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Austin's HEAL Initiative focused on high risk homeless camps during severe weather season

AUSTIN (KXAN) — This week's forecast has included the risk of tornadoes, hail, flash flooding, and damaging winds. For people living outside and without easy shelter options, that type of weather presents unique challenges. 'Last night's storm was another reminder of why the preparation is important. Especially when you have severe wind, rain, hail and tornado warnings happening in the middle of the night,' Austin's Homeless Strategy Officer David Gray said. How does the city of Austin decide which homeless encampments to clear? That's why Gray said the city is tailoring its HEAL Initiative efforts toward areas that may be most impacted by severe weather right now. 'We've been looking at sites in wooded areas both to prevent wildfires but also to make sure that people are not injured from lightning strikes, falling trees, wind, tornados and floods,' Gray said. The HEAL Initiative is Austin's program that moves people from high-risk homeless encampments to a bridge shelter, where people get a temporary place to stay until something more permanent opens up. HEAL stands for Housing-Focused Encampment Assistance Link. 'A lot of our recent HEAL initiatives have focused on creek beds for this specific reason. We know that we're entering severe weather season and it's really important that we get people out of those creek beds and out of those low lying areas, so if we do have a flash flood, heaven forbid, we've minimized the chance for people to get injured in those weather events,' Gray said. Austin-led HEAL initiative closes four encampments If it's left you wondering — well, there's an encampment near my house. Why hasn't the city cleared that one? The city can only move people to shelter if one is available. When that space opens up, the city has a ranking system for which camp it targets next. 'Priority rankings are based off of things like the people who are at the sites, so if there is evidence of children or pregnant women or seniors. We also look at factors like, have there been fires at sites recently, what's its proximity to residential areas,' Gray said. Read more about that process here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.