In 2023, Austin, Texas budgeted $5 million dollars for sweeps of “illegal homeless encampments.” Texas Harm Reduction Alliance (THRA)—another “illegal space,” due to its provision of harm reduction services to the unhoused—has responded with an increase of its own: expanded mental health and reentry services provided 100% by staff and volunteers with lived experience.

This year, THRA hired secondary exchange participants: unhoused individuals living in local encampments. They gather supplies in bulk, deliver them to their community, and provide peer support. When sweeps happen, they are uniquely positioned to continue care. As a part of these communities, they are aware of sweeps in real time and better equipped to keep in contact with various community members despite being forced to disperse. THRA’s Participant Advisory Board (PAD), composed of people who have received services in the past, meets monthly to eat and conduct surveys documenting the harm of increased sweeps. The main objective of this scholar-community collaboration is to create advocacy materials detailing the value of lived experience and relationships in providing healing services to unhoused communities.

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Nirel JonesMitchell is a PhD student in Social Welfare at UCLA. She is interested in the role of peer support and fitness in alcohol use interventions—specifically, for men in the South. She is broadly passionate about substance use, health education in the church, and understanding mental health within the context of society. When she isn’t working, she is volunteering, listening to live music, or engaging in deep conversation with friends and radical elders.

Texas Harm Reduction Alliance is an organization, made up of folks with lived experience, who work on the ground with people across the spectrum of drug use to end the War on Drugs. They care deeply about joy, open mindedness, and providing radical harm reduction services, advocacy, education, and training.