Houston Chronicle: Houston moved many 'Tent City' residents to a navigation center. Here's what it's like inside.

R.A. Schuetz, Houston Chronicle

Near Minute Maid Park, on the edge of downtown where the Astros recently clinched the World Series, you’ll notice something missing. One of the city’s largest homeless camps has moved. 

Where did everyone go? Most went to what’s known as a navigation center – a place where people moved out of an encampment can live, along with pets and loved ones, while they await their permanent housing. The city’s first permanent navigation center quietly opened its doors on Jensen Drive in late January. 

Monday morning, the center opened its doors to the media for the first time.

Inside Kenny Lindley, 61, and Mark Haney, 47, were among the people relaxing in the common room. The two friends sat at a table, absentmindedly gazing at the television. Activities abounded: A pool table, foosball, cornhole, chess and Cards against Humanity were among the games scattered throughout the room.

Nearby, Tazz and Not Turner, 28 and 29, fed bread to their 5-month-old puppy Chloe. Others beaded bracelets or typed on laptops.

"Calm," "blessed," and "a relief" were three of the terms people in the room used to describe their temporary living arrangements. 

Better than the Super Bowl

Mayor Sylvester Turner had more colorful language to describe his feelings about the navigation center opening: "To me, it's better than the Super Bowl."

He led dozens of people, members of partner organizations, Fifth Ward residents and the media through the building. Visitors saw where the staff wash linens and towels. Where Fifth Ward residents can access healthcare through Harris Health and the mental health provider Harris Center. Where the nonprofit operating the navigation center, Harmony House, stores bulk-sized boxes of Oreos, Fruit Roll-Ups and other snacks.

In another wing of the newly renovated building 100 beds are in place for residents. Most rooms have four twin-sized beds, two on each side of the room. Screens block off each sleeping area from the one beside it. Every mattress has a light overhead and drawers underneath, as well as a small night stand and an outlet. 

The setup is spare. But it has its comforts. One person savored its showers, another its hot meals and vegetables. To Haney, it felt safe. Before moving into the navigation center, he'd relocated his tent into another encampment, just in case — if things didn't work out, he would have somewhere to go.

Five days later, he was sure he wouldn't need it. "This place is a lot better than the streets."

Struck by sense of normalcy

Lindley's first night in the center, he couldn't sleep. It was too quiet.

The camp had been loud, with traffic roaring down U.S. 59 overhead. But at the navigation center, he could pick out the sound of someone walking up — even in his sleep. Here, unfamiliar noises ricocheted off the hard walls and floors in confusing ways. Before moving to the camp months ago, he had been living in his truck. It'd been a long time since he'd slept indoors. 

What was more, his mind filled with worries about his girlfriend, who couldn't move to the navigation center because she lived across the street from the area being "decommissioned." If something happened, he couldn't hear her yell and run across the street to her side.

But over time, at least he had grown used to the quiet. One evening, he fell asleep around 9 p.m. and didn't wake until 6 a.m. It'd been weeks since he'd last slept through the night. 

Others said they'd settled right in. Ricardo Mauriquez, 47, and Aaron Boothe, 45, were two of the first to move into the center. Mauriquez said he was struck by the sense of normalcy. 

It was quiet, they got two Metro fares a day to run errands, their onsite caseworkers were easy to contact. And he didn't feel like he and Boothe were discriminated against because of their relationship. In fact, they said Preston Witt, chief operations officer for Harmony House, had been uncommonly sensitive to their needs.

Mauriquez and Boothe have a room of their own — Witt said he wouldn't put anyone else in their room unless they were also a same-sex couple or someone who was openly gay, as a safety precaution. The same provision was given to transgender clients. 

And Witt's help extended beyond housing. After Mauriquez and Boothe got married in 2022, a storm had swept through camp and rain destroyed their marriage license before they had a chance to return it to the courthouse. Harmony House was helping them pay for a new one. They were thinking, their faces creasing into broad smiles, of a second wedding — this time, in the center. 

Five years in the making

The new navigation center traces its origins to 2018, when the city first tried closing down encampments by offering all of their residents housing. Between 2011 and 2017, the Houston region had successfully reduced its annual count of the unsheltered population every year, but the year after Harvey, when the count ticked back up. 

Starting in 2018, the city, the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston and Harris County and their partners tried closing down an encampment on Wheeler Avenue. Then they tried to close down the camp east of Minute Maid, which at that point encompassed more than 100 people. But instead of moving everyone out at the same time – there was no way to line up that many empty apartments at once – they moved people out as units became available. 

