AUSTIN (KXAN) — After a lengthy public comment period, the Austin city council voted Thursday afternoon to purchase a vacant property near East Oltorf Street and Interstate 35, with plans to convert it into a housing navigation center.
The specific site is at 2401 S I-35 in District Three. It’s near multiple schools and shares a fence with homes, which opponents stressed as risks during public comments.
Members of the public who spoke fell on both sides on whether the purchase should happen or not, but most speakers said they saw the need for a housing navigation center. Some opposed the creation of a new center altogether.
The opposition largely characterized the center’s potential clients as a potential threat to them and their families. Supporters said that those clients could include families and Austin ISD students.
The proposal to purchase the property came after a search began in June for a new location for the services provided at the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center.
Councilmember Marc Duchen moved to table the item for 30 days, but it was not seconded.
Ahead of the vote, CM José Velásquez, who represents district three, said he would vote no on the proposal to give the community more time to present a better plan to the public.
“We cannot lose the humanity of the issue,” he said.
Duchen, Velásquez and CM Zo Qadri voted against the item. The council’s eight other members carried the item to passage.
In a Wednesday interview with KXAN’s Grace Reader, Mayor Kirk Watson said that the proposed center would have been controversial no matter where the city tried to put it.
“Certainly there is a subset of that population of our community that worries, and I don’t dismiss those worries about where it gets located,” he said. “In order to address the needs of people living homeless and to solve this problem, this humanitarian problem we have, we’re going to need to have certain types of facilities that meet certain types of needs.”
He noted that unlike other navigation centers in Austin, a city-owned facility would give Austin the ability to set and enforce the center’s rules.
“One of the things I say is with all the success that we’re seeing in approaching how we address people living homeless, we have to keep moving forward,” Watson said. “We have to keep making investments that will help us in this. And I don’t have any question that a new Navigation Center will help us continue moving forward.”
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