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As we head toward another summer in which triple-digit temperatures are predicted for Austin, the city’s cooling centers are often promoted as a vital refuge. But for many people experiencing homelessness, the path to that relief is often blocked by the very possessions that sustain their survival.
“When folks go to these cooling centers … it’s no to luggage, no to pets, no to moving the stuff that you’re sleeping with and bringing it inside,” said Matt Mollica, executive director of Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO).
“And that’s one of the big challenges I think for people in terms of being unwilling to leave those things behind,” Mollica added.
ECHO is the central coordination point in Austin/Travis County for the local homelessness progression of care. Mollica described ECHO as an umbrella organization that works with government and nonprofit organizations, as well as street outreach teams that go out into the city to offer support to individuals and families living in unsheltered locations.
The issue of homeless people unwilling to leave their belongings unguarded to enter a cooling center highlights a deeper crisis as Austin grapples with increasingly dangerous heat.
The city often designates public libraries and recreation centers as cooling spaces. Most operate under standard public use rules that create barriers for those who can’t abandon their pets, belongings or the few comforts they own. Plus, they typically close at 5 p.m., the apex hour for summer heat in Texas.
Aware of this issue, David Gray, director of the City of Austin’s Homeless Strategy Office, said the five most used cooling centers often extend their hours when the National Weather Service issues an excessive heat warning.
“That was one of the things that we inherited: City buildings will close at 5 because they’re 9-to-5 or 8-to-5 operations,” Gray said. “If it’s still extremely hot, we’ll work with those department directors to extend the hours. Typically, we could push it out till about 7:30, 8 o’clock.”
Staffing limits and building schedules make extending hours difficult, but Gray said the city is aware that “not everybody has a home with an A/C to go to.”
The challenges for homeless people seeking relief from the weather run deeper than facility policies, however. Institutional racism and systemic barriers shape who can access these lifesaving resources. Black and Brown communities, already facing higher rates of homelessness compared to white residents, also deal with language barriers, distrust of government systems and fears over citizenship status.
“We don’t routinely screen for immigration status,” Gray said. “But if an officer runs someone’s name and there is an ICE detainer attached … the department is legally required to hold them until ICE arrives. There is really no way around that.”
This reality can make any city service, including a cooling center, a potential risk. According to a policy brief from ECHO, such marginalization extends into the justice system: “Homeless people in jail are not reflected in the snapshot” provided by the city’s annual count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people on a single night in January. “Neither are their needs. … When someone goes to jail homeless, they tend to leave homeless.”
The consequences are stark.
“The No. 1 shelter in our community for folks experiencing homelessness is the Travis County Jail,” Mollica said, estimating that approximately 60% of the homeless population incarcerated at any time are Black men. While in jail, Mollica noted, they’re not given services that could help them, and they often are released back onto the streets.
Mollica’s point that “more than 500 Black men in the Travis County Jail were experiencing homelessness” underscores how African Americans, who make up a plurality of the local homeless community, are disproportionately affected.
“Right now, about 30% of the people experiencing homelessness in Austin are Black — even though Black residents make up only about 7% of the total population,” Mollica said.
Mollica and other advocates point to serious issues like over-policing, incarceration rates, eviction policies, lack of generational wealth and discrimination in housing as contributors to racial inequities.
“It’s always been a cultural disconnect when systems were being built,” said Chase Wright, founder of The Hungry Hill Foundation, which collaborates with facilities like the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, the city’s main homeless shelter located downtown on East Seventh Street. “People did not have good intention when making the rules, and we are stuck dealing with that today.”
Credit: Alex Chew
Wright, who had no place to live after being incarcerated as a young man, emphasized that collaboration is the only way to navigate the patchwork of services. His nonprofit organization leads teams that work directly in the streets.
Yet, these nonprofits operate on unstable ground, dependent on funding cycles and volunteer capacity, making their supplemental services inconsistent.
Despite the barriers, some public spaces provide a welcomed, if surface-level, respite. At locations like the Carver Branch of the Austin Public Library, a designated cooling center, people seeking shelter are met with compassion.
“I feel safe and I’m glad they have someplace to go to to get heat or cooling,” said Rosemary Ledesma, an administrative assistant at the Carver branch.
To help facilitate a sense of welcome, staff at designated cooling centers can hand out resource guides created by ECHO in partnership with House the Homeless that list essential resources, cooling center locations and emergency services.
“That was one thing they were saying to us was, you know, we don’t have anything to give folks,” says ECHO’s Mollica. “And so we provide the resource guide. It’s laminated both sides and has numbers to call to get into shelter, numbers to get into housing programs.”
While simple, the guide offers something many of Austin’s homeless residents rarely receive: clear, consistent information in one place. For people who often rely on word of mouth and scattered updates, this tool can mean the difference between being left in extreme heat and finding a safe place to cool down, Mollica said.
For people with access to a cell phone, the city and ECHO also tout the city’s homeless service app. It sends text alert notifications via the Homeless Strategy Office for emergency services and current resources (such as cooling centers and buses) in real time. Mollica said the service could mean the difference between missing and receiving vital assistance.
Still, activists say, the highly touted app is far from perfect.
“Whoever thought of that — great idea, bad disconnect,” Wright said. “You still have to go organic and get on your feet to reach these people. Some of them, not all of them, don’t have cell phones.”
Wright said homeless people with cell phones use them only when they can get them charged and have access to free Wi-Fi, with phones not always active on a paid network. Wright suggests that networking, especially with nonprofits with boots on the ground, could help to close vital gaps for a population navigating a system not designed for them.
“The way nonprofits work with each other is through partnership and collaboration,” Wright said. “If you’re not collaborating, you’re not networking.”
Ka’Mari Pointer is a sophomore communication studies major at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin.
Noah Alvarez is a senior communication studies major at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin.