Last December, Jennifer Salinas sat in her San Antonio apartment holding back tears. The holidays had always been hard for her, but 2019 had proven to be especially trying for the Laredo native. Not only did it mark 10 years since she’d been sexually assaulted on her 20th birthday in December 2009—it was the first holiday season she’d spent away from her family.

During past winters, Salinas kept her anxiety at bay by organizing birthday parties, weddings, and baby showers for friends and family. While staying busy was always a challenge, she says, working full-time at a car rental agency and having her loved ones close by gave her a much-needed sense of support. But six months after moving to San Antonio with her 13-year-old son and her partner, Loretta Barajas, Salinas says the PTSD from her assault brought on a crippling depression that consumed her life. “The call center I was working at wasn’t very busy, so I’d often have gaps of 20 minutes where my mind would wander,” she says. “I didn’t have an escape, so I had plenty of time to think of stupid, harmful things. That’s when things started to go downhill.”

In an effort to reduce her stress and protect her mental health, Salinas’ manager cut her hours in half and tried to make her schedule more flexible. The move helped to a degree, she says, but the drop in pay put her in a crippling financial situation as the family’s breadwinner (Barajas suffers from severe back pain that limits her ability to work). Things quickly snowballed from there: Unable to pay their mounting credit card bills, student and car loans, and finally, their rent, Salinas and her family were eventually kicked out of their apartment on Christmas Eve. “We lost everything. The only saving grace was that my son, who was back in Laredo with my parents for his Christmas vacation, wasn’t there to see it,” she says. “We didn’t want to burden my family, we didn’t tell them what was going on. So, we moved what we could into storage and went to Austin to stay with a friend of mine.”

Unfortunately, their new living situation became untenable almost immediately. Littered with pet hair and feathers (two dogs and four birds roamed its quarters freely), the Southeast Austin home of Salina’s friend was a respiratory minefield for her son and Barajas, both of whom are asthmatic. Salinas tried to keep the area clean for her family, but between cooking meals and working 12-hour graveyard shifts at her new job at a semiconductor plant, she began to drown in debt and anxiety.

That’s when Barajas suggested they seek shelter at the Salvation Army’s newly opened Rathgeber Center for Families. After initially balking at the prospect (“I thought it would basically just be a gym full of people, which I didn’t want to subject my son to,” she admits), Salinas was shocked to learn the shelter offered private living quarters for families, including their own room and bathroom. By the end of February, they moved to the East Austin campus and began receiving case management services—including financial planning, on-site therapy sessions with mental health specialists, and resources to help them create a long-term housing plan.

Having access to these services and a safe place to call home was critical for Salinas’ family. Within weeks, her happiness increased, she paid off some of her outstanding debt, and her son’s performance in school skyrocketed. Everything was going well until the COVID-19 crisis hit Austin, she says. Now, the prospect of her child or partner getting sick has added further uncertainty to her family’s already-murky future—a sobering reminder that people experiencing homelessness are particularly vulnerable to the dire health and economic issues upending communities across the world. “This virus mainly attacks your lungs. Loretta and my son both have serious respiratory issues, so that’s really scary,” she says. “Even the thought of them getting the smallest cold and it getting out of hand is a constant concern for me. This whole virus has me anxious, on edge.”

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Over the past month, city officials have been flooded with issues stemming from the COVID-19 crisis. To say the pandemic’s impact around town has been debilitating would be an understatement: Tens of thousands of Austinites have lost their jobs. School campuses are closed indefinitely. Food insecurity has shot up, as has the likelihood that many families won’t make their rent come May 1. While these circumstances have devastated communities across Austin, they’ve hit the city’s most vulnerable population—people experiencing homelessness—especially hard.

The challenges posed by a pandemic on homelessness present a litany of complex questions. For instance, where do people living on the street find clean restrooms and hand-washing stations? How can shelters continue to house hundreds of people while adhering to the rigid sanitary standards needed to stave off the virus? Who will replace the countless retired folks (the core volunteer segment for most homelessness nonprofits) who now, in fear of falling ill, are being ordered to stay home? Can organizations fundraise enough money to amplify their impact if the economy continues to bottom out? The list goes on.

Answering these questions will require organization, collaboration, and creativity—resources the city has in spades, says Amy Price, director of development and communications at Front Steps. Long before its decision last summer to alter a previously existing ban on camping, local government has made homelessness one of its core policy priorities over the past year, leading to increased funding for urgent services and enhanced communication among key community stakeholders. This collaborative environment has been crucial to establishing a united front against the virus from day one, Price says.

“Everyone in the nonprofit world working on this issue regularly sees and convenes with city officials. To me, that’s really telling: On this issue, when I look around, I see the city really showing up,” she says, noting that daily meetings have helped government staff and organizations across town remain calm, collected, and aligned. “From organizations sharing physical resources like hand sanitizer to city hall coordinating with us on key needs, we’re banding together. We’re stronger together.”

With a streamlined communication system established, the city has been able to quickly adjust to the coronavirus crisis’ effects on people experiencing homelessness with specific, targeted strategies. From providing up-to-date medical information—many people living on the streets don’t have cell phones or consistent internet access, limiting their access to critical updates about the virus—and distributing hundreds of hygiene kits, to implementing dozens of mobile hand-washing stations across the city (especially in the urban core) and coordinating food access, local lawmakers have placed a premium on establishing a sense of order. Regardless of whether you agree with the city’s recent homelessness policies, officials say this compassionate, direct approach has been vital to preventing an outbreak of the disease thus far.

“The City of Austin, including elected officials, leadership, and staff, is working to ensure the public safety and health of all constituents in the response to COVID-19. People experiencing homelessness are included in the response, and it is our responsibility to meet them where they are as these folks are at higher risk for the virus, have limited capacity to respond, and are experiencing a huge shift in the resources available to meet their basic needs,” a city spokesperson told Austin Monthly. “Coordinated, compassionate, swift action reduces risk for everyone in our community. No matter how you feel about Austin’s plans and policies around homelessness, protecting the entire community has to come first.”

Area nonprofits like Front Steps, which runs the ARCH (Austin Resource Center for the Homeless) and provides case management services to adult men experiencing homelessness, have also had to shift their processes. Typically, hundreds of people pass through their downtown shelter to shower and use the restroom. But under the current circumstances—and with sanitation supplies at a premium—they’ve had to roll back their daytime services to protect as many as 120 people who sleep under their roof every night.

“With higher demand for cleaning right now, it’s just too easy to spread this virus. There’s no way we could keep it safe enough for the staff and the gentlemen who sleep in our shelters with that kind of foot traffic,” Price says, adding that the ARCH has also adjusted its sleeping quarters to adhere to social-distancing recommendations. “We’re doing everything we can to deliver the services that people need, but we have to make sure we have 24-hour coverage and cleanliness.”

Still, Price points out, the shelter-in-place policy needed to curb COVID-19’s spread is hurting Austin’s homeless populations in painful and unexpected ways. For starters, the virus’ severe threat to older people (who make up the majority of the volunteers for most organizations) has vastly reduced many nonprofits’ roster of workers. Furthermore, the lack of traffic through downtown has all but erased the opportunity for many people to panhandle—placing an increasingly heavy burden on shelters and soup kitchens.

“A lot of our clients consider panhandling their jobs. They’re mindful of how many hours a day they have to work to get something to eat or get a cheap hotel room every few nights,” she says. “Even when they work up enough money, several clients have told me that many of the downtown convenience stores and gas stations are practically barren. They’re encountering their own ramifications of this economic crisis.”

This has had a carry-over effect for nonprofits in this sector, which are being squeezed financially. As the Salvation Army has worked to contain the virus in its three shelters—which primarily serve women and children like Jennifer Salinas’ family—the organization has had to spend an extra $27,000 a week to employ additional case managers, custodial staff, and monitors. Typically, clients leave for the day to go to work or seek services, says Corey Leith, Salvation Army’s communications director. But with social distancing required to “flatten the curve,” the nonprofit has had to enhance its on-site resources.

