For several days now, Joseph Reed has been struggling to find relief from the heat dome suffocating Denton. It’s expected to linger over North Texas for another week, baffling weather experts who warn that risk for extreme heat has been increasing due to climate change.
Maps of the heat dome shared on social media show a brown splotch encircled by bands that look like fire over Texas.
“Remarkable heatwave across Mexico & Texas. Temps 110+. Heat Index 120+,” Jeff Berardelli, a meteorologist and climate specialist, wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “This map shows the upper level ridge ‘Heat Dome’. Maxes out at 4.5 sigma. This means in a normal ‘historical’ climate it’s basically impossible. But climate change makes the impossible, probable.”
Remarkable heatwave across Mexico & Texas. Temps 110+. Heat Index 120+. This map shows the upper level ridge “Heat Dome”. Maxes out at 4.5 sigma. This means in a normal “historical” climate it’s basically impossible. But climate change makes the impossible, probable. pic.twitter.com/LfokprTPZV
— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) June 20, 2023
In his late 60s, Reed has been on the streets for several years now. Six surgeries nearly back-to-back kept him from working. The lack of affordable housing, especially landlords who will overlook a nonviolent criminal record, has made it difficult for him to get off the streets, he said.
Reed isn’t alone. United Way reports that 431 people are homeless in Denton County and of those, 221 people don’t have shelter, according to the 2023 Denton County Homeless Data Report. Those numbers are based on the people they could find during the point-in-time count in January. Local homeless advocates claim the number is much higher in Denton.
In response to the heat dome, Denton officials have opened daytime and evening cooling stations at public facilities like the recreation centers and the libraries.
But it requires people in Reed’s position — a number that has been increasing in Denton — to play a game of musical chairs since each facility’s available cooling hours fluctuate between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. during the week, 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturdays and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
Nighttime temperatures, though, are also dangerous to the homeless community during a heat wave or heat dome — and often more so. As the Weather Channel highlighted in a 2019 report: “Warm nighttime temperatures, especially 80 degrees or warmer, do not allow people to recover from daytime heat.
“When warm low temperatures are combined with high humidity, conditions can become dangerous, if not deadly, even in the middle of the night.”
More than 580,000 people experience homelessness on any given night in the U.S., according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
At night, Reed and others without homes have had to get creative to seek shelter from the high humidity overnight since the only overnight cooling station — the new shelter on Loop 288, run by Our Daily Bread, together with Monsignor King Outreach Center — has been full.
“It is pretty tough overnight,” Reed said. “You find yourself running in and out of 7-Eleven, just buying one item at a time, to cool off.”
Staying cool
Sam Alphonse knows how tough it can be. He spent several years on the streets in Denton before he was able to pull himself out of the situation. A housing voucher helped, as did corrective surgery for his blindness.
To get out of the heat during the daytime hours, Alphonse would seek shelter at the police station and the Downtown Denton Transit Center when the city was still using them as cooling stations.
Nights on the streets during the summer were always hard — even more so, Alphonse said, for those who have health issues like addiction or diabetes.
As one homeless advocate pointed out, alcoholics, for example, are more prone to dehydration, and people on common medications for mental illness can suffer from impaired thermoregulation, which is why they wear hoodies all summer.
“One time I slept by the door to the church to feel the cool air coming out from underneath,” Alphonse said. “Another place I slept was next to the post office door to feel the cool air. Not too many people knew about it.”
Alphonse refused to sleep in a tent like other people struggling with homelessness in Denton because he felt it made him complacent with his situation. He said he needed the motivation to get off the streets.
“It is not your friend,” Alphonse said. “It’s not easy and not every day is sunny. Sometimes you get rained on.”
Our Daily Bread Executive Director Wendy McGee said in an email Wednesday that the shelter has 150 emergency shelter beds nightly, which doesn’t include the five cots reserved for drop-offs from Denton police. The shelter recently added an additional five cots.
McGee said they could shelter 182 individuals overnight at the Loop 288 location.
“We are working to shelter as many as possible,” she said. “We are full most every night.”
McGee said officials are looking to replace the cots, which she said aren’t “holding up well,” with some that are sturdier and easier to store. They had recently toured The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center in Dallas and noticed they were using sturdier cots for their emergency overflow.
