Homeless people rest on the sidewalk across the street from the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless in 2019, a day after city crews removed most of the homeless people and their tents from a camp outside the shelter. An annual count found 2,255 unsheltered homeless people in Austin in 2019, the most since 2011.

James Prince, who has been homeless for two years, lays down on the sidewalk on East 8th Street under I-35 in 2019. The Austin City Council rescinded ordinances against sitting or sleeping in public and panhandling - measures social advocates said wrongly criminalized homelessness, but Gov. Greg Abbott told Austin that he'd clear camps from highway underpasses if the city wouldn't.

Terry Gonzalez, 57, climbs a ladder to a house he’s building on top of his 2003 Oldsmobile Alero in a parking lot in Austin in 2022. Gonzalez, a traveling tile man, said he became homeless in 2020 after a hit-and-run accident in Austin caused him to lose his travel trailer and belongings.