Safeguarding against the virus’ spread in shelters can be costly, Leith says. After a client on the Salvation Army’s downtown campus tested positive for COVID-19, the city paid to put them—along with another 14 people they’d potentially been in contact with—in hotel rooms for a two-week quarantine period. These types of investments are critical to protecting their clients, he says. “We’re definitely spending more money than we usually would, and it’s going to have a long-term effect if we can’t properly fundraise. It’s going to be a huge loss on our end if this crisis continues for the foreseeable future,” he says. “But the one thing we don’t want to happen is people panicking in our shelters. This is usually their last stop, their last hope to get into self-sufficiency, so we need them to feel safe. They already have enough concerns on their plate as it is.”

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Eight years ago, Taylor Hamilton’s adopted parents handed her over to Child Protective Services (CPS) after they found out she was pregnant. With nowhere to turn to, the 17-year-old ended up at LifeWorks, a nonprofit that helps families and young adults achieve self-sufficiency through housing, employment, and mental health services. “My adopted parents didn’t understand what I was going through, and I was a bad kid, frankly,” she says. “Still, I didn’t understand how they could just cast me out like that.”

Despite fitting into the organization’s target population—LifeWorks’ services are largely targeted for at-risk youth emerging from the foster care system or experiencing homelessness—Hamilton felt restless at the shelter. Within four months, she ran away to stay with a friend’s family in Proctor, Texas, an unincorporated community just outside of Stephenville. Three months later, she gave birth to her first daughter, Peyton.

Hamilton’s new family took her in as their own, but life in Proctor proved to be solitary for the teenager. Several months after her daughter was born, she allowed her host family to adopt Peyton and hitched a ride back to the capital city. From there, she quickly fell into a cycle of homelessness after arriving in town, first sleeping in her boyfriend’s car before eventually moving to the street. “I met a group of people who were homeless as well, and they showed me the ropes, protected me. I felt free, like I didn’t have to live by anyone’s rules besides my own,” she says. “I loved being that young and without responsibilities. Still, I didn’t think it would last as long as it did.”

As the years passed, Hamilton survived by leaning on her tight-knit group of friends while sleeping on downtown benches and sidewalks. Over time, she began smoking crystal meth, causing an addiction that proved especially dangerous when she discovered she was pregnant for a second time. After her second daughter, Prudence, was seized by CPS shortly after being born in May 2017, Hamilton (then 22) recommitted herself to LifeWorks’ programming in hopes of finding permanent housing and reclaiming her child. But by early 2018, a series of painful losses—including her father’s suicide and her best friend’s death in a matter of months—made it all too much to handle, she says. Despite trying to work out a deal where her sister would adopt Prudence, Hamilton was forced to watch her daughter enter the foster care system for good.

And yet, two years later, Hamilton is drug-free, housed, and the healthiest she’s ever been—a situation she says wouldn’t be possible without LifeWorks. In addition to providing facilitating services that have been crucial to overcoming her addiction and past traumas, the nonprofit has provided the 25-year-old with a low-income unit at its new Works II affordable housing community. The nonprofit’s impact on her life has only increased with the rise of COVID-19 in Austin, she says: Because she can’t work (she’s awaiting surgery on painful bone spurs in both of her feet) and her boyfriend’s hours at Domino’s have been limited, they’ve relied on financial aid from LifeWorks to pay their rent.

Hamilton’s appreciative of this monetary relief, but she can’t help but think of the countless people still sleeping on the city’s streets in the middle of this crisis. “People experiencing homelessness don’t have the same protections as everyone else. They don’t have four walls they can just stay inside of, clean and sanitary spaces to wash their hands and use the restroom,” she says. “If this happened just a few years ago, that would be me.”

Running an organization that serves more than 4,000 at-risk young adults and their family members is challenging enough without a global pandemic, says Susan McDowell, LifeWorks’ executive director. Now, with the majority of their clients unemployed (many worked in the service industry, which has been ravaged by the economic downturn) and in need of food and shelter assistance, the nonprofit is expecting to allocate upwards of $110,000 per month in coronavirus-linked aid for the foreseeable future. That kind of spending spike doesn’t just stretch their organization thin, McDowell points out: It also compromises their clients’ hard-earned progress.

