'Continued barriers': How the Texas storm affected this young community

Thirty bags float around on people's backs in Houston, Texas, carefully packed by the non-profit organization Tony's Place. Contained in them are an assortment of items -- everything from weather wear to non-perishables to hand warmers. They are provisions someone might need when facing the elements, particularly a brutal winter storm and a record-shattering cold snap, without access to shelter.

The winter weather that hit the Plains this week struck Texans hard, and while power outages struck indiscriminately, the cold affected vulnerable communities disproportionately.

Tony's Place, a drop-in center for LGBTQ youth who are experiencing homelessness, began preparations for the storm on Saturday, Feb. 13. The bags were packed, and calls were made to attempt to find shelter for the members, all of whom are under 25 years of age and the majority of whom are in the 18- to 25-year-old age range.

"We also attempted to get members that were eligible for shelters into some of those spaces, accompanied them in calling family members if they had access to them or friends, just anyone that would maybe allow them to spend the night at their home temporarily due to the storm," MaDonna Land, Program Director of Tony's Place told AccuWeather via Zoom.

As a drop-in center, the non-profit operates as a resource center to provide emergency services such as showers, laundry, food, clothes and then referral sources out, but it doesn't have emergency beds. COVID-19 has also restricted the shelter's ability to provide services -- the facility is open only on Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. rather than both Friday and Saturday.

The staff and volunteers of the non-profit spent time utilizing social media to contact members and referred them to areas offering shelter this past Sunday and Monday. However, the number of people willing to go to a shelter was low.

"Because of how our members identify, they tend to not feel safe going into shelters, and so even with it being inclement weather, they're still not extremely open to that," Land said. On top of that, bed space is limited. "We have had a hard time referring members and trying to get them to those shelters not knowing if they're going to actually be able to stay. Many of them don't want to take those chances."

In San Antonio, Alex Fleming, a pastor volunteering at San Antonio's First Baptist Church, which is serving as an emergency warming center, told The Guardian a similar story of limited availability. "A lot of places are getting overpacked," Flemming told the news source. "The only hard thing is that you can only take so many. You've got to turn people away sometimes."

Land added that some of the members have been experiencing homelessness over a couple of months, and certain shelters are cutting availability to people who have returned several times. "It's no longer first-come-first-serve," Land said, "But more, 'You received your services here, and your time has kind of run out.'"

"Those who are able to return have gotten accustomed to the horror stories, if you will, about treatment when it comes to, especially my trans community, when it comes to being housed and things of that nature," Land said. "We also have to keep in mind that this community tends to not have their IDs and information to do in-takes and things of that nature."

Due to this, Land says it's difficult to get young transgender folks to consider going to shelters, and even when they can get them to consider the idea, the trust isn't there.

"If we can gain the trust, then not having space available just becomes continued barriers, if you will," Land said.

Of about 50 people who visited Tony's Place on Saturday, only five were open to the idea of staying at a shelter, but there's still no guarantee that they were allowed to stay.

MaDonna Land explained to AccuWeather the difficulty of finding shelter for LGBT youth experiencing homelessness ahead of the storm that hit Texas.

In addition to the concern for their members, a lack of power combined with an inability to get to the center to physically open the facility prevented Land and her staff from opening the doors, but they continued to try to link members to as many resources and services that were available. A lack of available transportation and dangerous roads added to the complications.

"It's been extremely difficult to do so with having our own personal limited access and then obviously them having limited access. It's just, it's been difficult altogether," Land said. "So we've been extremely concerned about our members, especially those that we were not able to get into sustainable housing."

Valerie Salas, the director of homeless services at Christian Assistance Ministry in San Antonio, told The Guardian that the state government needed to do more. Land added that there was not a lot of confirmation from the city as a whole as to what to expect to be available as resources.

Tony's Place's preparation for the inclement weather was the same as it usually would be, but Land added the amount of information on resources available was given after the fact -- much later than during other extreme weather events.

"In the past, some of the hurricane preparation and stuff like that, because we had dealt with those hurricanes, many of those resources they were giving us in the preparation timeframe," Land said. "But with this, there was not a lot of prep. There was not a lot of information on what to do and how to prepare our homeless community, so that was difficult because we didn't get any of the information till after the fact."

"After the fact," in this case, Land said, meant until Monday when the storm was in full swing.

Accumulating snowfall struck on Monday, piling up to an inch -- an unusual occurrence in the city. Heavy freezing rain and sleet also pounded the Houston area, and, by Tuesday morning, some nearby areas had picked up as much as 3 inches of frozen precipitation. While the ice contributed to power outages across the state, temperatures dipped to record levels, increasing the danger for people without heat or, worse yet, without shelter.

The cold that gripped the Houston area was historic. The low temperature plunged to 16 F on Monday morning, breaking the old record of 18 degrees for Feb. 15 that had stood since 1905 at Houston Intercontinental Airport. During the day on Monday, the temperature reached only 25 degrees, shattering the old daily record low maximum temperature for the date by 7 degrees. The old record of 32 was set on Feb. 15, 1909.

The next night, temperatures dropped even lower at 13 F by Tuesday morning. That tied the low-temperature record in Houston for Feb. 16, set back in 1895. Tuesday's high temperature finally rose above freezing but only by a few degrees to 35 F. It was still cold enough to set another daily record-low maximum temperature, beating the 36 F record that had stood since Feb. 16, 1895. Most people living in Houston had never experienced cold so extreme, which was life-threatening to anyone left exposed to the elements or without a heat source.

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"I think that it's just important for any individual who is not familiar with the homeless population, and specifically the LGBTQ population, [to know] how difficult it is for us to connect those resources and how there is such a disparity in providing resources in general to that population," Land said.

She added that it's important when in the preparation stage that there is a focus on the LGBTQ community involving people experiencing homelessness so that service providers like Tony's Place "can be better equipped to get them linked to those services 'pre-' instead of 'retro.'"

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