Houston’s homeless could face state camping ban, expanded civility ordinance from Whitmire

Gavin Burton’s life exists within the boundaries of a Westchase shopping center off Westheimer Road. He sleeps under the awning of an optometrist’s office and works at a Panera Bread across the street.

Occasionally, the 21-year-old and his fiancée find a bed at a nearby shelter or seek refuge in front of a church.

After five months on Houston’s streets and almost three months saving paychecks, Burton is trying to put himself and his fiancée on a better path.

“This isn’t something I’m willingly wanting to live through,” he said on a muggy, late January morning. “It just makes it harder when people are continuously telling us, ‘You gotta move, you can’t sleep here, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.’”

In an effort to end homelessness affecting people like Burton, Mayor John Whitmire plans to impose more limitations on the city’s unhoused population this year — that is, if the Texas Legislature does not act first. 

State lawmakers enacted a public camping ban in 2021, which bars sleeping on public property, with little to no effect in Houston. However, a proposal before state lawmakers could give it the bite of similar bans throughout the country, forcing the issue locally. 

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Even without the outside influence, Whitmire repeatedly has stated his intent to expand and strengthen Houston’s existing civility ordinance, which prohibits sitting in designated public areas during the day.

The timeline for such an expansion is unknown; officials involved with the city’s homelessness response plan said Whitmire wants to get people off the streets quickly, but the city currently does not have the funding to open additional bed space. 

Either option – an expanded civility ordinance or state legislation to force compliance with Texas’ camping ban –  would push Houston closer to restricting where people like Burton can rest, day or night. 

Advocates urge empathy

Tiana Richards is a youth housing associate at the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County. 

Her work involves conducting the annual point-in-time count — the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-mandated homelessness census — that organizations assisting the unhoused execute. Every year, 400 volunteers and nonprofit staff canvass Harris, Montgomery and Fort Bend counties to determine the region’s total unhoused population. 

Last year, more than 2,900 people from Harris County were recorded, although that is not the full extent of the county’s homeless population.

“This number only represents point in time,” coalition spokesperson Fryda Ochoa said. “There’s no way to know exactly how many people are truly homeless. The number fluctuates every single day — this gives us a snapshot of information.”

In 2011, the first year the coalition organized the count, it recorded more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in Harris County alone.

For this year’s count, Richards and her colleagues, Quana Smith and Laura Banks, comprised one of two outreach teams searching for unhoused Houstonians in the city’s Westchase neighborhood early Wednesday before asking folks like Burton if they were willing to answer some questions.

The coalition and its partners are required to canvass data for the point-in-time count to access federal funding for its programs. The snapshot also helps determine which resources are needed most and how the coalition can better support its clients.

That data is critical for the nonprofit’s success, coalition President Kelly Young said.

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Young began partnering with city officials last year to map a new collaborative approach between local governments and nonprofits to address homelessness. The result was a multi-step plan that includes gathering specialized experts that can safely and effectively interact with anyone experiencing homelessness.

The teams, in collaboration with the Houston Police Department Homelessness Outreach Team, would then have hubs throughout the city with beds readily available; individuals could find the resources most applicable to their situations. 

The price tag: $70 million for at least the first year, pulled from multiple sources, including city coffers. Whitmire has touted the plan as a rounded, multi-disciplinary approach, but it largely is reliant on outside funding. 

“Once the funding comes in, how do we make sure that we place it and coordinate it based on data, based on feedback from our partners in the right section, so that right when somebody falls into homelessness on the street, within 24 hours, anybody — law enforcement, outreach, whoever — can get them through a door that starts their path,” Young said. 

Support over punitive measures 

Houston long has represented the standard for homelessness outreach and planning, in part because of its nonprofit-government collaboration, said Eric Samuels, president of the Texas Homeless Network. Rising housing costs, however, have increased the number of people facing homelessness across the country.

Getting individuals off the streets has become one of the mayor’s top priorities. In a December 2024 interview, Whitmire said he intended to expand Houston’s civility ordinance citywide and extend the time it is active at the beginning of 2025. In January, he cited Winter Storm Enzo’s four deaths as another reason to move quickly.

Houston’s existing civility ordinance outlines designated areas where people cannot sit or sleep on public sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. There are no similar restrictions that extend overnight. 

