AUSTIN, Texas — Organizations that help the unhoused in Austin say they're grateful a temporary emergency homeless shelter in southeast Austin is staying open for now.
On Thursday, Austin City Council members voted to keep the Marshalling Yard open, despite plans to close in 2025. They’ve asked City Manager T.C. Broadnax to find the funds to keep the 300-bed shelter open until they find a replacement facility.
Councilmember Allison Alter – the sole member to abstain from voting on the resolution put forth by Mayor Kirk Watson – said she was concerned about where they would find the millions to keep it open.
“I'm very uncomfortable with the notion of saying, 'we're going to spend this money,' without knowing where it's going to come from, or how much we need, or really having a plan in place,” she said.
David Gray, Austin’s homeless strategy officer, said the shelter opened last August to deal with overflow at other shelters. He said it costs $9 million a year to keep the Marshalling Yard open. It may seem like a high sum, but he said it’s the most cost-effective facility compared to other shelters in the system.
“For every person who's coming through the Marshalling Yard, we can serve them with $9,000. For every person who we're putting in a permanent supportive housing unit, that costs anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000. So that $9 million sounds like a big figure – and it is – but for the volume of people who are able to serve, it actually allows us to achieve some really great economies of scale,” Gray said.
He said there is no price to saving people’s lives. According to the latest data, there are approximately 6,300 people who experience homelessness in the area and they've helped about 1,000 at the Marshalling Yard in the past year. Gray said of that 1,000, around 22% have left the shelter and moved into permanent housing.
“Every life that we touch, every number that we talk about, that's a real person. And so, it is a significant benefit to those 170 people who've come through the Marshalling Yard and are no longer homeless,” Gray said.
Gray said if the shelter were to close, it would create a ripple effect that would affect every part of the system. He said it would begin at the other city shelters, saying they’d have to stop intake so they can relocate the clients who are still at the Marshalling Yard.
That would also mean 311 calls to get people into a shelter would have to be paused and it would get harder to find and care for people who are spread out across the city.
Gray said that can be dangerous for people, as some are fleeing violent situations, aging out of foster care systems or trying to find medical care.
“The longer you're living unsheltered, homeless on the street, the more likely you are to become addicted to drugs, to begin suffering from a mental health challenge, to injure yourself and not seek proper medical treatment,” Gray said. “Every one year on the street ages you by seven years.”
Beth Corbett with the Central Texas Food Bank was one of the advocates who spoke up at last week's council meeting in support of the shelter staying open. She said the food bank has partnered with the shelter since April to serve 62,000 hot meals in the past year – as many as 600 per day.
She’s seen how impactful the space is, saying it not only gives people a place to stay, but a clean, dignified place to get food and help. Corbett said it's hard to give people support without a central place to go.
"It can certainly be challenging to provide particularly nutritious food and meals to folks when they're not staying and they're not sheltering in a centralized location. That's why this partnership between the food bank and the Marshaling Yard team has helped us to ensure they're not only receiving safe sheltering, safe wraparound services, but also healthy and nutritious meals," she said.
Gray told KVUE he has daily conversations with Broadnax about finding more spaces for permanent shelters. He said those spaces are significant to giving people a chance.
“We have a moral responsibility and an obligation to ensure that we are not exiting people from our shelter system back into the street,” Gray said.