Fellow concerned citizens - 

Our petition to rescind the Homeless Camping Ordinance has surpassed 45,000 signatures with zero paid advertising. Thank you for signing and sharing. If you would, please share again on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and NextDoor -- SaveAustinNowPetition.com.

I'm writing to update you in a few key areas.

First, the State of Texas (through TxDOT) began clearing and cleaning the highway underpass encampments on Monday of this week. They announced they will clean those areas weekly going forward. This is a really positive step.

Please take a minute to thank Governor Abbott (@gregabbott_tx) on Twitter for his leadership.

Second, the additional homeless camping ordinance changes took effect last week and the City of Austin and the Austin Police Department are now enforcing them.

No longer will camping be allowed on sidewalks, within 15 feet of an entrance to a home of business, or in front of homeless shelters.

You will be amazed by how nice the ARCH looks now.

These are positive developments, but we cannot become complacent.

Homeless camping is still allowed in Austin and it is still harming our city and threatening our neighborhoods.

The only way forward is to reinstate the ban on homeless camping through a ballot initiative campaign, likely in May 2020.

Last week, we appealed to you to help us cover the expense of hiring a lawyer to help draft our petition language. Your support made that possible and we are grateful.

We are still working on the language, seeking feedback and expert opinions, and will begin building our coalition in the coming days.

If you are part of an organization that wishes to help collect signatures for this effort, please email me (matt.mackowiak@gmail.com). We will have our first coalition meeting either next week or the week after.

We will need to collect 20,000 hard signatures of Austin residents by mid-February. This effort will require significant funding and volunteer assistance, so those are two other ways that you can help us.

We will start collecting volunteer information soon.

We already started raising money.

There are two ways to contribute:

1) Securely online here.

2) Make a check out to "Save Austin Now" and mail to: Save Austin Now, 807 Brazos Street, Suite 408, Austin, TX 78701.

We will be in touch with further updates next week.

Sincerely,

Matt Mackowiak

Save Austin Now, Co-founder

(email: matt.mackowiak@gmail.com)