By Isabela Gamez
Primavera Foundation
Hundreds of shelter leaders, advocates and housing experts gathered in Tucson for the 2026 National Women’s Shelter Network (NWSN) Annual Conference last week. They gathered around a shared goal: finding new ways to create safety and stability for people experiencing homelessness.
Held Sept. 21–24 at La Paloma Resort & Spa, the conference, titled Safe Shelter Saves Lives, featured more than 50 presentations and breakout sessions focused on the challenges facing shelters and safe-haven programs across the country.
On Thursday, Sept. 24, Primavera Foundation Interim CEO Ivelisse Bonilla joined Ann Chanecka, director of the City of Tucson’s Housing and Community Development Department, and Bill Mackey, professor and architect with the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, for a panel discussion on Star Village and the future of outdoor shelter models.
Star Village is a one-year pilot providing a safe outdoor sleeping space for 25 women and non-binary individuals. The presentation explored the project’s challenges and successes, and how it has helped inform changes to Tucson’s zoning and permitting processes.
For Bonilla, Star Village represents both an immediate response to homelessness and an opportunity to rethink how communities provide shelter.
“We need more housing for the unhoused, and we need to find ways to get there,” Bonilla said during the presentation.
The need for alternative shelter options is particularly urgent in Tucson, where Chanecka said the city estimates at least 1,300 people are unsheltered on any given night, while only about 20 to 40 shelter beds may be available.
Star Village was created as one response to that gap. Bonilla said that operating an outdoor shelter comes with its own challenges.
Building trust with residents is one of the first hurdles. Many people arriving at Star Village have experienced years of homelessness and trauma, making relationships with staff an important part of helping residents feel safe.
“There’s a lot of relationship building. It’s very intense,” Bonilla said.
The Tucson heat also presents significant challenges. Star Village provides tents, cots and swamp cooling to give residents relief from extreme temperatures. Bonilla described the conditions of living in a tent during Tucson summers as difficult and said the long-term goal is to create safer, more stable alternatives.
“We want safe places, but we really would love to get to the point where they have better conditions, better than a tent,” she said.
The panel also addressed the realities of operating the program, including staffing, safety, crisis intervention, case management, documentation, and community relations. Bonilla said the intensity of the work has contributed to employee burnout and underscored the need for organizations considering similar programs to prepare for the demands of operating them.
Despite those challenges, Bonilla pointed to several outcomes from Star Village. She reported that the program had served 120 residents, enrolled more than 100 people in case management, connected 83 individuals to health care and recorded 18 permanent housing exits and 22 temporary shelter exits.
For Bonilla, the impact goes beyond numbers.
One of the most meaningful outcomes, she said, is hearing from residents about what it feels like to have somewhere safe to rest.
One of the notes that we included from a participant, because I thought it was so amazing, was, “What feels good to me is having a place to rest and to be safe,” Bonilla said.
The City of Tucson has also used lessons from Star Village to explore new approaches to shelter. Chanecka said the city’s housing emergency declaration created more flexibility around zoning and other requirements, while a new process aims to make it easier for nonprofits and other organizations to establish safe outdoor sleeping areas.
Chanecka said Star Village helped inform a new option for safe sleeping areas that can accommodate up to 30 tents, vehicles or microstructure-style shelters and up to 50 people, subject to specific requirements. The city is also providing seed funding for three additional pilot projects, one in each of three wards.
The broader goal, Chanecka said, is to use pilot programs to inform longer-term changes to Tucson’s zoning and shelter regulations.
For Bonilla, Star Village is ultimately about continuing to learn and finding models that can better serve people experiencing homelessness.
“This is hopefully the start to different ways of doing it,” she said.
As the NWSN conference brought together organizations from across the country, Star Village offered Tucson’s experience as one example of how communities can experiment with new approaches while working toward permanent housing solutions.
The National Women’s Shelter Network has grown to more than 600 shelters and safe-haven programs across all 50 states and three U.S. territories. Collectively, its members serve more than 1 million women, children, youth and families each year.