from a local mental health facility and make a good judgment as to the legitimacy of the situation?
Furthermore, adding insult to injury, as proposed, the police officer will have no latitude whatsoever but to ticket this mentally ill person and send him or her on to the courts. What are the odds of that person showing up? And if that person stands before a judge (unrepresented or at taxpayer expense) showing that judge the same medical vial or document from MHMR, what then? The way the law will be written, the judge will also have no latitude and be forced to fine the individual hundreds of dollars that he or she will have no chance of paying.
What then? A warrant for their arrest for failure to pay the fine? Once arrested, will we then clog our jail system with people experiencing mental illness needing special medication treatment?
What then? Well, House the Homeless and others will have no choice but sue the city for repeated, flagrant violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act — all at taxpayer expense!
What’s the alternative? Well, we could simply use the original agreed-upon language that excludes all people with medical disabilities from fines and allow police officers to use their good sense and street smarts to determine who can sit and rest momentarily. And Austin can move to become the “world class” city that it purports to be simply by providing enough benches citywide so that anyone, such as moms toting kids and packages, can just sit for a moment and rest briefly before they move on.
Don’t give Austin a Black Eye. The whole world is watching… on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the House the Homeless website with well over 1,000,000 followers.
Photo by Daniel Lobo (Daquella manera), used under its Creative Commons license.
Richard Troxell’s Health Survey Testimony
Troxell’s testimony before City Council’s Health & Human Services Committee, July 2010
Between 2008 and 2010, House the Homeless (HtH) conducted several surveys and gathered other surveys conducted by both the City of Austin and the City of Houston that demonstrated that a majority of people experiencing homelessness want to work. To that end, we have been collaborating with Mobile Loaves and Fishes in our “Let’s Get to Work” Jobs Initiative. A more recent survey conducted in 2010 by House the Homeless shows that 48%, or about half, of those experiencing homelessness, are suffering debilitating health problems that are so severe that they are rendered incapable of working.
472 of the 501 people surveyed in this most recent survey felt that they periodically needed to sit down and rest from time to time, but 94% said they were unable to do so as they could not find a bench. Compounding the situation, there exists a “Quality of Life” ordinance in Austin that prevents people from sitting or lying down making them subject to fines of up to $500. This ordinance contains only one medical exception and that’s for people already sitting in a wheel chair. There aren’t even exceptions for people on crutches or using orthopedic leg braces. With health concerns ranging from Degenerative Heart Disease to Parkinson’s Disease to Degenerative Rheumatoid Arthritis, half of the homeless population is in need of exceptions to the ordinance.
We are now promoting 19 possible exceptions that range from Disability Award letters from the Social Security Administration or the Veterans Administration to participant letters in the David Powell-AIDS Program to people standing in line at a health clinic and so on. Two city-wide stakeholder meetings resulted in two additional recommended exemptions: evidence of taking psychiatric medications or when the heat index hits 100 degrees or more.
House the Homeless has met with all members of City Council and received favorable support. We pointed out that if exceptions are granted (as they should be) then people will be sitting down all over the city. We do not feel that people suffering disabilities should be sitting on the sidewalks etc. House the Homeless took 350 signatures of people requesting benches to the Mayor. We think that as we encourage people to be more “Green” and to leave their automobiles to create a “world class city” we should provide an ample number of benches to accommodate all citizens. This should include pregnant women, people with Christmas packages and those suffering disabilities. In response, Mayor Lee Leffingwell has directed the City Council Health and Human Services Committee to review the 19 “exemptions” requested by HtH and consider benches as part of the mitigation response.
Some social service providers have been opposed to benches suggesting their use may lead to illegal drug sales. HtH contends that drugs can be sold in either a sitting or standing position and in any event, this is a question of enforcement. The benches that House the Homeless recommends have center dividers so as to deter lying down.
The “Stakeholders” who attended the two meetings consisted of the Downtown Austin Alliance, The Austin Chamber of Commerce, about 10 uniformed police officers, their attorney, an attorney for Travis County, Downtown Community Court, City Staffers, a representative from the Omni and the Driscoll Hotels, downtown neighbors, representatives from the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, ARCH and a representative from Caritas. They were all joined in opposition and led by Charles Betts from the Downtown Austin Alliance. As a group and to the last person, they opposed any exceptions or any additional benches intended to be a response to this issue. Really? A doctor working for the United States Government determines that a person is disabled after a process that often takes up to 15 months to complete its findings is somehow unacceptable to this group? Or finding of a disability of a Military Medical Review Team for a person willing to sacrifice a leg in Afghanistan is unworthy of either an exception or a bench?
Today, HTH continues to look toward the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as possible legal recourse to provide the health relief associated with this issue.
Finally, City staff members have reported that “the Ordinance is working.” Really? For whom? In reviewing COA No Sit/No Lying Down ord. citations secured under the Open Records Act, the Community Court showed 2,729 tickets were issued between January 2009 through December 31st 2009. 70 tickets were subsequently dismissed with 708 convictions. So while the HtH survey indicated 48% of these folks had major disabilities, only 2.3% were dismissed on the basis of disability throu gh the court. At the same time, it has been observed by advocates that this ordinance has been used indiscriminately to sweep areas of people regardless of their disabilities. Using the Community Court as a filtering mechanism, in this instance, has proven unduly burdensome on this disabled population and ineffective. It would seem more humane and more cost effective to properly train police officers in an amended ordinance that clearly states specific exceptions.
While it is recommended that a strict list of exemptions be identified by Council, it is nonetheless the belief of HtH that the best common sense, practical response to the issue in a city seeking to attain world class stature, would be for us to simply provide an ample supply of benches available to all citizens.
At one point in time, it seemed okay to value other people in this country as 3/5th’s of that of other people. Almost everyone lined up behind that concept…but not everyone.
Richard R. Troxell
President, House The Homeless
Austin, TX “Quality of Life” ordinances
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