Highlights from our interview with Bryan Sunderland, director of advocacy at the Cicero Institute
Q: Lone Star Standard
How do we address the homelessness problem in Texas?
A: Bryan Sunderland
The good news in Texas is they have made a good stride here on street level camping and being able to camp wherever you want. That has largely ended in Texas. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have a homeless problem, you don’t have a need for more resources. Certainly. But also, there is good news because unlike California, Oregon, and some of these other states that have gone all in with this Housing First notion, that we’re just going to build enough housing and if we build enough houses, people will get homes.
That is not working. There are a lot of reasons why people are homeless, and a lot of times it’s other underlying reasons. It’s not just a lack of affordable housing. A lot of times it’s drug abuse. It’s a substance disorder. It is mental health issues. It is broken families and things of that nature that people need help with services in more of a services-first approach.
In Texas, Florida, and Georgia we’ve helped pass legislation in Utah too that are really trying to get at the underlying problems and trying to acknowledge that we need to try to get people off of the streets. We need to not make it so that taking over entire street blocks and people living in these sort of dangerous homeless encampments that are generally full of drug abuse and other violence. We need to get people off the streets into safer locations, into shelters where they can access services, where they can find people that can help them turn around their lives.
If we just accept the fact that we let people sleep on the street and that is somehow compassionate, we’re going to continue to see the problem get worse.
Q: Lone Star Standard
What should Texas do to improve health care outcomes?
A: Bryan Sunderland
I’m not exactly sure what the specific stats are but you’ve got a lot of health disparities in Texas. You’ve got a massive state. Texas is huge. It takes a lot of funding. And, you’ve got a lot of rural areas of the state that don’t have the types of health care services that are available here in Austin or in Dallas, Houston, or other larger cities.
Part of that is the disparity but there are two areas that I would point to that can be really helpful. One is that we need to really address the rural physician shortage and the healthcare provider shortage, because that actually impacts real people and their ability to access care. And that’s one of the main reasons we are focused on that issue.
Second, we also focus on telehealth. We can continue to expand telehealth roles like we did during COVID. A lot of states just really relaxed the laws, realized that people weren’t going to drive to the local emergency room or the urgent care center. And a lot of doctors told healthier people to stay away for a while.
A lot of the telehealth happened post-COVID. Some of those roles have been broken down and some have gone back to the same pre-COVID restrictions. I think there are a few things Texas does pretty well, but there are a few things that Texas can continue to do to loosen telehealth laws, allowing independent practices to provide more access for more people.
Q: Lone Star Standard
What policies have you worked on related to public safety?
A: Bryan Sunderland
We believe public safety needs to be about public safety. How do we reduce crime? How do we get people who have had problems back into society in a way where they’re not going to continue to commit crimes. That requires accountability on all parts of the system.
Most people who spoke up for the defund the police movement now would say that was a pretty bad thing to do. But we have these rogue prosecutors. We’re working in Georgia and a few other states like Missouri and others on a special prosecutor reform. The idea here is if you have a prosecutor who’s not doing their job, and you look at the metrics in a particular metropolitan area, and their murder rate is above a certain benchmark in the state, their violent crime is above a certain benchmark in the state. Then the state’s governor or attorney general can appoint a special prosecutor to go in to help manage the crime there and make sure that they have the tools and the resources to prosecute those criminals, rather than turn them back on to the streets where we see this cycle of criminality that often leads into devastating consequences.
Well, we saw in Georgia actually that it’s not just having the state step in when someone’s not doing their job. If there’s a particular area that all of a sudden they see a spike in crime, and they decide we need some additional help from the state to make sure that we can do our jobs well, give them that tool too.
So that’s one of the reforms that we’ve incubated here at the Cicero Institute that we’ve worked with lawmakers on and are starting to try to find those sort of innovative solutions that take metrics, accountability, and even financial incentives if needed.
Bryan Sunderland is the Director of Advocacy at the Cicero Institute, a nonpartisan public policy organization with deep experience in government, legislation and the law, technology, and entrepreneurship.
This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the full discussion here: https://texas-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-15-bryan-sunderland.
