Texas attorney general seeks to shutter homeless ministry amid safety concerns

Pastor Mark Hilbelink said he learned about the lawsuit targeting his church’s homeless ministry when a reporter called him to ask about it.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center last week under a local nuisance law and asked a federal court for a temporary injunction to close the ministry, which is affiliated with Sunrise Community Church. In the lawsuit, Paxton argues the center has become a “magnet” for homelessness and crime that endangers students at a nearby elementary school. But Hilbelink says some of the lawsuit’s claims are overblown and leave out the full story about his organization’s work in the city. The dispute showcases the difficulties of helping people on the street while balancing a respect for other local residents.

An estimated 5,020 people in Austin regularly sleep outside in tents, cars, abandoned buildings, or other places not meant for human habitation. Another 1,215 are homeless, but sheltered, according to the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition. Homelessness nearly doubled in Austin between 2020 and 2024. Sunrise and the neighborhood surrounding it are in city District 5, where homelessness has grown 135% since 2020.

Councilmember Ryan Alter represents District 5. He describes Sunrise as simultaneously one of the “biggest blessings” and “greatest headaches” in his region of the city. He said the services Sunrise provides are vital, since it is the only walk-in day center in the city. But the center’s location isn’t ideal. “That creates a little bit of difficulty and tension with the neighborhood where they are located,” he said.

Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center isn’t an overnight shelter, and Hilbelink said less than 0.5% of the city’s homeless, about 30 individuals, regularly spend the night in the surrounding area. The center’s outreach team visits encampments hidden in the woods off major thoroughfares to encourage people to apply for housing assistance. “We see ourselves like the airport,” Hilbelink said. “Our day center is not a place to go and hang out for the next six months. It’s a place to go and then get connected to the next thing.”

But dozens visit the center every day to apply for food stamps, fill out social security applications, and connect with case managers, who help clients apply for city housing or rehab programs. Staff also serve food and coffee and help clients keep track of their medications. A free medical clinic serves the site twice a week. Much of the work the center does happens online, Hilbelink said, through a hotline that helps people connect with housing and services. Last year, Sunrise served a total of 10,853 clients, according to the center’s website.

Citing the complaints of neighborhood residents, Paxton claimed in the lawsuit that the navigation center is a “steady home base” for a stream of homeless individuals who publicly use illicit drugs, urinate and defecate on public grounds, and indecently expose themselves to passersby. All this even as Sunrise receives government money to operate, he noted. The organization has contracts with both the city of Austin and surrounding Travis County. Just days before the suit was filed, Travis County awarded the center another $350,000 after it fell short on funding for a planned expansion.

The suit also alleges homeless individuals have menaced individuals with machetes, fornicated in public, and awoken residents in the middle of the night with high-pitched screaming.

To make matters worse, the center is directly across the street from Joslin Elementary School, where 291 students are enrolled, leading students to feel unsafe and some parents to second-guess sending their children to the school, the suit claimed.

Last year, Austin Independent School District parent Courtney Page told local reporters that one homeless individual, while screaming and barking, had chased her and her daughter. Another neighborhood resident recently told reporters that she found syringes on the school playground.

A spokesperson for Austin ISD told WORLD the school is “committed to continued collaboration with our neighbors, ensuring those who need support can get what they need while prioritizing our student learning.”

Paxton’s suit alleged that Sunrise turns a blind eye to illicit drug use and permits a syringe distributor to come to the property and distribute clean needles and other paraphernalia. The filing included a picture of a pile of used needles attached to bright orange syringes found on the property of a business near Sunrise.

Hilbelink said the center does not host a needle exchange program or allow other organizations to operate one on its campus, though staff do distribute the anti-overdose drug naloxone and an onsite vending machine also carries it. Hilebelink says his organization is “not anti-harm reduction,” referring to an approach to addiction recovery aimed at reducing the risk of using illicit drugs. But he said that needle exchange programs, common features in anti-harm methods, take it a step too far.

“There are agencies in town who do that work, some of them who do it nearby here, in fact, but they’re not doing it here,” he said. “We feel like many of the things that were written in [the lawsuit] were exaggerated or completely not true.”

Hilbelink said the center has worked with the neighborhood and school as well as the city of Austin and surrounding Travis County to ensure “everything we do is done in the safest way possible.” To that end, Sunrise opens its doors from between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. to ensure that homeless guests won’t start arriving until students have already made it to school and will have already dispersed by the time classes wrap up for the day.

Still, some neighborhood residents say the center is also negatively affecting the business environment. Dale Herron, president of the Western Trails Neighborhood Association, told Fox 7 Austin that some businesses are closing because customers aren’t frequenting the area. “The services that they provide are instrumental in too many of their lives, and it’s good stuff,” he said. “[The problem] is just where they’re located.”

In May, several residents voiced concerns about the center’s activities during a Community Homelessness Meeting at a Baptist church in south Austin. At the beginning of the meeting, Hilbelink said the center is working to expand digital services and hopes to obtain funding to open more centers across the city to take pressure off its south Austin location.

To ease the demand on Sunrise, the Austin City Council recently passed a resolution to develop two new locations for the Downtown Austin Community Court, which provides criminal diversion and navigation services. “I think it’s really unfortunate that, instead of trying to help with solutions to this issue, the attorney general is deciding to file a lawsuit,” said Alter, the District 5 councilmember. “We need to encourage the state to provide more funding so that these services can be distributed around the city.”

A spokesperson for the city of Austin said the city has increased law enforcement presence in the area surrounding Sunrise. “We are aware of the concerns raised by neighbors of Sunrise and have taken proactive steps to address those concerns, such as closing nearby encampments,” the emailed statement said. “Law enforcement and cleanup crews have been periodically redeployed to these areas to ensure ongoing public camping enforcement and maintenance.”

Hilbelink declined to comment on next steps in the case, though in a statement Sunrise released last week, he argued the First Amendment and U.S. Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, among other laws, protect his ministry’s activities.

He told WORLD that providing a welcoming space for the homeless while remaining sensitive to community concerns is a difficult balancing act.

“Homelessness is a difficult issue in every city across America,” he said. “Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbor,’ but ... what happens if one of your neighbors wants the other neighbor not here anymore? How do you love both neighbors?”