Austin City Council Member Alison Alter responded to concerns from constituents this week saying that hundreds of needles found at a homeless camp could be for medical use, not for illicit drug use.
“I just wanted to point out because folks are expressing concern over the needles, but people use needles for health reasons and for insulin and other stuff, and I believe that’s what we were seeing,” she said in remarks at the City Council Work Session on Tuesday, Feb. 4.
“And so I just wanted to throw that out there, that a lot of folks who are homeless have health issues and are using the needles for health reasons. That doesn’t make them safe to be on the ground but that is one of the reasons that we may be finding those in those areas.”
Firefighters faced “extremely hazardous” conditions searching for survivors and fire after a blaze at the encampment on Monday, Feb. 3, owing to “hundreds of needles and other dangerous debris,” according to the Fire Department’s public relations team.
The fire began for unknown reasons at the homeless camp, which was home to as many as 50 people. It was underneath the eastbound frontage road of 183 between I-35 and Cameron Road.
In the wake of the blaze, some emergency personnel and homeless service providers have said that they have known about the camp for a long time. But Ken Snipes, Director of Austin Resource Recovery and the city’s chief lead for encampment cleanups, said that he and his team had not known about the camp.
He told the Council work session, “One of the things that happened as a result of the fire is that we learned about this location and what we plan to do going forward is just to connect with the service providers so that we have a better understanding of where these locations are.”
Snipes said his team plans to continue to assess the area and add it to “normal protocols” for cleanups, which have intensified in recent months as the Texas Department of Transportation began a cleanup campaign at the direction of the Texas governor, who has criticized the city for its handling of homeless encampments.
Alter asked Snipes whether the city or the state was responsible for the area in which the fire occurred. Snipes responded, “I think we’re still trying to learn that now. The area was completely new to me… So we’re still working on who has jurisdiction and who will clean that area going forward.”
The photos below were taken by the Austin Fire Department at the camp in question.
