South Austinites Worry About Planned Homeless Navigation Center

Residents living near I-35 and Oltorf continue to worry about a homeless navigation center that city officials are placing in the area. A group of them recently formed a nonprofit called the South Austin Neighborhood Safety Alliance, which is meeting regularly with city and county officials, local law enforcement, representatives from the Travis Early College High School, and the community violence intervention group Life Anew Restorative Justice in hopes of limiting the types of services the new center will offer to homeless people. 

SANSA held a community meeting on June 23 to discuss the latest developments with the planned center. Group co-founder Erika Shadburne told us the Oltorf area is already struggling with issues related to a large homeless population and that neighbors fear the presence of a new navigation center will exacerbate them. “It’s a fragile community,” Shadburne said. “There’s not a lot of room here for a mistake.”

Austin’s City Council voted last October to put the center at 2401 S. I-35 Frontage Road to help homeless people find housing, jobs, medical care, and, possibly, food and showers. The center was expected to begin offering the services this spring, but SANSA members said they have learned that the city is delaying the opening until the summer of 2027 as it renovates the property. 

“There’s not a lot of room here for a mistake.”

On June 18, city officials recommended a group to operate the facility – the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center, which runs a separate navigation center on Menchaca Road. Council is expected to approve the selection of Sunrise at its next meeting on July 23. Mark Hilbelink, a pastor and executive director of Sunrise, told us in a statement that the organization is pleased to have been selected to operate the new center and is “committed to working with the City of Austin to prioritize public safety and mitigate unintended impacts” around the site. 

Sunrise is one of the largest and most effective providers of services for homeless people in Central Texas. The group has led the Menchaca Road center since 2015, providing a one-stop shop for mental and physical healthcare, substance abuse care, help with benefits enrollment, and more resources. However, residents living near Sunrise complain that it draws homeless people close to their neighborhoods and an adjacent elementary school and that some use drugs openly, create unsanitary conditions, and drive down business traffic.

These are the same issues that SANSA says its community is dealing with. At the June 23 meeting, SANSA member Michael Ybarra said that Austin Police Department officers describe the area as the largest open-air drug market in the city. Shadburne said that students attending Travis Early College High School, located across the highway from the planned center, are traumatized by homeless people in the area. “I see these kids walking from East Oltorf to the high school, walking past folks who are panhandling, stepping over folks who are sleeping on the sidewalk,” Shadburne said. “The school has to clean up all the time before school starts. And this is a Title I school. It’s over 50% ESL, 85% socioeconomically disadvantaged.”

SANSA shared a white paper at the June 23 meeting that proposes limiting the services the new navigation center will offer in an effort to discourage more homeless people from moving near it. “SANSA does not object to the provision of services to people experiencing homelessness at the proposed site,” the white paper reads. “We object to a specific operational model, namely one that offers a wide range of daily needs services on a drop-in basis – which is precisely the model the City has planned.”

The white paper is organized around three priorities. The first is that the city prohibit a long list of proposed services at the center, things like providing homeless people with food, medicine, showers, mail service, “and all similar open-access services that generate daily-return behavior and encampment congregation.” The second is that the center operate by appointment only. The third is that city officials create provisions in any contract between the city and Sunrise to hold the provider accountable if its terms are violated. 

Ybarra said that SANSA recently sent the white paper to over 300 local leaders. Within a week, the group had met or spoken with representatives of the mayor’s office, the Travis County Constable’s Office, District Attorney José Garza, and City Council Member Zo Qadri, he said. “They’re all in agreement that the city, if they’re going to do this, has to ensure that the public safety infrastructure is there to support the community,” Ybarra added. 

Ybarra also described a mid-June meeting of the South Austin Housing Navigation Center Advisory Board. The board, which meets in private, was created last fall and is composed of 13 stakeholders, including neighbors and homeless services providers. Local resident Ian Dille, who sits on the board, reported that Hilbelink is aware of the drug dealing and sex trafficking on East Oltorf and promised that his team will build relationships with local businesses to help address loitering and trespassing. 

Dille also said that Mayor Kirk Watson plans to form a task force with representatives from different city departments to address issues around the planned center. He reported that HSO’s director, David Gray, also attended the advisory board meeting and said that if the neighborhood still looks the same one year from now, “We have failed you.” A city spokesperson confirmed that Gray made the comment ascribed to him. Watson’s office did not respond to requests about a potential task force for the navigation center.

Ybarra said that SANSA’s meetings with city leaders have been positive. “But I think we can’t kind of let our guard down, right?” he added. “We’ve really got to keep up the dialog, we’ve got to keep up the pressure. Politicians are going to politician, no offense to our elected friends here. They’re going to tell you what they want you to hear.”

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