The city’s plan

 

  • Based on testimony from the city’s top homelessness official and the city's Request for Application (RFA), the ‘South Austin Housing Navigation Center’ is not planned as a housing navigation center in any real sense. It is instead to be a drop-in day services facility for chronically homeless single adults.

    The distinction matters enormously.

    The city's RFA process, now underway, does not prohibit the provision of any category of services at the new center. Instead, it requires or permits center operators to provide a broad list of on-site services, including food and nutrition supports, behavioral health and substance use services, mail services, and basic daily-needs assistance. The RFA also contains no requirement that services be delivered on an appointment-only basis, no prohibition on walk-in access, and no binding performance benchmarks tied to housing outcomes or community impact.

    In other words, the city is planning exactly the kind of open-access, day-services model that turned the area around the controversial Sunrise hub into what it is today—and doing so six hundred feet from Travis Early College High School, abutting residential backyards, and next door to a neighborhood that is already carrying more than its fair share of Austin's homeless service burden.

    HSO officials have confirmed that they expect the new center's operator to run a food pantry, provide medical and wellness services, and offer "ancillary supports" for individual adults transferred to this site from the Sunrise hub. They have also acknowledged that folks are likely to “pitch a tent near where they can get access to nutritional resources and other social services.”

    In light of all that, it is our position that the city must implement reasonable but actionable guardrails around the operation of the new center to ensure an outcome that works for everyone.

  • With the city's help, the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center has provided homeless support services for ten years at its location on Menchaca Road and Redd Street, directly across from Joslin Elementary school.

    Under pressure from the surrounding Western Trails neighborhood and the attorney general—who has sued Sunrise in an effort to shut the hub down—the city decided to move the problem to a less politically influential community. Despite strong opposition from our Southeast Austin community, the city bought a building in the heart of our neighborhood, directly across from Travis Early College High School and within a mile of three elementary and middle schools.

    This is not the first time the city has taken this approach. The Southbridge Homeless Shelter, which has operated just steps from the new center's site since 2021, was originally slated for Bannister Lane—until that neighborhood objected, and the city moved it to ours instead.

    In addition to its proximity to schools, the new facility’s site at 2401 S. I-35 backs up against residential yards where kids play and sits next door to a supportive housing community whose residents have worked hard to escape homelessness. It is a short walk from two parks where encampments and confrontations are common, and is just a few doors down from the city’s Southbridge Homeless Shelter.

    When the city first announced plans for the new center, it described a facility focused on helping housing-insecure families find stable housing, and led Sunrise's neighbors to believe that center would close. The city's own chief homeless officer, though, is on the record saying that what will move to the new site are "services that are focused on individual adults" — including drop-in services like "nutritional supports, like the operation of a food pantry, coupled with nutrition, medical, wellness and health."

    Family services, he confirmed, "would likely stay" at Sunrise’s Menchaca hub location. Both centers will remain open.

    So our neighborhood will receive a large, city-funded drop-in day services facility concentrating the chronically homeless single adults near our schools, homes, and businesses—while the Western Trails neighborhood keeps the lower-risk family services.

    To make matters even more concerning, Councilman Ryan Alter has signaled on multiple occasions that Sunrise itself is the clear front-runner to be the operator of the new center.

    We support providing services for Austin's unhoused residents, including those with the highest needs. Our concern is not with the mission. It is with the city's plan to build a facility that, based on everything officials have said on the record and the center’s RFA, is designed to function as a day-services drop-in center—a model that the Sunrise hub demonstrates creates serious problems for surrounding neighborhoods unless binding safeguards are in place.

  • SANSA is asking the city to implement three categories of enforceable ‘safeguards’ before the center opens:

    A prohibited-services list. The operator's contract must explicitly prohibit on-demand, walk-up access to day services—including meals, showers, laundry, mail handling, medication storage, and clothing distribution—that are not directly tied to individualized housing navigation appointments. These services have an important role in Austin's homeless services ecosystem. But they are already available nearby, and do not belong in a facility that is sited adjacent to schools, homes, parks, and an existing shelter.

    Appointment-based access controls. All services must be delivered through scheduled, appointment-based intake. Walk-in access must be strictly prohibited. This is a primary structural distinction between a housing navigation center and a drop-in day shelter, and it is the single most consequential factor in determining whether the center will actually move clients toward housing stability or simply encourage them to set up camp nearby.

    Enforceable accountability mechanisms. The city must commit, in the operator's contract and in city policy, to binding objective numeric benchmarks—housing placements, community impact, incident thresholds—with defined consequences. Such consequences must include the possibility of operator termination if those benchmarks are not met on a defined schedule.

    These three requirements are an integrated system, not a menu of options. Any one of them without the others leaves the facility structurally indistinguishable from the Sunrise hub, and will lead to an even worse outcome.

    SANSA stands ready to engage with the Advisory Board, HSO, and City Council on the specifics. We are simply asking the city to do this right.