Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched legal action against a homeless center in Austin during the run-up to Thanksgiving, with his office alleging the facility had become a "magnet for drug activity and criminal activity, including public urination and defecation and violence."
Paxton is seeking a court injunction to prevent the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center, which is situated across the road from an elementary school, from "continuing to operate as a common nuisance under the Civil Practice & Remedies Code and as a public nuisance under common law."
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the nation had a homeless population of 653,104 in 2023, a figure that has increased steadily since 2018.
In some cities, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, the establishment of homeless encampments has become a toxic political issue and is one of the factors that caused a backlash against progressive policymaking, with support for Donald Trump increasing significantly in major urban areas.
In a legal case filled on November 26 the Texas attorney general's office said Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center had become "a 'magnet' for a homeless community that commits rampant crime in the area."
Specifically, they alleged: "Sunrise homeless clients break into residents' homes. They menace residents with machetes. They routinely urinate and defecate in the streets. They masturbate in public, while trying to grab passing women. They wake up residents with high-pitched screams in the middle of the night."
The court filling continued: "Sunrise's depravity is a great deal worse because it operates mere feet from an elementary school. Students and staff at the elementary school have been terrorized by the conduct that Sunrise's operations facilitate.
"Elementary school students, as young as 4 years old, and staff bear witness to the homeless walking around naked, fornicating, relieving themselves in public, and engaging in open drug use."
Paxton's office claimed the Sunrise center "enables and facilitates" criminality in the area.
The court filling said the center "permits a syringe distributor to come to its facility on a weekly basis and give needles to the homeless in order to inject drugs. It permits this drug use on and around its surrounding property. And it then permits the homeless to linger in and around the community even if they are in an unstable state."
It also said the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center had been awarded "over $1 million dollars to serve the homeless" by the Austin City Council.
In a statement, Paxton commented: "By operating a taxpayer-funded drug paraphernalia giveaway next to an elementary school, this organization is threatening students' health and safety and unjustly worsening daily life for every single resident of the neighborhood. We will shut this unlawful nuisance behavior down."
Newsweek contacted the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center for comment on Thursday by email.
On its official website the center says it "offers pathways to housing for people experiencing homelessness through low-barrier access to wraparound services by providing innovative, trauma-informed, and person-centered programming that engages our communities and leads systemwide transformation."
On November 5, London Breed was voted out as mayor of San Francisco by Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie, who pledged a law-and-order crackdown.
California Governor Gavin Newsom launched legal action against the city of Norwalk, a Los Angeles suburb, after it imposed a homeless shelter ban on November 4.
In Florida, tough new laws came into effect on October 1, banning the homeless from sleeping on sidewalks and in parks and other public spaces in the state.
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