By early 2020, they’d moved more than 100 people into housing from so-called Tent City, the camp east of Minute Maid. But the camp's population showed little sign of diminishing. Word of what they were doing had gotten out, and new people were moving in, taking up empty spots at the camp.

That’s why the city, county and their partners decided to create a navigation center, a concept pioneered in San Francisco. Housing an entire camp at once would drastically cut down the time it took to “decommission” a camp, which they hoped would prevent the process from attracting new people. 

A navigation center differs from a shelter in that it does not accept walkups. The only way a people can get a spot in a bed is if the city, county and their partners targets the area where they're living and signs them up for a transfer.

During the pandemic, hotels emptied out as people sheltered in place, and the Coalition leased one to use as a pilot navigation center. At the same time, it worked on securing a larger, more permanent facility. Opening it – and then following through on all the logistics with “decommissioning” encampments – was an immense undertaking, involving millions of dollars and more than a dozen partners. 

Fifth Ward prioritized

It also took significant political will. While many neighborhoods call for homeless camps to be moved, they balk at housing people near them who have been living in tents. When City Council readied to vote on turning a former school building in Fifth Ward into a navigation center, over 200 people signed a petition expressing their “strong opposition.”

Turner said that members of the community had been involved in discussions about the center before it opened. Some had even been invited to help move members of Fifth Ward's homeless community into the navigation center before the encampment east of Minute Maid was decommissioned. 

Joetta Stevenson, president of the Greater Fifth Ward Super Neighborhood, said she had not only been unaware of plans for a navigation center until it went before City Council for a vote — she also did not find out that it had opened until she read about it in the news. 

She said people in Fifth Ward were used to coming to the aid of neighbors, but she saw the center as an example of how little political voice the historically Black community has had in determining what happened in their neighborhood. She reserved the term NIMBY — short for "not in my backyard" — for those who actually had power to sway development.

"I wish Fifth Ward had the luxury of being NIMBYs," she said. Over the decades, Fifth Ward has been home to cement batch plants, a rail yard many link to a nearby cancer cluster, an outsized portion of the city's public housing and a highway, which caused businesses and homes to be torn down and will likely be expanded.

But Planchette Williams, a Fifth Ward business owner who was invited to the tour, felt differently. "I welcome the navigation center here in our community," she said.

She was glad that in addition to people from encampments, outreach workers would target people living in Fifth Ward for the navigation center's services. She'd rode along as a team looked for homeless individuals in the neighborhood to offer them spots in the center. A dozen people had been living in an abandoned church; eight were in another. She was struck by the lack of running water and other utilities. Ultimately, five of the people they found took spots in the navigation center.

Whenever the mayor thanked the Fifth Ward community at Monday's press conference, those gathered around him burst into applause. 

"Our number one priority, in terms of placement, are the people that are homeless in Fifth Ward," Turner said. "They will always be the priority."

Looking forward

Shortly after Lindley moved into the navigation center, he received a call from his caseworker. His background check for his housing application had passed. He already had his voucher, so all he needed was some final paperwork from the apartment complex, which could arrive any day. He was excited, and decided he'd stay at the center all week so he wouldn't miss his case manager whenever she arrived.

The only wrinkle was that would Valentine's Day was coming up. Saturday, he signed out of the navigation center and rode the Metro back to the camp where his girlfriend was living. He brought her a dog made of chocolate, a pair of earrings and a card. He promised to return the following Saturday to continue their celebration with dinner at BreWingz. 

Mauriquez had also gotten Boothe an early Valentine's Day gift: A pair of silver necklaces. Each had a charm in the shape of puzzle pieces that fit together. "His one" was engraved on Mauriquez's. "His only" was engraved on Boothe's.

But their paths forward were also complicated by their lives at the camp. While living under U.S. 59, Mauriquez found out he had a cancer in in his bones that at first doctors thought could be stopped through amputation. But when he showed up to a consultation about the surgery, doctors found the cancer had already moved up past his hip. Doctors had given him 15 to 18 months to live.

These days, he and Boothe are living in the moment. They're focusing on the positive: Their wedding, the relief of living indoors. 

"You're not always looking over your shoulder," Boothe said. 

"You're not worried about the weather," Mauriquez agreed. "This place is pretty cool."

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