The Tech That’s Changing How Cities Help the Homeless

Every day, a team of community health paramedics in Austin, Texas, fans out across the city to provide aid to the growing number of people on the streets. Finding the homeless isn’t always easy—Austin’s annual homeless census found that at any given time, more than 2,500 people are unsheltered; in a year, that number exceeds 7,000—and those are just the most obvious, countable cases. Harder still is finding their papers.

“It’s a great anomaly to find someone who has all their identity documents,” said Jeremy Davis, an EMS with Austin’s community health paramedic program. “To get them properly connected to homeless services, you need their birth certificates, social security cards, health insurance records—all those are interdependent.” And often, Austin’s homeless don’t have any of them.