On Wednesday, February 7th, the Public Health Committee of the Austin City Council held a public meeting to discuss a range of topics, including some discussion of the ongoing efforts to address homelessness in Austin.
During that meeting, interim City Manager Jesus Garza addressed the committee about the impact of the city’s recent efforts to address homelessness in Austin. Garza said, “over the last three fiscal years, we’ve allocated in excess of $200 million for this issue alone. In the course of that time, the number of homeless have not decreased, but in fact, have increased.”
This sentiment was echoed in a 2023 KXAN report by Claire Burrus, who manages data on homelessness in Austin for the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO), an organization that receives funding to address homelessness and conducts an annual effort to count the number of homeless in Austin. In that report she said, “the trend is definitely clear here that our count has definitely been increasing over this longer period of time.”
Going forward, according to the city budget and Garza’s remarks during the meeting, the city is allocating an additional $80 million to address homelessness this year, bringing the total close to $300 million for the last four years.
The city Homelessness Response Efforts say that the funding is used for Reducing Inflow (homeless prevention), Crisis Response, Housing Stabilization, Public Space Management, and Supportive Services. The city says that “rising rent costs, insufficient affordable housing inventory, inflationary pressures and their adverse impact on real wages, lack of health insurance, and economic and racial inequity have regrettably continued to push many into homelessness.”
The most recent audit, conducted by the City Auditor in September 2021 on homeless spending by the city, found that the “spending generally aligns with Council direction and stated priorities.”
You can find all the Austin City Council and Council Committee meetings here, including audio and video recordings of the meetings.