HOME Center of Central Texas provides outreach, services for homeless populations in San Marcos

Scrolling through Hannah Durrance’s Facebook feed, you’ll find the usual personal announcements and a smattering of shared news stories interspersed with requests such as this:

“We need men's socks. Would anyone be willing to donate men's socks, sizes 8-11? We have some individuals with sores on their feet because their feet are sweating so much and they don't have clean socks.”

Durrance conducts these searches through the Facebook page for HOME Center of Central Texas, a nonprofit organization she created to address the needs of the homeless population, but she shares it via her personal Facebook feed as well because the plight of the homeless in San Marcos is, for her, a deeply personal one. After leaving an abusive situation seven years ago, Durrance moved to San Marcos to start anew, but as a single parent with three children, she and her family wound up living out of her van.

“I’ve been homeless three times in the last seven years,” Durrance explained. “I understand what people are going through.”

As Durrance and her family struggled through their first Texas winter, she registered for classes at Texas State and started working in food service jobs while looking for a permanent place to live. However, without family support, securing first month’s rent and security deposits began to seem like an insurmountable feat. That was when she met someone in the community who offered to pay for three months in a hotel while Durrance continued her search for suitable housing.

“That gave me the opportunity to get on my feet,” she said.

Durrance continued to attend college, often working multiple jobs to make ends meet, but things naturally got easier with the solid foundation of a reliable living situation. Then, in 2015, her house flooded and Durrance once again found her feet swept out from beneath her.

“I was working 62 hours a week as a college student with three kids living in a hotel,” Durrance said. She fell into what is called ‘invisible homeless,’ the ones most people won’t see on a regular basis because they live day-to-day, bouncing from cars to shelters or hotels as they scrape together funds for basic survival. “It took all of our income combined to pay for the car, car insurance, and a lot of fast food. There’s a lot of factors that people typically don’t understand.”

At the time, Durrance had other factors that compounded her situation. Her youngest child struggled with an undiagnosed disability that made it difficult to find an appropriate daycare placement. That, along with the daily challenge of providing food and shelter for all of her children as well as herself showed Durrance some of the crucial gaps in the social systems meant to safeguard people from such situations.

“People have very different perspectives on homelessness,” she said. “There are the people we see on a regular basis, the ones on the street. We call them bums. People think they’re lazy, but 73% of the homeless in Austin suffer from mental illness. They wind up in the prison system or on the streets. People typically want simple solutions for these difficult problems. If they have mental illness, they can’t get a job. If they don’t have family support, they wind up on the street.”

Then there are those who were like Durrance, the homeless population that people don’t see. “So many factors play into someone being homeless,” she said. “It’s not just one thing.”

After the flood in 2015, as Durrance continued to put her life back together, she began to look for ways to help those who found themselves facing similar hurdles. Her understanding of the complexities of homelessness helped her to see the places where people were most likely to need assistance.

“If it hadn’t been for someone helping me, I don’t know what I would’ve done,” Durrance said. “The weeks we slept in the van were terrifying. So whenever someone finally stepped in and said, ‘Look I wanna help you.’ That was such a gift. So I thought, ‘If I’m in a position to help others, why wouldn’t I do it?”

Durrance created HOME Center, which stands for Homeless Outreach, Mitigation, and Emergency Center, in May 2019 as a means to pay that gift forward to the broader community. As a volunteer-led organization, HOME Center’s ultimate goal is to connect individuals and families with the resources they need to acquire housing. However, because every situation is multifaceted, this can look very different from each circumstance. This is why much of HOME Center’s community outreach happens online and via their website. Everything from diapers, to laundry and cleaning services, to advocacy work, and access to computers, Durrance and HOME Center volunteers put out the call for assistance and people in the community answer.

“Being able to reach into the community through our Facebook page helps us make a difference,” Durrance said. “We have volunteers who work in a lot of different ways for us. Every single penny we make goes back into the program. Eventually, we want to have staff members, but right now it is just volunteer based.”

HOME Center has partnered with Hays County Food Bank in order to arrange separate food deliveries for those who are sheltered and nonperishables to those who are unsheltered. Often it’s Durrance herself driving around town to deliver care packages to homeless individuals, but on July 4, Durrance’s car was stolen from her driveway and later found totaled in Lockhart. This prompted an online GoFundMe campaign to replace Durrance’s vehicle, led by her friend Jen DeAngelo, who described Durrance as, “the person who will give her last dollar to anyone she thinks needs it more. She's willing to sacrifice and do without so others have more opportunity.”

But when asked about her car, Durrance seemed less concerned about the vehicle itself and more about the donation items packed inside. “After the flood, a lady gave me a Toyota Forerunner,” she said. “I was able to use that vehicle for two years. I was able to be the mom and the employee I needed to be.”

So while Durrance said she was concerned about not having a car, she refocused the conversation on the needs of HOME Center instead, shifting the topic to the many ways in which the coronavirus has impacted their ability to serve the community.

“COVID-19 has shown us the safety nets that aren’t there,” Durrance explained. “We have a lot more people coming to us, asking for help. People are understanding that things aren’t as easy as they thought.”

As for recent successes, HOME Center was able to conduct the first Point in Time (PIT) Count in Hays County, which is important in securing support from larger organizations such as the Texas Homeless Network. Additionally, HOME Center was granted 501c3 tax-exempt status with the IRS, which will allow the organization to serve the community more effectively.

Durrance has long-term hopes for expanding the scope of HOME Center as well. “We really want an office space,” she said. “If we had a church or location we could work from, we would love to have a community breakfast for people. If we had an office space, it would make things easier for us.”

HOME Center is currently seeking donations to help fund their motel program, as well as volunteers to assist in a variety of ways. For information on volunteering, check their Facebook page at Home Center of Central Texas, or call 512-270-8433.