A five-acre campsite near Montopolis Drive in south Austin, known informally as Abbottville or ‘Camp RATT,’ provides a safer option for women experiencing homelessness, according to a longtime homeless services worker.
Austin faces a police shortage and a recent uptick in crime, which Police Chief Brian Manley has tied to the proliferation of illegal guns and narcotics.
But at the Montopolis camp, which now hosts more than 140 homeless, state troopers provide security around the clock. David Gomez, PATH Program Manager at Integral Care, says that Austin’s streets can be dangerous for women sleeping outdoors at night, but so far there hasn’t been a single reported sexual assault at the state-owned site.
Gomez has been working with the homeless in Austin since 1976 and runs the federally funded PATH program, which assists those with substance abuse issues and mental illness.
“The reality is that for the women that are out there (on the streets), if they don’t have a dog and they are not tied to a particular individual, male or female, the chances are that they are going to be the victims of sexual assault. If not just once, maybe a number of times every night. And that is unconscionable. I can’t believe that we are allowing that to happen. But it happens. And what I have been hearing from the ladies that are at the (governor’s) encampment is that because the DPS presence is there, that there has not been a single rape out there.”
“And I think that’s a positive thing and they all talk about the fact that we finally have a safe and stable place to be. I know there’s been discussions about storage and they feel like they can leave their stuff behind and go to a job and not worry about their stuff getting ransacked or stolen. That has led to people being able to get jobs and self-resolve, without the need of a voucher or rapid rehousing or permanent supported housing, and that’s wonderful. So that’s what I see, that’s what I find.”
Gomez was speaking last week at a work session of the Austin City Council. He said that the population at the Montopolis camp tends to be older and has more women than the homeless population at large.
Council Member Pio Renteria commented, “When I went out to – people call it Abbottville, the governor’s little village out there – the first thing that I heard them say is that they’re out there because they want to feel secure. And there they feel secure because there’s security out there.”
Renteria expressed interest in providing more city services at the site. After visiting the site, he said he was concerned about a lack of adequate water for bathing and doing laundry.
Integral Care is helping people at the site to connect to medical and psychiatric services, and other charities are providing meals and other services.
Integral Care also serves people on the streets and at makeshift camps throughout Travis County. Integral Care’s PATH program budget is about $750,000 yearly, most of which is federal funding. The program has a staff of 13, and annually it enrolls about 550 people in services.
With regard to security at other camps, Gomez said, “The camp sites that I am familiar with, they do a good job of policing themselves. They don’t allow themselves to get so big that it gets out of control. And they do that without any other resources except that they kind of have a marshal-at-arms that says hey, dude, that behavior is not going to be okay here. You need to leave or whatever.”