“We’ve got so many youth who have worked to overcome personal and circumstantial challenges to get to the point where they have a job, can pay their rent, and are progressing towards their ultimate goals—only to have that progress halted or pushed back,” she says. “All of a sudden, you’ve lost your restaurant or retail position and are back in this real uncertain place. For a youth that’s experienced a lot of transitions, that could trigger past trauma in a big way.”

Right now, McDowell is confident LifeWorks will find ways to protect its clients from the rash of health and financial fallouts from COVID-19. Still, the pandemic poses a number of unprecedented challenges that could have lasting ramifications for organizations that rely on philanthropy, she admits. “Nonprofits deal with this kind of uncertainty all the time, but this is a much more dramatic, exacerbated form. It’s worrisome,” she says. “A lot of the funding sources that have historically supported us will be strained. We’re just going to have to remain nimble and adjust in creative ways.”

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Every month, Jennifer Salinas and Loretta Barajas sit down with Salvation Army staff to evaluate their financial and personal progress. Although they’ve only been with the organization since February, the pair has made steady improvements, paying down several outstanding loans while meeting with therapists for mental health counseling. Having the chance to catch their breath has renewed their confidence in one another and in their relationship, Barajas says. “When we arrived here, I was already over the edge with the frustration with things going downhill. From the job search to my health, it all felt like too much,” she says. “I don’t know where we’d be without this place.”

Nonetheless, Barajas acknowledges that their future is loaded with uncertainty. Because they can only stay with the Salvation Army through the end of August (clients typically stay for a maximum of six months), she and Salinas are working diligently to land an affordable housing unit in town—a tall task during a pandemic, especially in a city with a notoriously high cost of living that continues to rise. The odds are stacked against them, the pair admits, but they’re committed to staying in Austin to foster their son’s newfound academic success at his new middle school. For now, they’re just going to remain patient and take things day-by-day.

In many ways, Austin has fallen into a similar holding pattern. With shelter-in-place orders established across communities and life at a standstill, it’s proving increasingly difficult to anticipate what the rest of 2020 holds, let alone remember what day of the week it is. For many, these circumstances have created a lull of listlessness, anxiety, and confusion—causing a spike in activities like baking and online video challenges by stir-crazy people seeking to escape their loneliness. While the mental health concerns posed by shelter-in-place policies are legitimate, they pale in comparison to the compounding struggles faced by people experiencing homelessness and the organizations who aid them. But if unemployment continues to strike vast swaths of the city’s populations, advocates worry that COVID-19 could have a lasting impact on area nonprofits by creating a groundswell of need that will remain long after the threat of the virus subsides.

“With so many people losing their jobs and grappling with this crisis, we’re anticipating an increased caseload moving forward. There’s going to be people who were self-sufficient in October but lost their job and have nowhere to go by May,” Leith says. “Our ability to serve everyone we can is crucial not just now, at the height of the crisis, but afterwards. Because people still might not have jobs. They still might be relying on us.”

While that’s a harrowing prospect, local leaders and nonprofits remain steadfast in their mission to provide stability and resources to the city’s homeless population amidst COVID-19. There’s some reason for optimism, too: In addition to a $10 million utility relief bill, City Council approved a $15 million budget amendment last week that will provide relief funding to nonprofits and social service organizations. Weathering this storm will require unprecedented levels of patience and optimism, McDowell says, but she’s hopeful it could also evoke a heightened sense of purpose and unity among Austinites.

“The current public health crisis and the economic fallout is hurting all of us, but it’s especially painful for those who are already tremendously vulnerable,” she says. “But our commitment to our mission has, frankly, been renewed during this pandemic. It’s never been clearer just how vulnerable individuals and families who experience homelessness are—and how important it is that we come together as a city. These challenges, while daunting, just sharpen our focus and urgency.”