OUR STORY
Love Huntsville grew out of the effort to register voters living on the streets in Huntsville, AL. cycle. As our founders visited local camps they developed relationships with the unhoused community and learned more about the unmet needs in the city’s shelters. In March 2021 the Huntsville Police Department began the process of evicting the city’s largest camp located on Mill Street.
Thanks to their newfound connections with camp residents, our founders became aware of the eviction and put out a call for volunteers to help displaced camp residents relocate. This new team of volunteers continued to check in with residents after the transition and, realizing there was a great deal of trauma from the move, began a series of volunteer run dinners, including games and movies.
These dinners continued after a second eviction in October 2021 to the city’s current and largest camp on Derick Streat. Seeing the gap in resources during these dinners our founders began to expand their mutual aid efforts for a growing unhoused population. With the help of a community of self-funded volunteers, Love Huntsville began providing transportation and advocacy at appointments, necessity drives in the winter and summer, and on the ground medical care during monthly dinners.
The organization started up a team of policy researchers who utilize research and models from other municipalities to advocate for a housing first solution to homelessness in city hall. Our partners have expanded from a few volunteers to a network that now includes the North Alabama Coalition for the Homeless, local bail funds, professionally trained street medics, and a coalition of housing advocates from Birmingham to New Orleans. In our effort to protect our community’s civil rights we have also been taken on as a client by the SPLC for our work monitoring camp evictions and interrogating the city’s policing policies.
