For Laurie, the biting winter temperatures mean making a careful calculation about where she should sleep each night.
The 67-year-old weighs whether to spend about $40 a night of her monthly Social Security check at the Super Inn motel; drag her suitcase and backpack to a local shelter to check if there is space; or curl up under blankets outside with a friend.
Each has pros and cons. The difficulty of travel to the shelter could be outweighed by sleeping inside for no cost, but there may not always be space. She also doesn’t always have a working cell phone to call and reserve a bed.
“It’s hard to totally stay warm,” said Laurie, a longtime contractor with Intel before she says she was laid off in 2021. “But it’s better than a lot of things.”
As temperatures have dropped below freezing in Tucson, Laurie is one of an estimated 2,000 people in Pima County without stable housing on any given night, according to data collected in January 2024 by a one-night snapshot census called the Point in Time count.
Tucson runs Operation Deep Freeze, a program funded by the Arizona Department of Housing that provides three emergency shelters during severe weather. These shelters, open to anyone without requiring ID, are available when overnight temperatures drop below 40 degrees.
So far, there have been eight nights where the temperature dropped below 40 degrees since Jan. 1, 2025, according to the National Weather Service.
City officials say demand increased last week amid the spike in cold weather, and several participating shelters were near or at capacity. “However, we have a plan for overflow, and participating shelters can refer guests there once they reach capacity,” Tucson Public Information Officer Andrew Squire said.
More broadly, it’s not always easy to see the impact of cold weather on unsheltered communities.
The city doesn’t collect real-time data on hospital usage, so information about cold-related emergency room visits would come from hospitals themselves, said city officials.
The latest reported cold-related death in Pima County was a housed person in October 2024, said Natasha Tully, a forensic epidemiologist for the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. But, she added, it can take up to six weeks for a death certification to be complete so data on cold-related deaths from the past week are not yet available.
Mutual aid group resources
Several mutual aid groups also organize regular and free food, hygiene supply and clothing distributions. Here are some regular events:
- Where: Santa Rita Park
- When: 4 p.m. Saturdays
- Where: Armory Park
- When: 7 p.m. Wednesdays
- Where: Amphi Park
- When: 2 p.m. Saturdays
- Where: Downtown route on Sundays, starting on Fourth Avenue and ending at the Ronstadt Transit Center
- When: Sundays, 12:30 p.m. and typically arriving to Ronstadt around 2 p.m.
- Where: Santa Rita Park
- When: Every two weeks; coming up on Jan. 25
From pets to suitcases, accessing shelter not always easy
Cynthia Alvarez carries her dog as she and Brandon Kyle cross the grassy patch behind a gas station convenience store on Benson Highway.
They had just left the methadone clinic and were waiting for a ride. Alvarez held the little black pup, snug in a sweater, close to her. Temperatures were set to drop to the low 30s that weekend and continue into the low 20s the following week.
Alvarez lived in a desert encampment until the last few weeks, where she was already struggling with the increasingly frigid temperatures.
“I mean being in a tent is like a little bit of help but not by much,” she said. Despite the weather, she said, the city and police bulldozed the encampment and she lost her belongings.
This instability and forced transiency exacerbate the already difficult task of withstanding the cold.
“I feel like a lot of people don’t understand that part of it. That almost the whole homeless community gets kind of pushed from one place to another. There’s no real place to go to have security where you’re not gonna be kicked out,” she said.
Luckily, Alvarez said, she’s staying at Sister José’s shelter and Kyle now lives at home but both are familiar with life on the streets and the added complications of freezing temperatures.
“It’s definitely a health hazard especially out here in the winter because we get freezing temperatures. So you can usually catch pneumonia or whatever it is,” Kyle said. Alvarez added that she knows of people who have died in freezing temperatures at the washes.
“It just makes everything a little bit more difficult,” she said.
Alvarez hasn’t been at Sister José’s for long — only for about two weeks.
It’s one of the few shelters that allows dogs, a crucial criteria for Alvarez when deciding where to stay.
“It complicates things a lot, you can’t just abandon him,” she said as her dog’s little nose twitched and he squinted at the breeze.
In mid-January, with another week of deep cold predicted, Laurie is also moving between her housing options: she spent ten nights at Sister José’s, one of the city’s shelter options, and one night outside. Laurie lives off her social security money and sleeps outside or in a shelter when she wants to save money.
“Usually when I don’t have the funds for some reason, or I get it in my head that I need to try to save money so I can have the down payment for a security deposit” she will move into a shelter or camp outside, she said. “But the cold is miserable.”
She and a friend sometimes stay in an area on the border of the city and an unincorporated part of the county. They sneak through a hole in the fence made by someone else, and cuddle up in a makeshift shelter with blankets. Occasionally, they have a small fire in a covered fireplace they built.
“It’s kind of hidden back in there,” she said. “We’ve both been really careful to clean up after ourselves and, you know, keep it decent.”
Shelter information
Tucson-area shelter space available under Operation Deep Freeze:
The Salvation Army Hospitality House
- Where: 1002 N. Main Ave., off Speedway and Main
- Hours: Intake is from 3-5 p.m.; dinner is served between 5-6 p.m.; exit by 8 a.m. the next morning.
- Contact info: 520-622-5411
- Note: Only two bags of personal belongings are allowed upon entry. No ID needed.
Sister José’s Women’s Center (female-identifying adults only)
- Where: 1050 S. Park Ave, off 21st and Park Ave.
- Hours: Request a bed at 9 a.m.; 5 p.m. is admission and dinner; exit by 7 a.m. the next morning after breakfast.
- Contact info: 520-909-3905
- Note: Pets on a leash are allowed. You may bring anything you can carry but there isn’t much storage.
Primavera Men’s Shelter (male-identifying only)
- Where: 200 E. Benson Highway
- Hours: Intake is at 4:30pm.
- Contact info: 520-623-4300
- Note: Unable to accommodate Level 3 sex offenders.
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