On a dark, drizzly Saturday in February, Steven Potter made his way up the slippery steps of ACC Highland’s north entrance. Pushing through the renovated mall’s double doors, the 52-year-old New York native trudged through an empty corridor and slipped into a corner booth. Taking out a boxy Dell laptop, Potter adjusted the black beanie atop his head, slightly obscuring the thick salt-and-pepper hair spilling out from underneath the hat.

An avid reader and a self-proclaimed “creative” since childhood, Potter would often lose himself in sci-fi classics like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and campy horror flicks like The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Their family didn’t have a lot of money, he explains, so his mother encouraged him to use his imagination to transcend their lives in the rural foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

“My dad wasn’t around, and Mom had trouble finding work because of her limited education, so we were on welfare for most of my childhood,” he says. “Mom taught us to lose ourselves in reading and nature. When you’re growing up poor out in the sticks, you need that.”

That lesson stuck with Potter, who has been writing short stories, screenplays, and anthologies since his 20s. Though the majority of these early works went unpublished, he self-published a collection of pieces titled Writing In Circles in the 1990s while living in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he worked in a General Foods factory producing packaging for instant food companies like Minute Rice. The work wasn’t fulfilling, he admits, but he enjoyed its hands-on nature, an attitude that earned him several promotions along its assembly lines. More importantly, the job allowed him to save up a few thousand dollars and plan his future filmmaking career.

After his mother died and the factory subsequently shut down, he moved to Austin in 2002 to take part in its indie film scene. But things didn’t go as planned when Potter arrived in town; carless and without a place to stay (the lease he’d set up fell through at the last second), he turned to social services for aid while living at the ARCH (Austin Resource Center for the Homeless) for several months. Finally, after applying to more than a dozen jobs, he landed a gig in a North Austin warehouse run by Nappco Fastener Company and moved into a one-bedroom apartment off Braker Lane.

As the city’s cost of living rose and his savings evaporated, Potter’s housing situation became increasingly tenuous. By 2008, he was sleeping illegally in a 20-by-15-foot storage unit near Nappco. Within two years, he’d lost his job, downsized to a 5-by-5-foot locker for the few material possessions he still had, and was sleeping on the streets.

In the 10 years since, Potter has become entrenched in a cycle of homelessness: sleeping undetected on lakeside benches and in isolated parking lots, receiving aid from local churches while sporadically holding down jobs, attending the odd class at ACC, and deepening his roots in Austin’s creative community. He also began selling his plasma twice a week, a painful practice that yields just enough money (between $250 and $350 a month) to subsist off a combination of foods like flour tortillas, Gatorade, and the occasional jar of peanut butter. Along with a Pell Grant he received for school, those funds also helped him purchase a Canon XL2 camera to shoot a variety of film projects, including shows at venues like the Red Eyed Fly.

Experiencing homelessness has become intensely more scrutinized in the months since City Council relaxed its regulations on camping last June, Potter says. Led by Mayor Steve Adler, Austin’s uniformly Democratic leadership structure has championed the new policy as a significant first step toward addressing the city’s homelessness issues, arguing that fixing the problem requires a compassionate, long-term solution—not a punitive one with short-time gains. “We have to recognize that these are just regular people, by and large. They’ve suffered the perfect storm of life events and really need our help,” Adler says. “Within all of this, it’s about spending our public safety dollars in an efficient, fact-driven manner. You can’t get caught up in the populist, political red meat rhetoric.”

But as tents continue to pile up under overpasses and along downtown streets, so has the criticism, especially from Gov. Greg Abbott, who has made a habit of publicly airing his disdain for Austin’s liberal leanings. Adamant that the city’s policies are promoting a violent brand of lawlessness, the governor has repeatedly attacked Adler as reckless and inept via a stream of inflammatory tweets that has riled public opposition. Undeterred, the mayor has answered every barb with a response of his own, stoking the flames of a personal feud that’s quickly become a public, Texas-sized clash over cities’ self-governance and the authoritative state power to trump those decisions.

***

For generations, Austin has been known as the blue dot in a sea of red—or, as former Texas Gov. Rick Perry so eloquently put it, “the blueberry in the tomato soup.” Back in the ’70s and ’80s, the capital city was a sleepy college town full of students, hippies, and cosmic cowboys, regarded by state lawmakers more as a rebellious child in need of discipline than a legitimate political adversary.

