Statesman: Homeless Deaths Decreasing

More than 200 tiny wooden bats dangled from a live oak tree at Auditorium Shores, reminders of the lives lost this past year — and the fact that it could have been even worse.

“This is the only memorial that many of the people on this list will get,” Pastor Mark Hilbelink, who runs the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center, said to more than a dozen people gathered Sunday morning at the Tree of Remembrance, where the nonprofit House the Homeless holds an annual memorial for those who died in Travis County while experiencing homelessness in the past year.