New TX homeless ban creates unfunded mandates for cities: Costs downplayed during #txlege process but cities must foot bill to store homeless belongings and can't limit arrests to ↓ costs

A Joint Memo From the Unintended Consequences and Unfunded Mandates Departments:

Now that the Texas Legislature has passed HB 1925 criminalizing homelessness (or more specifically, criminalizing cooking or sleeping under a blanket outside), cities must figure out how to implement the new law, which restricts their ability to limit arrests through policy.

Here's the catch: The statute requires police who arrest homeless people under this statute to take custody of their belongings and store them without a fee while they're in jail. Here's the relevant provision:

It's unclear if they must store people's stuff when arresting for unpaid warrants based on Class C tickets under HB 1925. If not, it would defeat the purpose of the provision: It's inevitable most folks who receive these tickets won't be able to pay.

Regardless, the bill forbids cities from establishing policies that limit these arrests, so if and when costs start racking up, the Lege will have taken away their ability to limit this expense.

Let's get down to brass tacks: Where will police take their belongings and what procedures will be put in place for them to be able to retrieve them later? Will they get a receipt? Where will police take their stuff? Who will be in charge of it while folks are jailed? How will  people retrieve it later and what happens when folks don't have good ID?

These are not idle questions: Most police evidence rooms are already overflowing (e.g., see this audit of the Denton PD evidence room, which is stuffed to the gills.) When I was policy director at the Innocence Project of Texas, evidence-room shortcomings emerged as a significant, hidden flaw generating all sorts of problems throughout the justice system: Evidence lost or damaged, guns stolen, DNA gone bad because it was kept at room temperature (that last one we fixed via legislation). The volume of stuff they keep track of boggles the mind, and housing all the earthly belongings of every homeless person arrested is going to overwhelm them.

So cities must create new systems, and probably find new locations, to store belongings of HB 1925 arrestees, but despite these extra costs, are forbidden from setting policies that limit these arrests/costs.

This is an unfunded mandate on cities and one assumes an unintended consequence, since the problem was barely-if-at-all discussed during the legislative process.

OTOH, if we're honest, the bill wasn't written to be good public policy or workable for cities, it was written to punish Austin and virtue-signal to the middle class against homeless people. They're doing it because they believe demonizing societal outcasts plays well in the suburbs, and it appears to be true, at least for the moment.

But whatever "signal" the new law sends to voters, it also lards new costs and responsibilities on cities big and small which they're both ill-prepared for and forbidden from managing. I called this an "unintended consequence" earlier, but that's probably generous. Governor Abbott and the Texas Legislature view putting the screws to cities as a legislative feature, not a bug.