“When I came in as mayor, the state legislature had become an appellate court for our local legislation. So if our City Council did something that state officials didn’t want them to do, they would ‘appeal’ it in the legislature in an effort to enact something that addressed their concerns about our local policies,” says Kirk Watson, who acted as Mayor of Austin from 1997 to 2001, and has served as a state senator since 2006. “It was so pervasive that the legislation was referred to as ‘Austin-bashing.’”

Despite their ideological conflicts, though, Watson says there was genuine interest among Austin leaders and state officials to reach across the aisle and form healthy working relationships. Upon being sworn into office in June 1997, he immediately met with then-Gov. George W. Bush, forging a bond that later extended into Perry’s regime.

“Bush and I would go running together in the torch relay for the Special Olympics. One time, he turned to me, saying, Mayor, I think you’re faster this year,” he laughs. “Bush and Perry had good senses of humor, and even when you completely disagreed, they weren’t offended when you stood your ground.”

These days, this approach to policy-making seems almost idealistic. In the two decades since Watson and Bush merrily raced down Austin’s streets together, American politics has taken a decidedly partisan turn, with both major parties drifting toward their respective ideological poles. All too often, leaders now cater to rabid constituents who favor extreme policies and snarky social media banter over bipartisanship, leaving little (if any) middle ground for pragmatism.

While this phenomenon has developed, Austin’s population and public reputation have both skyrocketed, catapulting the city into a new stratosphere of cultural prominence. South By Southwest now draws hundreds of thousands of people from across the world every year, nearly 30 million domestic tourists visit annually, and U.S. News & World Report has named it the No. 1 city to live in the past three years. These developments undoubtably elevated its standing in national politics, says Andy Hogue, communications director for the Travis County Republican Party. “With so much attention and money flowing in, Austin has become ground zero for not only culture, but politics. Before, we were just kind of here, part of Texas. Now, Austin is part of the nation and part of the world, frankly. People know about us, and the political stakes have been raised.”

***

In January 2015, Greg Abbott and Steve Adler were sworn into their respective offices. Within two years, Texas Senate Bill 4 (SB4), known as the “sanctuary cities” bill, had turned them into sworn enemies. Praised by conservatives as a vital check on illegal immigration, SB4 didn’t just allow law-enforcement officers to inquire about a person’s citizenship status: It left the door open to punishing sheriffs, police chiefs, and local officials who refused to cooperate with its mandate. Even more, it placed Austin on the front line of the fight over President Trump’s hardline immigration policy.

Many perceived the law as a direct attack on Austin and Travis County, where newly elected sheriff, Sally Hernandez, had promised to limit cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Those directives included a request for local jails to hold inmates suspected of being undocumented immigrants. Abbott, a close ally of the president—and one prone to borrowing from the Trump playbook—took to calling the sheriff “Sanctuary Sally” on Twitter and threatened to oust her from her job. He also withheld more than $1 million in state criminal justice grants—money that would have funded services for victims of family violence, services for veterans, and parents struggling with drug addiction. Abbott later told a room of Bell County Republicans that these efforts helped stymie the “Californication” of Austin.

“As you leave Austin and start heading north, you start feeling different. Once you cross the Travis County line, it starts smelling different. And you know what that fragrance is? Freedom. It’s the smell of freedom that does not exist in Austin, Texas,” Abbott told the GOP chapter in the same speech. “I can tell you that today, Austin is more free than it was before the legislative session began because the state of Texas passed laws that overrode the liberal agenda of Austin, Texas, that is trying to send Texas down the pathway of California.”

Led by Adler, Austin (along with Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio) came to Hernandez’s defense, filing a lawsuit attempting to block SB4, which he decried harmful to the city’s Latino populations. “The lawsuit seeks to show that Texas and ICE have collaborated to punish Austin and Travis County,” the mayor said in a June 2017 press conference. “I just want to say that we’re here today representing a policy contrary to Senate Bill 4, because that law is wrong and it is not just.”

