City to Expand Homelessness Assistance Program After Successful Pilot

Austin Resource Center for the Homeless in 2022 before Urban Alchemy took over (photo by Jana Birchum)

A pilot program that provides assistance to homeless people in crisis without calling in the police will continue for at least another year, after City Council approved a nearly $1 million contract last Thursday.

From February to July, a team of 12 practitioners walked the streets to provide food, water, clothing, and other services to the roughly 500 unhoused people living Downtown. Downtown Austin Alliance partnered with the nonprofit Urban Alchemy to run this pilot of the Homelessness Engagement Assistance Response Team (HEART). Urban Alchemy mostly employs people who were previously unhoused or incarcerated and transformed the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless in 2022, turning much of the previous administrative space into usable areas for residents.

So far, the pilot in Austin has shown promise, with over 100 people admitted to shelters and 57 reunited with their families, according to data provided by Bill Brice, a senior vice president at the Downtown Austin Alliance.

Brice said the pilot also referred 1,500 people to the Oasis, which is a space in the parking lot of the ARCH with tables, tents, and portable restrooms. At the Oasis, unhoused people can escape the Texas heat, get food or coffee, and connect with shelter services.

“We believe that we’re going to make a difference as HEART grows and we see more folks having an additional resource to call on when our most vulnerable neighbors are in trouble,” said Kirkpatrick Tyler, the chief of government and community relations at Urban Alchemy.

For years, social justice movements have pushed for alternatives to policing, such as social workers and mental health professionals, to assist unhoused people. Advocates argue for a kinder approach that also conserves police time and resources. Urban Alchemy is an outgrowth of that movement, Tyler said.

“I have a kind of personal mantra that you can’t serve people that you’re afraid of,” Tyler said.

Brice added that police don’t have enough time to sit down and talk with unhoused Austinites like Urban Alchemy practitioners do. Urban Alchemy is uniquely positioned to help because it runs both ARCH and the Eighth Street Shelter, he said. In California, Urban Alchemy practitioners are also equipped with naloxone. They engaged in more than 100 overdose reversal attempts in San Francisco and Oakland in 2023.

But in California, Urban Alchemy practitioners have also been accused of physical, verbal, and sexual assault of the people they serve. The Pacific Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Nation have all reported on the allegations from various public and anonymous sources.

Following police investigations into some of these allegations, Urban Alchemy has never been charged or found guilty in court. Tyler said Urban Alchemy has always been compliant and open to investigation. He believes the nonprofit receives criticism because they employ formerly incarcerated people and that people are intimidated by the nonprofit’s success.

“Our COO beat a life sentence,” Tyler said. “There’s almost a level of cognitive dissonance like, 'Wait a minute. He just got out of prison after 37 years, and you’re entrusting him to run a whole city branch for a nonprofit?’ There’s not a lot of people or organizations saying: Actually, these folks are the best folks to do this work.”

The city of Austin previously contracted with Urban Alchemy in the spring of 2022 before many of these allegations arose that summer. Urban Alchemy worked on an outreach program for the Downtown Austin Alliance under the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO). Brice said both the city and the alliance were fully aware of allegations against Urban Alchemy before letting it take over the ARCH in October 2022. Based on their previous work with the nonprofit, though, Brice felt it was important to continue their work with Urban Alchemy.

The pilot program operated in the heart of Downtown: from Fourth Street to Ninth Street and from Congress Avenue to I-35. Tyler and Brice said the new boundaries remain uncertain, but it’s possible HEART could expand across the entirety of Downtown: between I-35 and Lamar Boulevard, and from Cesar Chavez Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

“What we’ve been doing as a community, not just Downtown, but as a city, has not been working well enough up to now,” Brice said. “This is a really exciting opportunity knowing that we were able to effectively pilot this and prove that the concept works.”

Editor's Note Thursday, 12:45pm: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified a partner in the pilot; Downtown Austin Alliance partnered with Urban Alchemy. The Chronicle regrets the error.