Critics have argued the ordinance and public camping bans effectively outlaw homelessness. A Supreme Court decision last year allowed such bans to give cities and states autonomy when addressing homelessness. 

Expanding the ordinance would show compassion toward a population that may not know the damage sleeping outdoors can bring to themselves, said Larry Satterwhite, the city’s director of homeland security and co-creator of Houston’s new homelessness plan.

“Allowing them to sleep on the sidewalks overnight means that they’re vulnerable to anything and everything, not just Mother Nature, but other persons that might prey upon them,” he said.

RELATED: Houston to expand civility ordinance, open resource hubs under new plan to end homelessness

The overarching goal is to ensure no one experiences homelessness for longer than 30 days, which currently is a goal for unhoused veterans, said Mike Nichols, director of the city’s Housing and Community Development Department.

The city, however, does not have the resources to give every homeless person an apartment and shelter beds remain largely at capacity.

Houston officials did not comment on what would happen if the civility ordinance is expanded without additional beds or shelter space readily available.

“(Bans) put police officers in an untenable situation,” Samuels said. “These people have nowhere to go, so (officers) are the ones that have to decide where we’re going to issue the camping ban and where we’re not.”

Florida ban leads to arrests

Anyone sleeping outside is in harm’s way, Satterwhite said, but — outside of specific circumstances — city ordinance does not give police the right to move people. 

The existing state ban outlaws public camping at all times, but has had little to no effect on Houston.

A bill before the Texas Legislature this session would set penalties for cities that do not enforce the state public camping ban. 

States with similar bans have come with undesirable results, housing advocates said. 

Florida, for example, implemented a statewide public camping ban last October. Under the ban, individuals are not permitted to sleep on public property; starting Jan. 1, residents could sue municipalities that did not enforce the ban. 

It has resulted in the warnings and arrests of hundreds of homeless individuals. 

“We don’t want people sleeping on the streets, but again, the way we have to approach it is through getting them off the streets and into housing, not just pushing them outside of that imaginary boundary,” Samuels said. 

Houston’s goal is not to arrest its way out of homelessness but to carry out the entirety of Whitmire’s multi-year plan, said Mike Nichols, director of the city’s Housing and Community Development Department. 

As the mayor said in December: “You lock up people that you’re afraid of, not those that you’re mad at. Ticketing somebody does nothing.” 

On a practical level, jailing individuals costs more per year than finding appropriate housing. It also can lead to a cycle of arrests as residents still have no place to live after leaving the jail, Nichols said.

Nichols estimated a majority of homeless people would utilize available housing resources if available.

The challenge, he said, is what to do with the 500 or so individuals believed to be mentally ill, who at times refuse resources and are not served by being jailed.

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Satterwhite said the city’s team addressing homelessness will consider how to help those who may need mental health or substance treatment. 

“It’s going to take some time,” Satterwhite said. “But we need to get on it now because the longer we wait, the more we’re gonna have problems.”

At a City Council committee meeting Monday, Satterwhite and Nichols also suggested broadening the state mental health commitment laws to include people who may not realize they suffer from mental illness. 

Waiting for results

The 2025 point-in-time count and analysis will be published later this spring after an epidemiologist has independently verified the data, Ochoa said.

Those results will help the coalition and its partners gauge progress in decreasing chronic homelessness, as well as where the gaps are.

In the meantime, Nichols said he does not know when Whitmire will propose the new civility ordinance, but he expects it would be systematically rolled out through the city.

“It is a tool to move people into housing, but it would still be done on a rolling basis, not citywide,” Nichols said. “Because, could you do that? You’d end up putting people in jail, which is not what you want to do.” 

Satterwhite said conversations surrounding timing were ongoing. Whitmire has not been able to move as quickly as he would like because of the lack of resources available.

An expanded civility ordinance may or may not impact Burton, depending on when it begins. He and his fiancée are planning to move to California once they save enough to buy train tickets.

Burton wants local and state politicians to understand that living on the streets does not prevent him from presenting himself well. He showers on a regular basis and shows up to his Panera shifts on time.

“One thing I would like them to understand is that not every homeless person you come across is going to be crazy or strung out on drugs,” Burton said. “I’ve never touched drugs in my life. The bigger problem is when someone will come by and say, ‘You gotta move.’”

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