On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Political Editor John Daniel Davidson joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss Austin’s rampant homelessness problem and how voters united to reinstate the city’s public camping ban.
“[The city of Austin] wanted to target everyone who wanted to reinstate the camping ban as evil, conservative, elderly, Republican NIMBYs who wanted to lock up all the homeless people. That’s absolutely not true,” Davidson said. “These were ordinary Austinites, by which I mean, they were Democrats. This is a super-majority Democrat city.”
While leftists tried to spin the homeless problem as a humanitarian crisis that only bigots and careless GOP supporters opposed, Davidson said the city allowing camping without public input showed even the overwhelmingly Democrat voters that woke agendas are not realistic.
“This was really a case of Democrats, turning on the city because they had to deal with the very visceral, real-world consequences of an ideologically driven policy that was a complete disaster,” Davidson said.
“It’s in cities across the country. It’s ordinary, middle-class, working people that have to bear the brunt of these ideological decisions made by progressive leaders who don’t have to face the consequences of their policies,” he added.
Read Davidson’s op-ed, “Austin Loses Patience With Camping in the Streets,” in the Wall Street Journal.
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