ARCH Shelter

Austin Recourses Center for the Homeless, also known as ARCH is a 100 bed shelter for homeless men located on 

seventh street in Austin, Texas.

This Front Steps organization is built to provide a place for the homeless to sleep and rest while in need. 

The need for homeless shelters in Austin were felt as soon as you get a block away from the steps of the entrance. 

There were people sitting outside the building huddled around this one electronic door that would only let people in 

one at a time due to capacity issues.

People for the most part minded their own business when they saw my partner and I walking into the shelter. 

After getting through the metal detector near the entrance we walked to the front desk to ask if we could observe the 

place for about half an hour. The people who ran ARCH were a little hesitant to let us walk around because they were 

so dedicated to keeping their occupants comfortable. There are two levels that the homeless can sit or sleep. There is an 

upstairs room where the beds are and a sitting area that wasn't well insulated and not enough seats.

For the most part people looked really tired and satisfied with the resting place they were in. Still, even with 

a roof over their head we could tell the amount of people that were in the shelter caused a little uncomfortableness. 

People had more with them than a casual person walks out the door with and the fact that I or my partner didn't have 

anything to carry in our hands seem to grab the curiosity of the occupants.

There was no particular way to categorize any of the people who stayed at the shelter. There were teenagers 

to elderly with a heavier influence on the elderly in the shelter and there were all different kinds of races that occupied 

the place. The one thing the many different people at the shelter all shared were the ignorance of anyone else who was 

next to them or in their walk-paths. It's hard to imagine your social skills being the most upbeat if you shared your place 

of rest with so many other people in the same need as you.

For the most part the shelter was clean but with the constant gain and loss of occupants it must be hard to 

keep the shelter in the same clean aspect as the last hotel you stayed in. One thing is clear about the ARCH shelter 

is the fact that the people working there are dedicated to keeping the occupants as comfortable as possible during their 

stay. The only thing that seems to be the problem is the need for more shelters like ARCH. Overcrowding of any place 

can make it less comfortable. 

The need is relevant and justified as soon as you walk in to a shelter and with ARCH being such a desired place it's 

hard to think that Front Steps won't try to find more shelter space for the many homeless in need of a place to stay.

-James McNeal