Over the next two years, Abbott and Adler sparred over a variety of issues, including Austin’s 2013 plastic bag ban—aimed at reducing single-use plastic bags in grocery stores—and a 2018 paid sick leave ordinance, both of which have since been overturned. Funding for women’s healthcare organizations like Planned Parenthood and the state’s failed effort to limit transgender citizen’s access to public restrooms have also served as key battleground issues for the two politicians. Each of these conflicts followed the same pattern: Austin passes a new ordinance, Abbott orchestrates statewide legislation to strike it down, Adler denounces the governor’s actions, and both leaders further dig in their heels. Rinse, repeat, and tweet.

But after last year’s battle over an effective solution to the homelessness crisis in Austin, this rivalry began to strike a more personal chord, with each lawmaker’s stance seemingly becoming a referendum not just on their view of their world, but their moral standing in it. And with Abbott and Adler both unwilling to compromise, the two have reached an impasse that shows no signs of waning.

***

In early 2018, a constituent approached Mayor Adler following a heated South Austin neighborhood association meeting. Like many of the event’s attendees, the man was enraged by a swelling homeless encampment under a nearby highway overpass. After demanding that Adler take action, he offered the mayor a chilling alternative if he didn’t: frontier justice. “You need to fix this,” he said, “or I have a gun, and I’m going to fix this myself.”

A year and half later, Adler made his move, working with City Council to decriminalize homelessness by revising existing bans on panhandling, camping, sitting, and sleeping in public. The policy, he said, wouldn’t increase the number of people living on the streets—it would simply raise public awareness and allocate city resources toward shelters, services, and long-term affordable housing.

“If you have six people sleeping under an overpass, you could drive by thousands of times and never notice them there—which is what this city has historically done,” Adler says. “But if you give those same people tents, it looks like the world just changed. We didn’t create any more people experiencing homelessness than existed before: We just made their presence more visible.”

In the months following the council’s decision, even more tents cropped up across the city’s urban core, lining busy thoroughfares that many Austinites passed during their daily commutes. Areas adjacent to the ARCH—often criticized for its unchecked overcrowding—teemed with people.

Abbott seized on the narrative, retweeting accounts like “Austin Skidrow” that cited “reports of violence, used needles, and feces.” Despite Adler’s claims that these actions sow division and obscure the truth (Abbott has shared uncertified content from various accounts, including a clip of a man throwing a street sign at a car that turned out to be from 2018), the governor has remained bullish in his assessment that “Austin’s reckless homeless policy puts lives in danger.”

“Gov. Abbott utilizes social media as an important tool to highlight how the ineptitude by the City of Austin in dealing with the homeless has increasingly endangered both the homeless and non-homeless alike,” says John Wittman, a spokesman for Abbott’s office. “Gov. Abbott also values social media as a way to directly hear from the people of Texas–and within this context, hear from Austinites who have been impacted by the gross negligence of city leadership.”

Even in liberal Austin, the governor’s intervention is being welcomed as a necessary measure in many circles. Last fall, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Abbott received more than 400 messages regarding Austin’s homelessness policies, nearly 90 percent of which praised his stance against camping, and which frequently referred to people living on the streets as “vermin,” “filth,” and “vagrants.” Several high-profile stabbings—including an incident at a Freebirds World Burrito on South Congress where a man was fatally wounded by a homeless person—have further buoyed the governor’s argument that downtown’s rising violent crime rate is a direct symptom of Adler’s policies (a claim the Austin Police Department has refuted).

Beyond taking to Twitter, Abbott instituted actionable steps to clear out overpass encampments, increase law enforcement’s presence downtown and near UT’s campus, and shuffle people onto a 5-acre plot of land in Southeast Austin owned by the Texas Department of Transportation. Known colloquially as “Abbottville,” the camp is home to a smattering of tents and defunct storage units, where dozens of people now reside. While viewed by some as a safer option than sleeping in the streets, critics like Gus Bova at The Texas Observer say the outpost simply seeks to hide the city’s homeless from the public eye. Not only is the camp far removed from vital city services, such as reliable public transportation and mental health facilities, it has limited electricity and a lack of proper showers.

