About SANSA

SANSA seeks to preserve and enhance the safety and vibrancy of our South Austin neighborhoods, first by working to reverse the city’s rash decision to place a high-needs homeless resource center in our already-stressed community, then by advocating for more equitable planning and policy-making to ensure our area receives the same considerations as every other sector of the city.

The South Austin Neighborhood Safety Alliance is a grassroots organization dedicated to protecting the safety, health and quality of life in our South Austin community. Our diverse nonprofit group includes parents and single people; professionals, small-business owners and retirees; and homeowners and renters, including formerly homeless people. We all share the belief that Austin can serve our homeless neighbors compassionately, while making smarter decisions about where and how it provides and manages those services.

Through neighborhood outreach, education and engagement with city leaders, SANSA strategizes to make sure decision-makers stop overlooking the needs and interests of our community’s working-class families, students, immigrants, small-business owners and others when making planning decisions regarding homeless services and public safety. Our goal is to keep our communities walkable, safe and friendly for everyone.

In short: You do! We’re supported by modest donations from people who live and do business near the new homeless navigation center site. We are all-volunteer, spend carefully and are not beholden to any political organization, party or candidate. All donations go toward our goal of making our South Austin community safer and more walkable.

No. We believe that support for housing-insecure or homeless Austinites is absolutely necessary, and that anyone in those circumstances deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. But we also believe services that attract mentally unstable, addicted or violent people and encourage loitering and camping should not be located in close proximity to schools, parks or anybody’s backyard — or in an area that already has a homeless shelter and several encampments, and cannot handle the added burden of a center providing day-to-day drop-in services for high-risk clients.

We maintain that services should be spread around the city, not concentrated in one spot, and high-risk clients should receive services in locations that provide for their safety and security without compromising the safety, security and stability of established neighborhoods.

The problems that caused the state to sue the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center will not be resolved by moving them to another community ⏤ especially if Sunrise is contracted to manage the new center. Because the city has not demonstrated an ability to control criminal and nuisance activity at Sunrise or in the areas surrounding the Southbridge Homeless Shelter, there is little reason to believe it will somehow do better with the new center. If there was evidence to suggest the city could manage an influx of high-risk homeless clients near any residential area, we wouldn’t object to the center’s location here or in another neighborhood. But that evidence doesn’t exist, which is why this center doesn’t belong where the city wants to put it. It doesn’t belong close to any spot where children attend school or play, or where it will negatively impact neighbors — including the formerly homeless residents of Arbor Terrace, located next door. They’re opposed to the location, too.