Community-based public safety program reaches out to overlooked and underserved Austinites

Urban Alchemy, a national nonprofit, has been awarded a $2 million federal grant to grow Austin’s Homelessness Engagement Assistance Response Team, or HEART ATX. The grant comes from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and will expand an initiative to send trained, trauma-informed practitioners to respond to nonviolent public safety needs in Central East Austin.

The HEART program, which has been running since June, currently focuses on the 78702, 78721 and 78723 ZIP codes. Urban Alchemy practitioners, connected via 911 dispatchers so that they can arrive quickly on-scene, can be dispatched in nonemergencies as an alternative to police officers to de-escalate conflicts or help connect vulnerable residents to services. 

Project director Michael Duque told the Austin Monitor that the practitioners provide an additional benefit – reducing crime and homelessness while rebuilding community trust in public safety.

“Success for this project would definitely be providing the resources to this community to bring down nonviolent crime,” he said.

Urban Alchemy is a Black-led nonprofit with chapters in Austin, Birmingham, Portland, Oakland and Los Angeles. For this project, it is coordinating with Huston-Tillotson University, Austin Public Health, We Can Now, the Hungry Hill Foundation, the Downtown Austin Alliance and others. Duque explained that this wider net of sub-recipients and partner organizations helps to track the success of the program and provide access to resources during practitioner calls.

Duque emphasized that more than 95 percent of Urban Alchemy’s trained practitioners have experienced incarceration or homelessness, which can make their interventions more impactful. He said Urban Alchemy’s clients “respond differently to people they can relate to,” and the practitioners “meet people where they are.”

He added that, often, people reentering the workforce after incarceration don’t feel they have something to look forward to, which can contribute to recidivism. The program provides meaningful work opportunities for justice-involved residents.

Duque shared some recent instances in which practitioners have made a difference: administering Narcan for overdoses downtown or, in one case, defusing a conflict by giving an unhoused man a pair of shoes when he believed his had been stolen.

“A lot of people in the community feel overlooked,” he told the Monitor. “We want to bridge that.”

The ultimate goal is to create a model that can be used in other cities, and Urban Alchemy is already seeing some traction. After a successful launch of the Austin initiative, Urban Alchemy has begun training a team in Birmingham, Alabama. Program leaders are hopeful that they will be able to connect with leaders and nonprofits in other cities as well.

“People at the top having awareness of the success of (the program) is the big thing,” Duque said.

As part of their work to serve under-resourced Austinites, Urban Alchemy and many of its partner orgs are hosting a coat drive with a goal of collecting 1,000 coats, hats and gloves. Community members are invited to drop off donations at Anything’s Baked Potato (1326 Rosewood Ave.) through Oct. 25 and to help spread the word. Find details here.

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