Despite the governor’s barrage of criticism, Adler maintains the city is making progress by implementing his own solutions. In November, the city purchased a hotel for nearly $8 million to house its homeless, and a second acquisition could be in the works. Advocates argue these efforts are a step in the right direction and sharply contrast Abbott’s default answer of backing up dump trucks into tent communities. “Criminalizing homelessness perpetuates the

problem by creating barriers to jobs

and housing for folks in the form of criminal history and warrants for their arrest,” says Chris Harris, a criminal justice advocate and data analyst. “If we don’t have the structure in place to provide real solutions, these folks are far more likely to end up on the streets long-term and exposed to what’s typically been viewed as the ‘solution’: police and prisons.”

***

Over the past 10 months, Gov. Abbott and Mayor Adler have collectively sent more than 120 tweets related to homelessness in Austin. And yet, save for two official letters from Abbott, the two leaders’ offices never addressed each other directly in 2019, according to reports from the Austin American-Statesman. “I think that the governor seems to be falling victim to a party that seems to be moving further and further to the right,” Adler says. “My approach to government is pragmatic; I’m willing to work with anybody, I want to work with the governor, especially on things that are happening to help cities. But when the state government focuses on places like Austin to try to change the culture in the city, that’s problematic to me.”

Despite all of last year’s drama, 2020 promises to be even more explosive. With Texas suddenly considered a swing state by many politicos, presidential candidates have begun venturing south to fundraise and rally supporters in Austin—a reality that isn’t lost on Abbott (a strong Trump ally) and Adler, who’s forged close ties with former Oval Office hopeful Pete Buttigieg, whom he refers to as his “mentor.”

For Adler, November also represents an opportunity to push through a multibillion-dollar transit bond and a long-awaited rewrite of the city’s land development code, which failed miserably in 2018. In addition to broadening Austin’s homelessness services, the mayor says these could be the defining issues of his time in office.

Abbott and area conservatives, on the other hand, are hoping frustration over Adler’s recent policies could fuel a shake-up in several City Council races—a body that’s long been dominated by the Democratic Party. Headed by Travis County Republican Party Chair Matt Mackowiak, the organization Save Austin Now is also collecting signatures for a petition that seeks to put a petition to recriminalize camping in public places on the November ballot.

Regardless of what happens at the polls this fall, though, Wittman says the governor will have a four-point plan in 2021 to address Adler’s policies with sweeping legislation that puts public safety first. “Gov. Abbott will continue to work over the next 10 months to develop recommendations for the Texas Legislature to consider that will address reckless city policies like Austin’s,” he says.

With tensions between Abbott and Adler at an all-time high, Texas is in the midst of grappling with the worsening COVID-19 crisis. Up to this point, attempts at addressing the coronavirus’ outbreak has largely served as the latest—and most significant—reminder of the deepening divide between state and local lawmakers. Austin leaders have repeatedly demanded greater action from the governor’s administration while criticizing its lackluster response to the worldwide pandemic. Given their history, it’s unlikely the two camps will harmoniously join forces to battle the virus’ impact; but with resources scarce and a cohesive strategy yet to be constructed, cooperation between the mayor and the governor could be vital to curbing the ramifications of rebuilding the city’s healthcare and economic infrastructure.

Only time will tell if (and how) the two political rivals can come together to combat the coronavirus, but one thing’s for certain: There will still be a myriad of hot-button issues remaining for them to spar over, something that Steve Potter, who has lived on Austin’s streets for the majority of his 18 years here, is all too aware of. While Potter is optimistic about the city’s recent efforts to address homelessness—something he pushed for as a leading advocate for the “Homes Not Handcuffs” coalition—he says it’s going to take years of dedication to create the system of support and affordable housing options that communities need to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty.

Ideally, Potter says, those resources will arrive soon. Last October, doctors discovered a massive blood clot in his lungs—a life-threatening development that has since cost him his main source of income, selling plasma. To drum up some extra money, he’s launching an online shop called Imaginarium Designs, where he’ll sell prints of designs he’s created for items like T-shirts and coffee mugs.

“I wish my story was unique, but it isn’t. It’s not what most people imagine when they think about homelessness. They only think of us as people with substance abuse issues, with mental health issues,” he says. “But the truth is, so many people around you—your friends, your neighbors, your family—are just a few missed paychecks away from landing on the street. You can’t paint homelessness with one big brush. There are just too many different ways we’ve all ended up here—too many reasons that aren’t explored enough.”

Note: This story has been revised since the release of its print edition to reflect the current state of the coronavirus crisis in Texas.