Tents Under Bridges Outlawed in Houston

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is looking to get homeless "off the streets." To that end, the mayor is pursuing an anti-homelessness initiative. "Turner’s initiative features an anti-panhandling awareness campaign and ordinances that would ban tents on public property and make it a Class C misdemeanor to obstruct city streets," Kelsey E. Thomas writes in Next City.

To accommodate the people Mayor Turner would be making into criminals under his initiative, Turner proposed, "professionally staffed ‘low-level shelters,'" where people could sleep on mats in a fenced-in area with a roof. These shelters will will be set up under some overpasses and on private property. The non-profit, Star of Hope, also plans to add 215 beds by August with the help of $800,000 in funding from the city, Thomas writes.

Some fear that this expansion of shelters will not be enough to accommodate the people whose shelters would become illegal. "You're outlawing sleeping when you outlaw tents," Megan Huston told Thomas. Huston went on to argue that shelter is a basic human need.