UNHOUSED
SHELTER FROM THESTORM Homelessness in a region on the rise
Eastern Williamson County is on the rise.
New industry, new rooftops, new restaurants and new promise stretch across East Wilco. But as Taylor, Hutto and their neighbors transition from farming to hightech industry, another story is unfolding — quieter, harder to see and even harder to change.
Despite the promise of prosperity, pockets of poverty remain. So does the problem of homelessness. As Taylor welcomes new industries including Samsung Austin Semiconductor, city leaders and business owners grow more concerned about cleaning up downtown.
That includes moving street people or panhandlers out.
Taylor already has “no camping” regulations. And in January, the City Council approved a new loitering and vagrancy ordinance that makes sitting or lying on a public sidewalk, street or alley, sleeping in public places at night and “aggressive” panhandling subject to fines of up to $500.
Georgetown enacted an almost identical ordinance, modeled on one in Austin, last summer.
Days after the ordinance passed, Winter Storm Fern hit. And throughout the county, some groups scrambled to make spaces for their homeless neighbors to come in from the cold.
In Taylor, St. James’ Episcopal Church opened its fellowship hall as a warming center.
“When it’s below freezing, we can shelter 15 adult men in our parish hall with cots, and we shelter women with children and the disabled in a local hotel,” said the Rev. Terry Pierce, the vicar of St. James.
Sheltering and feeding people with nowhere to go during extreme weather or in crisis situations is the main mission of the Taylor Center for Assistance and Navigation, or Taylor CAN, a ministry of the church.
While some Wilco residents are surprised to learn that homelessness is a reality here, Pierce knows it all too well.
“I’m painfully aware of the problem of homelessness and the extraordinary difficulty of a solution,” she said. “This is not a problem that has been brought about by growth or Samsung coming here. It’s a chronic problem that has been worsened by things like cutting off access to food stamps or Medicaid for people who are deemed able to work but who can’t work because of severe mental illnesses.”
The vicar added, “Someone who’s on Social Security disability or veteran’s benefits and gets $900 a month –– that’s not enough to rent almost any place in Taylor. I think as a community we don’t have realistic ideas about reasonable expectations and about who needs our care.”
Pierce said the homeless population in Taylor has not increased much, if at all, based on the 50 or so people she regularly shelters in bad weather.
“About two-thirds of them are men ranging in age between 21 and 79, and about a third are women and children who may have been living with relatives, or living in their cars, if they have them,” Pierce said. “We have a number of people who live in their cars and work, but they don’t make enough money to have a place to live other than the car.”
Several of the homeless in Taylor come from the town, not outside.
“Many of these people grew up in Taylor, they went to school in Taylor, they have family in Taylor that they may have broken relationships with, or their family doesn’t have the resources to help them. I’ve not ever seen people coming from outside of Taylor specifically to seek shelter,” Pierce said.
INVISIBLE INHABITANTS
Christel Erickson-Collins, former chairwoman of the Wilco Homeless Coalition, said most people aren’t aware of the number of homeless residents because of a lack of visibility.
To better understand the number and circumstances of unhoused people in Georgetown, the coalition organizes a “point-in-time” count one night in January, where volunteers go out into the community to track the number of people living on the streets or in encampments.
It’s an imprecise estimate, but according to the Texas Homeless Network, the number can safely be considered the minimum of unsheltered people in a community.
“That has helped awareness about the issue, because when volunteers engage with the count, they get to talking with people, and they get to hear their stories. I think it has helped people see homelessness in a different way,” Erickson-Collins said.
Taylor CAN also conducts a point-intime count, and other cities in the county are beginning to do so as well.
Erickson-Collins joined the Wilco Homeless Coalition in 2021.
There is more awareness of the problems of homelessness today, she said, although there is still a long way to go, and solutions remain partial at best.
“What I saw at the time I got involved was that our county government’s response to having shelter for the homeless in Williamson County was to sue the city of Austin over the Pecan Gardens project,” she said.
Austin had purchased an old hotel on a part of its property just inside the Williamson County boundaries, and was in the process of converting it into Pecan Gardens, housing for the homeless.
Williamson County filed legal action to stop the project. The lawsuit was dismissed.
“If you think that our elected officials are in step with what the community wants, that pretty much tells you where the community was at that time,” Erickson-Collins said.
“But I would say in this county there has been a very slow movement toward breaking down the barriers. We’ve seen expansion in services for domestic violence, for women and children, and we have had several attempts to start a shelter for just about anyone experiencing homelessness,” she said.
So far, none have been completed. Pierce said she would like to see a center to help people get ID cards, Social Security cards and birth certificates.
“That’s kind of the first step into being helped, is to have basic identification to access resources that are available,” she said. “And maybe it could be a place where people could take showers, could do laundry. That would make a difference.”
TEXASFACESACHALLENGE
Williamson County is not alone. Statewide, the challenge is significant. As of early 2026, more than 45,000 Texans experienced homelessness, with recent estimates showing increases after years of decline, according to the Texas Homeless Network.
While churches, nonprofits and volunteers provide stopgap relief, city and county officials face pressure to provide other kinds of solutions, such as camping bans and vagrancy ordinances that may at least help minimize visibility of the problem.
Taylor’s interim Police Chief Joseph Branson said his department’s approach to enforcing these ordinances is balanced and thoughtful.
“Here, the number of the unhoused ebbs and flows – they’re here, and sometimes they find homes or places, and we don’t see them for a while, and then they are out and about in Taylor again,” the veteran officer said. “Over time, our regular officers get to know many people and have assisted and helped them in different ways. A good portion of them are from Taylor, and they stay in the area.”
He added, “Long-term solutions require collaboration, so we’re looking for longterm, practical solutions that consider public safety and respect for human dignity. We respond to a report of a crime or complaints, as needed. But being homeless itself is not a crime.”
To many business owners, particularly downtown, the primary problem is presence.
“We’re trying to grow our community and have people feel safe and welcome here,” said Greater Taylor Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tia Rae Stone. “While we have complete sympathy for people in drastic situations, if they cause people to feel unsafe or unwelcome (by aggressive panhandling), it’s important that we have the police backing us up.”
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The situation involving the unhoused is not out of control, she said.
“It’s not like you’re going to drive through Taylor and see encampments all over. I don’t think Taylor has a worse problem than anybody else,” Stone said. “This ordinance is just us trying to get on top of a problem before it gets worse. But it’s a lot to manage.”
She added, “A long-term solution is going to take assistance and funds from the state or federal. But some people in Taylor are out there, like Terry Pierce at Taylor CAN, giving people food and shelter. There are a lot of good people working on it, but they can’t solve the problem. They’re mitigating it.”
Community members who pitch in are helping, Stone added.
“If people don’t have a place to go, society has to think about that,” she mused. “And I think it starts with groups like Taylor CAN and others who are forcing us to think about it.”
While the data doesn’t show significant growth in East Wilco’s homeless population at this point, what has changed may be visibility — and anxiety.
FALLINGTHROUGHTHECRACKS
As towns including Taylor, Hutto, Granger and Coupland reposition themselves in a high-tech corridor, the presence of people sleeping in vehicles or parks disrupts the narrative of seamless prosperity.
It’s not a new problem. It’s the same chronic human vulnerability that has always existed — now illuminated by growth, enforcement and attention.
What remains unresolved is whether East Wilco will treat homelessness primarily as a public-safety problem, a social-services gap, a moral responsibility — or all three.
The question now is whether a region building for a brighter future can also create systems that keep its longtime residents — visible or invisible — from falling through the cracks.
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