Workers from two shelters who were suddenly fired last week are not disputing whether Out of the Cold mismanaged the buildings, but they said the workers should not be blamed.
They called on the government to reinstate the workers through the new service provider and to honour their collective agreement through the union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2.
These workers should not be punished for “what the Houston government says is mismanagement,” according to Austin Hiltz, a resident support worker from one of the shelters.
“I am, like many of us, learning what the specific allegations of mismanagement are through second-hand reporting,” said Hiltz.
“All I can speak to directly is the experience of the work my colleagues and I did, and the dedication and commitment to that work I saw every single day, the practice we put into keeping those spaces clean, dignified and safe every day.”
He spoke at a rally outside of the legislature on Tuesday. More than 150 people showed up, including some of the shelter workers and their supporters.
Hiltz said that last week they were helping keep people off the street, and he said removing the Out of the Cold workers so quickly will likely put more people on the streets.
More than 150 people gathered to support Out of the Cold shelter workers who suddenly lost their jobs July 8. Photo taken July 15, 2025. (Jacob Moore/Acadia Broadcasting)
Another worker, Julie Brown, said suddenly shifting to a new service provider does not make sense, when some workers have created years-long relationships with the people who stay at the shelter.
“We would like [the government] to offer employment to us, the workers that fostered relationships over years with residents and know them and can work with them and support them,” said Brown.
Province gave 30 minutes to vacate
The Out of the Cold Community Association has one location on Cogswell Street and the other, on Church Street. Together they house more than 60 people. The group ran the shelters for the last three years.
The province told the union workers and management on July 8 that they had to be gone within 30 minutes.
In a letter sent to the association’s board of directors, the province said they had “several critical concerns” that “have not been addressed” or were “inconsistently or insufficiently addressed.”
The provincial government sent the CBC two photos of some rooms, which were published in an article Tuesday morning. One is below. Another showed a table and floor covered in garbage, with a few recognizable objects here and there—a wrapped sandwich on a plate, a pill bottle, several bottles of paint.
This photo shows a room at one of the Out of the Cold Shelters. (Submitted to CBC by the Department of Opportunities and Social Development, and published July 15, 2025)
Suzanne Ley is the executive director of employment support and income assistance with the Opportunities and Social Development Department. She told the CBC that her department got multiple reports of people who did not live there entering the sites at night and assaulting the people living at the shelter.
Ley also said they did not have enough supplies, lacking drinking cups, for instance, and that staff were not cleaning and maintaining the rooms enough.
She also said she knew there was an issue with the condition of the shelters, but she did not know the full extent until Out of the Cold was gone and the department could get a better look.
Workers defend themselves, not management
At the rally on Tuesday, the workers denied that they were not properly taking care of the residents.
They said they should not be punished, losing their jobs so suddenly, when the province had a problem with management.
Carlo Cininni, a worker at the Dartmouth location, said helping people at a shelter is complicated, and a lot more complicated than the public understands, because you are working with such vulnerable people.
“If you want to cherry pick one picture, frankly, I think that that’s absurd, because we’re constantly dealing with this. If something happens in a room at one point, well, we know about that, and we go through the avenues to go and fix that as soon as possible.”
Hiltz also said he saw the room in the photo above, and those were not everyday conditions. He said “it didn’t look that bad” on July 7, and his coworkers put a lot of work into cleaning it.
“We are workers here. We are not out of the cold. We are SEIU. We are our union,” said Hiltz.
They were diligent, he said, when they had to request things, but they often did not have enough funding.
“We worked hard and we did everything we could, and when it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t for a lack of trying to find those resources,” said Hiltz.
With files from Caitlin Snow.
