Homeless in the heat

thousands of homeless texans rely on shelters or public shade to stay cool. what problems do they face? abc-7 reporter julio- cesar chavez visited a homeless shelter this morning, he has the story. he’s live from our abc-7 weather deck the heat is keeping a lot of people in their homes but homeless people tend to stay outside of shelters despite these high temperatures “last night we had 95 peopl within the emergency shelter, the men’s emergency shelter” that’s nearly half the number of men who stay there during the cold winters. others shelters don’t change much throughout the year. the heat, we’re told, gives people a chance to get outside crowded shelters. “and all shelters are crowded and so many will go back to the streets and live on the streets” “you can take stuff off in th summer, the heat isn’t really gonna kill you” freezing to death is not uncommon but the heat can still be as dangerous.0 triple digits temps dehydrate people, or even cause them to fall to heat exhaustion or heat stroke, which can be deadly. the heat can easily get to the homeless walking with a backpack on your back, long sleeve shirts on, no shorts to put on like everybody else so many have to pick between being outside where there’s plenty of space and staying in a crowded but cool shelter “it beats being out in the sun” although the shelters deal with fewer people in the summer, they still have problems “it seems like air conditioners go down regularly, so between the ten shelters that we have my maintenance men are moving between shelters making sure that air conditioners are going” if you would like to help homeless shelters around the city you can donate to help pay their summer electric bills