Medical City Denton donated recliners to the shelter, and McGee said they’ve been using them as a place for people to sleep at night.
“This time of the year, our most pressing needs are bottled water and Gatorade, sunscreen, sun hats, bug spray, and rain ponchos or umbrellas,” McGee said.
Liz Whitaker cooked more than 1.5 million meals during her 20-plus years as the executive chef at Our Daily Bread’s soup kitchen before it moved to the Loop 288 shelter. Whitaker said she has witnessed the devastating effects the extreme weather cycle has on unsheltered people like Reed.
Officials often underestimate the number of homeless in the community, Whitaker said, and pointed out that the shelter can only hold so many.
Not everyone, she said, seeks shelter there for several reasons, including the structured environment. Some are dealing with mental health issues that make being around other people difficult. Others are afraid their belongings will get stolen — an issue Alphonse had to deal with in the past.
There are also those who are in the throes of their addiction and simply don’t see a way out.
Whitaker commended city leaders for making a “huge leap” with opening the new shelter — even though she said it took them 20 years to do so — and Our Daily Bread staff and volunteers for the good job they are doing. But she said more needs to be done to address the issue of homelessness in Denton.
Homelessness is worsening, but not just in Denton, where half the households in the city can no longer afford to live, according to United Way’s 2022 Denton County Community Needs Assessment.
In July 2022, The New York Times reported that shelters around the country were seeing a surge in people needing help, with “wait lists doubling or tripling in recent months.” The problem is a complex one involving inflation, high rent — which “has increased at its fastest rate since 1986” — and the lack of affordable housing, according to The Times.
Last year, about 1,200 people experienced homelessness in Denton County, according to a July 2022 report by Serve Denton.
“I don’t know how to solve this problem,” Whitaker said. “It is like a hamster wheel, and it is hard to get off the wheel.”
Cooling off
Reed has been struggling to get off the wheel for several years now. During the day, he has been helping the Denton Water Project stock water bottles in the coolers they’ve placed around town for those in need.
Jane Piper-Lunt from Denton Basic Services Center, which originated the water project, said the group has gone through 6,900 bottles of water since June 5. For several years, she has been an advocate for opening the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center as an overnight cooling station since it is closer to several of the homeless camps.
“The real problem is this: Heatstroke can build up over several days,” Piper-Lunt said. “And when there is no real way to stay cooled down, it causes problems. The other problem is getting to places to get cool.”
Denton City Council member Paul Meltzer said it is a problem they’re seeking to address.
“The main missing element from what I gather is transportation there from daytime cooling centers,” Meltzer said in an email Wednesday. “We’re working to see if GoZone can be deployed to address that need on those dangerously hot days where life and safety are truly at risk.”
Although Thursday and Friday were set to offer some relief, temperatures will return to those triple-digit highs with high humidity overnight this weekend and into next week, according to local weather reports.
But city officials have no plans to open another overnight cooling station for those who can’t get into the shelter or simply can’t go there due to their health issues. It’s a situation that could lead to more emergency calls for EMT help for overheating, which each costing the city several hundred dollars.
In an email to the Denton Record-Chronicle on Tuesday, Ryan Adams, chief of staff for the city, said Denton has opened emergency shelters under an issued declaration of disaster in the past — for example, during Texas’ deadly winter storm in February 2021 — but doing so now, he said, would pose challenges because there is a lack of adequate facilities for summer youth programming.
“The Denton Community Shelter [on Loop 288] added additional cots to accommodate the increased demand but they did reach capacity last night,” Adams wrote on Tuesday. “The Salvation Army does have additional overnight capacity so referrals to the Salvation Army shelter will be made when the Community Shelter is full.”
Adams said the Salvation Army also opened a cooling center during the day at the shelter off of McKinney Street.
Since his options are limited, Reed plans to look for a shaded spot not far from where he has been staying near McKinney Street. He also has some advice for those in Denton who soon might find themselves on the streets.
“It’s the basic thing: Stay as extremely hydrated as you can,” Reed said. “You need enough fluids but try not to get too full. Learn how to work the system. Take your time when you’re shopping at night. I go in and buy a cold drink and leave when I’m cool enough.”