Dear Mayor Adler and City Council, We are a group of Austin High School students investigating the issue of homelessness in Austin. While we recognize many efforts made by the city of Austin to accommodate the homeless and agree with the Council’s policies that decriminalize their existence, we believe they lack the direct perspective of homeless people. After interviewing several homeless individuals in the community, we realized Austin citizens need to hear from people experiencing homeless directly or, as noted by David Lynch, an Austinite experiencing homelessness, “people out here on the front line.” One main issue mentioned by our interviewees was housing. Diego has a solution: “Get those storage containers and make those into housing for the homeless.” Storage containers are not fit for a permanent residence, but they could provide a place to start. A more prominent issue is mental health. Because of hidden trauma, many resort to drugs. “We want to suppress these feelings,” says Bradley. According to Austin ECHO, 70% of homeless people experienced past abuse or trauma that has played a part in them becoming homeless. These experiences can scar individuals for life and make it difficult to find a healthy way to cope. Some might say, “Why don’t they go to the homeless shelter?” In reality, Austin’s ARCH shelter isn’t as effective as it seems. Upon asking our interviewees about the shelter, many of them reported it a place of violence they were scared to visit. We encourage you to listen to the perspective of those experiencing homelessness, to increase the budget on health care and education for the homeless. We believe if citizens of Austin better understood what individuals experiencing homelessness are going through, than our community would be able to better understand, and eventually solve, Austin’s homeless problem.