Nonprofits Step Up to Bring Unhoused to Warm Shelter

Unhoused Austinites try to stay warm at Hungry Hill Foundation on December 23 (Photo by John Anderson)

As midnight approached on Friday, Dec. 23, and temperatures in Austin dipped below 15 degrees with wind gusts exceeding 30 miles per hour, Ayanna Ransom knew there were people left out in the cold. She just had to go find them.

For the next two hours, that's exactly what she, Chase Wright, and other Hun­gry Hill Foundation staff did. They drove to encampments near the East Austin neighborhood where Wright operates the daytime resource center he founded in 2021 and offered people a warm place to sleep. Ransom, Hungry Hill's director of out­reach, told the Chronicle Friday morning that she knew where to look for people, because she interacts with them daily. "I knew who might try to stick it out in the cold," Ransom said, while frantically preparing for the bitter temperatures to return that night. "We delivered food and blankets so people would at least know somebody was advocating for them. Then we went back to try and get them inside one more time."

Wright estimates that 25 people took refuge in Hungry Hill's makeshift shelter, the garage inside a Phillips 66 gas station located at the corner of 12th and Spring­dale. Wright's family has owned it since 1966. Last year, Wright converted it into a day center that now services 110 clients in the Central East Austin neighborhood where he grew up. "We know this community because we are a part of it," he told us. "We knew where to look for people," like in a wooded encampment behind a park, "so we went out and got them."

One of those people was John Mason, an elderly man who's lived in East Austin off and on since his family moved there in 1953. Before coming to the shelter early Friday morning, he asked Wright to bring him some hand sanitizer he could use as fuel for a fire. When Wright returned later and asked if Mason wanted to come to Hungry Hill, he changed his mind.

Michael Williams was another late arrival. He initially declined an invitation, but when temperatures dropped, Williams reconsidered. "I thought I'd be all right," he said, wrapped in blankets inside Hungry Hill's tent, "but when the winds started whipping, man, that cold was different." He came to the shelter about midnight.

Hungry Hill was just one of the community organizations that helped the city respond to four days of extreme cold that threatened the lives of Austin's unhoused population. The city of Austin, which awarded the Austin Area Urban League a $1.2 million contract in November to operate its cold weather shelter system, sheltered 1,559 people from Dec. 22 to 26. AAUL ran three overnight shelters, while the city ran three additional overflow locations.

Selena Xie, president of the Austin EMS Association, said medics played a key role in shepherding people into the shelters. Community Health Paramedics, who work with the unhoused, contacted people once the city made the decision to activate cold weather shelters. Time was of the essence so homeless Austinites could make plans to get down to One Texas Center, at South First and Barton Springs, which served as a central meeting point for people seeking shelter, during the narrow registration window (6-8pm every night the shelters were activated).

Xie, Wright, and other partners in the cold weather response agreed that while the city may have performed better this year than during 2021's catastrophic Winter Storm Uri, there was still much room for improvement. Xie and Wright said better communication ahead of the next freeze will be key. "We need 48 hours' notice and we need fliers posted with at least 36 hours' notice of when shelters will open," Xie told us. She added that shelter locations should be broadcast publicly, too, so that unhoused people can make their way to a location convenient for them rather than traveling to One Texas Center, which may require a significant trek. The registration window should be extended and people should be allowed to register directly at shelters, and the temperature at which the shelters are activated should be increased to 40 degrees. These concerns were echoed in an audit presented to the city earlier this month, which found the city undertrained staff on cold weather plans and inconsistently activated its shelters.

The city says using one central embarkment point (OTC) helps the shelter operation run as efficiently and smoothly as possible and that shelter locations are not disclosed to protect staff and guests. Currently, shelters are activated only if conditions meet strict criteria: 32 degrees or colder overnight, 35 degrees with rain, or 35 degrees with wind chill of 32 degrees or colder. But these guidelines can be confusing. Advocates are asking that Council and city staff look at streamlining them with an approach that results in shelters being activated more often (temperatures actually fell below the threshold overnight, Dec. 18, but the system was not activated).

Advance notice would help outreach groups and unhoused individuals alike. One man, named Joseph, stood outside One Texas Center Thursday night and told us he made the tough decision of abandoning the tent he was living in near North Lamar and Parmer Lane, more than 10 miles and an hourlong bus ride away, because he didn't have time to store it anywhere. He only learned about the cold weather shelters that morning. "Nobody on the north side knows about this spot," Joseph said. "I basically took all my stuff that I can't replace, but I had to leave my tent. I hope it's still there when I get back up there, but who knows."