The Quickest Way To Find the Nearest Hurricane Harvey Shelter That Isn’t Already Full

Here’s a crowdsourced, interactive map showing more than 180 shelters and shelter-ish locations set up in the last few days to take in evacuees separated from soggy homes as a result of Harvey flooding. Most of the indicated locations are in the Houston area, but others farther afield have been added (and are welcome) as well.

To use the map, you’ll first want to click on the icon just below the top left corner to toggle off the legend. Then you can zoom in or out or pan around, and click directly on each location to read details — such as the address, phone number, whether there’s room for more people, and how recently the information has been updated. You can access a larger version of the map directly by going to houstonsheltermap.com.

If the map provides more info than you need right now, there’s an easier way to find the closest shelter to you that’s still accepting newcomers: Just text your Zip Code (the one where you are; it doesn’t have to be your home address) to 346-214-0739. It’s set up to text you back the location of the nearest open hurricane shelter.

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The map was put together by Nick Popovich of mapping firm ESRI, and the text bot by Nile Dixon. Both draw from data submitted by dozens of volunteers from Houston and around the world who’ve been making calls and updating information directly onto a shared Google Doc. The entire effort is being coordinated by Houston-based civic-hacking group Sketch City, which has been corralling volunteers in its active Slack channel.

Data Rescue Ops

One Comment

  • How do I add a location? My friend is at 1414 Wirt road and they have a wonderful facility and capacity.