Homelessness spending likely to be focal point of Austin budget conversations ...Middle East

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- As the city of Austin looks to release its proposed budget next week, how much money will be dedicated to homelessness? That could be a focal point of budget conversations after Austin City Council voted to make homelessness a top spending priority earlier this year.

“We’re positioning our investments in the homelessness response system as one of the city of Austin’s top funding priorities, which is critical. And you’ve heard it before, we’ll say it again, our budget is our moral compass. Where we put our money is where our heart is,” Austin City Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison said at the time.

Now we have an idea of how much the city thinks it may need in a memo from the Homeless Strategy Office (HSO). The HSO "identified $101 million in funding considerations to grow the homeless response system’s capacity and impact," the memo says.

That $101 million wouldn't all come from the city or be ongoing funding, David Gray, the city's Homeless Strategy Officer, told KXAN. Gray says roughly a third of that identified cost is one-time allocations, for example, American Rescue Plan Act funding the city received during the pandemic or other one-time funds Austin City Council already voted to spend on homelessness.

"The second third is new, ongoing investments that we're asking the city to consider...and then the last third is money that we are looking to other system funders to contribute," Gray said.

As for what the city identified it needs most: "A chunk of that is for permanent supportive housing and helping people who are chronically homeless. A large portion of that, though, is also looking upstream, helping people prevent homelessness in the first place, or even helping people quickly get rehoused within 45 days of losing their housing," Gray said.

Austin's proposed budget will be made public on July 11 — next Friday. City staff will officially present that proposed budget to city council on the following Tuesday, July 15.

After that, city council will work with the community and budget staff to adjust that document before it's voted on in mid-August. The budget goes into effect October 1.

"If folks have questions, we encourage them to contact our office. We're very transparent about how we're spending funding, where money is going, and also happy to dispel any rumors," Gray said.

Different spending framework put together by ECHO

In November, the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) presented modeling for Austin’s homelessness response system to some council members — including how many shelter beds and permanent housing units the city may need over the next decade.

“About a year ago we just decided that it was about time to really understand not just where we are at currently but where the population is going so we can appropriately plan. So we decided to do that in conjunction with a lot of our partners and with the city to really understand what the costs would be and what would be needed as a result of that,” said Joseph Montaño, director of research and evaluation at ECHO.

ECHO said the number of additional shelter or housing units required to “meet functional zero” over the next ten years includes:

Altogether, building out those beds or units alone could cost the city an estimated nearly $350 million. The breakdown is as follows:

You can find ECHO’s full State of the Homelessness Response System report here.

In an interview with the Texas Tribune earlier this year, Mayor Kirk Watson was asked if $350 million was an achievable plan and he indicated he leans toward the city's HSO data:

“The candid answer to that is that I think that is a plan that we should accept or receive or adopt as a guideline. I don’t think that the governing body of the City of Austin ought to just adopt that ECHO plan. One of the good things we also did is that in 2023, the City of Austin did something that it hadn’t really done…and that was create a Homeless Strategy Office. That Homeless Strategy Office is our Homeless Strategy Office, and it is doing a very good job of helping us with the strategies, and ECHO is someone we should look to to help provide guidance, but I don’t know that we should adopt whole cloth ECHO’s plan, except as one of the things we look to and one of the things we seek guidance and help.”

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