On a January afternoon, Pam Reynolds pushed her wheelchair across the pavement of a Texas Department of Transportation facility in Austin that Gov. Greg Abbott turned into a temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness. She was flanked by a black Labrador puppy and her tent neighbor, Amy, who was carrying rain-soaked blankets that were still dripping.

Reynolds said she slept on the soaked sheets for three nights before someone helped her exchange them for a dry set from another resident. Before Abbott and state officials transformed the facility into a shelter, Reynolds lived in the concrete underbelly of State Highway 183 in the state’s capital.

“I’ve been beaten up, nearly raped, except I fought for my life,” Reynolds said.

So is life in the governor’s camp better than life under a highway?

“I guess,” Reynolds said as she stared past the tree line.

Homeless Austin residents say life at the shelter in the southeast Austin neighborhood of Montopolis is an improvement for them — but still an incomplete solution to life without steady shelter. And some still feel stigmatized and targeted by the governor’s claims of increased crime involving homeless people and routine clearings of homeless communities elsewhere in the state’s capital.

Abbott, a Republican, has used recent assaults allegedly perpetrated by homeless Austin residents to criticize city officials for changes to its camping ordinances, though he hasn’t provided a direct link between those rules and violent behavior.

Austin city officials last year relaxed ordinances prohibiting lying in public areas. Those officials later tightened the ordinances and prohibited lying on sidewalks, near shelters and in high fire-risk areas.

After a homeless man was accused of stabbing another resident experiencing homelessness Jan. 8, Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to increase patrols downtown and around the University of Texas.

After the Austin Police Department arrested a woman for allegedly stabbing several people in downtown Jan. 24, Abbott said Austin official’s choice to relax the city’s camping ban was allowing “lawlessness” and corresponds with a “rise in violence,” though he did not provide crime statistics to back up the claim.

And on Saturday, after a CBS Austin report in which witnesses to a stabbing said they believed the suspect was homeless, Abbott tweeted that state lawmakers will “override Austin’s reckless policies.”

The Austin Police Department has not responded to questions about whether there has been an increase in violent crime correlated with the ordinance changes.

Last fall, Austin police Chief Brian Manley told city leaders that between summer 2018 and summer 2019, violent crime in which the suspect was homeless and the victim was not rose 11%, compared with a citywide violent crime increase of 15%. Cases where the suspect was not homeless but the victim was increased 19%.

Life at the camp

At the shelter, residents are assigned spots to pitch tents and are given packages of food three times a day. About a dozen of the spaces are covered, while others are not.

There are also port-a-potties and hand-washing stations at the front of the camp. A state trooper is posted at the site 24 hours a day for security.

During its first week as a shelter in mid-November, 22 homeless residents started camping there, according to the Texas Division of Emergency Management. That number has recently grown to 107 residents.

Among the state agencies involved with the temporary shelter, none will claim oversight or leadership. The Texas Division of Emergency Management seems to have the largest share of daily work; it distributes food packages three times a day and assists with third-party donations to the camp.

Latest in the series: Homeless in Texas

Residents like Reynolds and Manuel Baez, who was a handyman before the Great Recession, said one of the best benefits of Abbott’s camp was the stability of having assigned spots to return to every night.

While his wife heated lunch — a mixture of canned tuna, boiled eggs and onion — Baez compared his time at Abbott’s camp with his time sleeping near the Terrazas Branch of the Austin Public Library on East Cesar Chavez Street.

“We’re better over here because nobody messes with you. It’s your own place. We all try to get along. Sometimes we got problems because people are different, but we try to get along,” Baez said.

Baez and Reynolds also said they worry less about violent crime because state troopers offer a constant police presence. However, some residents said they are still robbed by their fellow homeless residents like they were under highways.

On a recent afternoon, Barbara Terrell gave a goodbye hug at a nearby bus stop to a friend who had come to visit her at the camp. She said she wanted to leave with him, but she didn’t have a bus pass. She said the bus fare was relatively expensive for residents of the camp.

“They should’ve gotten bus passes or some way for us to get out. Because a lot of people don’t have bus passes, so you can’t really go anywhere,” Terrell said.

Being stuck without transportation was the primary complaint from shelter residents. Reynolds said they don’t have access to grocery stores, medical care or fresh clothing because of the camp’s distance from Austin’s urban core. The camp is a two-hour walk from downtown.

According to Tammy Quinn, who is the program manager for Capital Metro, the company provided a bus stop to the campsite at the request of TxDOT.

“There are no resources over there that are in walking distance,” Quinn said.