AUSTIN, Texas — Wednesday is expected to be another cold night in Austin with temperatures dipping into the 30s. However, that won't meet the threshold to open the city's cold weather shelters for a second day in a row.
That's where Urban Alchemy, which runs the Eighth Street Shelter and the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH), is stepping in and inviting those in need to "The Oasis."
ARCH said their shelters were nearly at capacity Tuesday night, but their Downtown Austin parking lot, which was transformed over the summer, is available.
"[Wednesday night] is still going to pretty brisk and cold weather shelters won’t be open people," said Sarah Finley, who serves as Urban Alchemy's director of operations. "They're more than welcome to come out here. We don't promote this as a sleeping area, but people are more than welcome to hang out the best they can under the heaters and get some coffee."
As for Tuesday night, the city did open its shelters under new guidelines. People were told a day in advance when the shelters would be open. They also dropped the tier system that factored in rain with the temperatures, and announced shelters would open if the forecast dips below 35 degrees.
"I think word got out. That increased our numbers from what they would have been, had we not done that,” said Greg McCormack, Austin's Homeless Strategy Office Program Manager.
City leaders said things did run smoothly as more than 150 people showed up.
"We are going to look at what worked and didn't work and see if we need to tweak anything, or improve anything," McCormick said. "We're always looking at that but for today our first activation was a success."
On Wednesday, city leaders said they worked with outreach programs like Urban Alchemy to hand out blankets to people in the community doing what they could to try to keep people warm.
"We do this to better the community, we do this to help everyone around us," Finley said.