Shannon Brown, a 51-year-old woman who lives without a home in Mesa, knows how to stay alive when the summer's extreme heat makes life on the streets nearly unbearable.
"I learned that the way to stay (out of) the hospital is to stay wet," said Brown. "I dump water on myself all day long and drink — I try to make myself drink it, too."
She wore a loose-fitting blouse and shorts on a recent July morning. Her eyes were colored with eye shadow and liner, and her blonde hair was cropped close to her scalp. A shopping cart she acquired somewhere was packed with sleeping gear and bags stuffed with clothing.
Brown was one of dozens of people gathered at the St. Vincent de Paul Mesa Dining Room at 49 West Broadway Road just before noon on Monday, July 22, when the temperature had already crept up to 98 degrees. Aside from the unsheltered people in the facility's courtyard and others, like Brown, hanging out on the semi-shady sidewalk outside, few pedestrians were walking outdoors as the air steadily grew hotter.
"I usually bust into, like, an unlocked swimming pool in an apartment complex. Go swimming," Brown said. "I know which ones they don't lock, the community pools, and just kind of make a note and visit all of them."
As long as she's "well-behaved" and doesn't "make a mess," she doesn't get hassled, she said. Has she ever been hospitalized for heat problems?
"Not this year," she replied.
As seasons change, region goes from 'heaven' to 'hell'
Anyone can succumb to heat illness in the Sonoran Desert's extreme temperatures, especially as climate change and the heat island effect last year led to Phoenix records for the number of days with a low temperature at or above 90 and the number of days with a high over 110. This year is on track to break both of those records.
But unsheltered people are particularly vulnerable, comprising the largest category of the 645 heat-related deaths in 2023. The death toll was a record for Maricopa County.
Nearby the Mesa Dining Room, Annamarie Harris sat in a yellow dress at a shaded bus stop, waiting for the bus to take her to one of three jobs. These days, Harris lives in a climate-controlled home like approximately 98% of county residents, but a few years ago, she endured the unsheltered lifestyle in Mesa and Phoenix for "two full summers."
She recalled her frustration with local businesspeople who wouldn't let her into their air-conditioned stores because she looked homeless. Some refused to give her water.
Ironically, she moved to the Valley from Idaho in 2011 for the good weather. It was 63 degrees the day she arrived in metro Phoenix, she said. She thought she had "moved to heaven." Then, when summer came, she realized she'd "moved to hell."
One day, she sat down at a Phoenix bus stop during a hot day. That was the last thing she remembered before waking up in a hospital "with heat stroke."
"It was horrible. That was the sickest I've ever been," she said.
With the help of Central Arizona Shelter Services, she eventually got off drugs and found a job and an apartment. She's been doing well ever since, she said. But the memory of her experiences stays with her.
"It's a rough situation," Harris said. "But if you're going to be homeless, though, this and (California) are probably the two places you want to be."
Maricopa County cooling, respite centers provide life-saving relief
Inside the Mesa St. Vincent de Paul facility, Christel Armstrong, formerly homeless herself, works as the program manager. The shelter feeds people in the morning from 9:30 to 11:30, then, from June 1 to September 30, switches into a heat relief center in the afternoon until 4:30. About 30 to 100 people a day have been showing up lately to escape the heat and stay hydrated, she said.
The number of people using the facility to cool down this year and in 2023 has been about twice the number she saw when she started work at the location four years ago.
"We watch movies. We play games. Most people just want to take a nap, and that's perfectly fine with me," Armstrong said. "Good, safe sleep."
People sometimes come in with "second-degree burns," which she further described as severe sunburns. Medics visit the shelter "like every other day. And people are being taken to the hospital for IVs and nutrition stuff, even though there's food and plenty of water here. It's just not enough in these temperatures."
Armstrong routinely informs the shelter's clientele how to care for themselves in the heat and watch out for others.
"If you're sweating and you're hot and you feel dizzy and the guy next to you is looking, is feeling, the same way, but he's not sweating ... he's near done," she said.
The shelter expanded its summer hours last year as the heat-related deaths climbed to a record number, but "people just weren't coming in," Armstrong said. She's not sure why. Possibly, she said, "they think sitting at the park in the shade is good enough, but it really, honestly, is not."
This year, "because of the outcomes of last year, people become more aware. Because a lot of people lost friends."
Mesa's website lists eight cooling centers and eight hydration stations that offer free water. People at risk who have access to a phone can call 211 to receive free transportation to one of the many heat relief centers in Maricopa County.
Riding the bus to stay cool
A few blocks from the St. Vicent de Paul facility, at a shaded bus shelter, Ismael Valencia waited for a bus next to his belongings, which consisted only of several plastic grocery bags full of clothing. He has no job currently, he said, and planned to ride the bus for hours to stay cool, using a free bus pass he obtained.
That's one of his survival methods while out on the hotplate-like sidewalks of Mesa during the summer. He's been unsheltered for about a year, he said.
When he's not riding public transportation, Valencia said, shade is key. But even if it's 115 degrees, he'll only sit around in a shady spot for about an hour before he decides to "get back out there." Rather than going to a cooling center, though, he said he likes to "hang out" at nearby Pioneer Park.
"It gets hot, but it's nothing I can't handle," he said. "I can do it."
Reach the reporter atrstern@arizonarepublic.comor 480-276-3237. Follow him on X@raystern.
