ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY
After reviewing some preliminary results from the City of San Angelo’s online survey for the Downtown River Parks Master Plan, it was interesting to see several participants use their comment space to talk about our homeless neighbors living all along the river corridors.
While some comments were more empathetic than others, several cited the homeless situation as a primary reason they tend to avoid the river parks areas.
Comments included:
Improving the parks is great and all, but if the homeless people are all over the parks it doesn’t matter how much money you throw into it, people will not want to be there.
I used to use the riverwalk several times a week, but now with the amount of homeless down there I no longer feel safe walking let alone taking my kids down there.
Please do something with the homeless; young children should not be subjected to them
We need a place to house the many homeless people who live around the river parks. Some way to humanely treat those persons. They need affordable housing!
I’d love to use the parks by the river more, but I typically go earlier in the morning with my toddler. On many instances the homeless population is just waking up and stumbling around the playground.
In Our Opinion
Surely no idea currently on the table in San Angelo would do more to alleviate or attenuate homelessness in this city as the proposed Rock Rose Community Campus.
The term for these projects and policies is “Housing First.” The premise of which is to address homelessness directly in the simplest way possible: give them a home.
Further Reading: Mike Burnett on Housing First
According to the experts who’ve tried and succeeded with projects like Rock Rose, an integral component of addressing homelessness is acceding to the everyday realities the homeless are really facing.
We feel this has been demonstrated to great effect by the fact that Navigation Day events organized both here in town at First Presbyterian and in several rural communities, have become a key part of the local continuum of care for this population.
Engineering the kind of help our homeless neighbors are likely to accept is the key to success here.
A persistent problem is the fact that homeless folks don’t want to stay at the shelter.
Barring extreme weather, almost every single homeless person I’ve interviewed absolutely did not want to stay the night in local shelter if they could help it.
This is due to a wide variety of reasons, but it’s not because they want to be outside at night.
It’s that they don’t want everything else that goes along with staying at the shelter.
Everyone Needs Some Space
Tied up in the inevitable conversations about homelessness are dozens of misconceptions and arbitrary judgements about the group.
According to the best estimate from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Point-in-Time Survey from a few years back, about 1-in-500 Americans are homeless.
That equals about 685,240 folks with no place to live based on the current U.S. population of 342,620,143, but that number does not accurately represent the actual number of homeless, and very-nearly homeless people.
According to HUD, there were at least 771,480 people counted as homeless during the 2024 PIT Count, an 18-percent increase over 2023, including almost 33,000 veterans.
It’s understood by experts that the PIT count significantly underestimates the homeless population because some are inclined to avoid participation.
While difficult to calculate with a high degree of accuracy, medical debt is a leading cause of housing instability and homelessness, with roughly 1-in-5 adults burdened with medical debt reporting it has forced them to change their living situation, such as moving in with friends or family, according to a Kiser Family Foundation poll from 2022.
Low Wages and Medical Debt Among Chief Causes
Inadequate pay is another major factor.
The federal minimum wage was last changed on July 24, 2009, when it was increased to $7.25 per hour.
The federal minimum wage was adjusted upward by 70 percent between 1994 ($4.25 per hour) and 2009 ($7.25), but is has not been adjusted once in the last 17 years.
(While it was considered a poverty wage in 1994, such an income today qualifies as actual starvation wages, and it’s not even against the law to pay someone so poorly.)
If you’ve never been homeless, you can’t imagine how important it is to just have a little space that’s yours. Some place where your few possessions can be safe while you go to work or keep a doctor’s appointment.
A place that’s safe, where they can sleep soundly, without having to worry about being robbed or otherwise abused.
The harsh truth is that not everyone can hold a regular job, or live what you or I consider a “normal” life. Some don’t want to, but many others do, they just need some help.
Nobody asks to be born, but everyone has a right to exist, and there has to be room for everyone, including people that have given up on the system, as well as people the system has given up on.
Nobody should need to go hungry, and nobody should have to sleep out in the cold, or get eaten alive by mosquitos.
Until society as a whole does something intelligent about mental health, medical care, and finding a way to actually pay everyone a meaningful-life type wage, homelessness is going to persist.
As long as the U.S. military subjects young people to unhealthily-stressful situations and physical injuries that are likely to be problematic for life, there are going to be veterans who are unable to hold down a regular job.
I see more and more homeless elders these days, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to go to work. I promise, they’ve worked enough — they just don’t have money.
That’s the one thing that all of our homeless friends have in common; they need some help.
The Rock Rose Campus can help people using a model proven elsewhere to improve life here in San Angelo.
The Rock Rose Plan
In a recent appeal on social media, Concho Valley Community Action Agency Executive Director Mike Burnett talked briefly about the project, and his very practical plan to fund the endeavor:
What Rock Rose is
- A holistic service hub—focused on dignity, safety, and long-term stability.
- Private, non-congregant housing options paired with comprehensive case management and housing navigation.
- On-site support like medical care, mental health & substance use support, employment training & job placement, legal aid/document recovery, food pantry/essential items, GED & certificate programs, and more.
- Built to serve thousands through direct services—12,000–14,000 people annually
- Designed to launch in phases, so progress can begin as milestones are met.
Rock Rose is campus that strengthens disaster readiness, too.
Rock Rose is also designed to serve as a regional coordination center for community resiliency and disaster response—including being the operational home of the local COAD/LTRG.
The goal is to strengthen preparedness, coordinated response, and long-term recovery—before, during, and after disasters—with space and infrastructure that supports that work.
What Rock Rose isn’t
- It is not an unmanaged homeless encampment. Rock Rose is structured and accountable, with controlled access, on-site personnel, and a comprehensive security plan developed with law enforcement.
- Rock Rose doesn’t belong to CVCAA. It doesn’t belong to one donor or one agency. It doesn’t belong to City Hall.
Together, We Can Make It Happen
This will be a community campus, and everyone will have a part to play.
You can help by donating, sharing accurate info, volunteering, partnering, or advocating for solutions that work.
Here’s what that can look like: If 1,000 people in this community gave the equivalent of eating out once a month for three years ($30), that’s one million dollars. If 5,000 people did it, that’s five million dollars.
This isn’t about equal gifts. It’s about equal commitment. Some give $25. Some give $25,000. What matters is that everyone leans in.
Because community action only works when the community acts.
Rock Rose is ready. The partners are ready. The neighbors we serve have been ready.
Now the question is whether we are ready to finish what we started.
San Angelo Gives is May 5. It’s one day, but it reflects something bigger about who we are as a city—a moment when we decide whether our actions match our values.
The Concho Valley has always shown up when it matters. After storms. After floods. After fires. Rock Rose is about doing that work before everything falls apart.
It’s about building a system that works—for everyone.
Further Reading:
