Austin City Council discusses homelessness in budget work session
Written by Adela Uchida, CBS Austin
AUSTIN, Texas — Austin City Council held a budget work session Thursday. Part of it was addressing homelessness.
“The budget proposal doesn't have any funding extra funding for rapid rehousing, he doesn't have any extra for permanent supportive housing services. “And those are two things that we absolutely need,” said Barry Jones with Vocal Texas, which rallied for more money in Austin’s proposed city budget -- to help people experiencing homelessness. “The Homeless Strategy Office is getting point 2%, point 2%. The police are getting 35%. These funds can be shifted around. The council knows that they can find the money. That's not the issue. The issue is the will to do it.”
“We actually have 967 evictions filed in July. A lot of people talked about how do we solve homelessness. How do we solve homelessness? There's a direct correlation between our rising rents and the rent and rates of homelessness,” said Sasha Rose from Austin Mutual Aid. “We really need to prioritize our housing and our vulnerable communities in Austin and investing more money into APD isn't going to do that. investing money into our housing Rapid Rehousing, permanent supportive housing, rent relief.”
City manager TC Broadnax arrived in Austin with some success tackling homelessness in Dallas. The NPR station in north Texas reports there were 3,718 people experiencing homelessness in Dallas and Collin counties on a count conducted in January of this year – that’s down 19% from 2021.
Thursday however, on the city council budget question board, there were more than a dozen questions about homelessness and affordable housing most still not answered.
Among those that are answered – what is the projected gap in permanent supportive housing? The answer: $4.2 million. And how much funding is going to emergency shelters? The answer is more than $26 million, with fourteen million coming from the general fund.
“ I thought it might be helpful if on Tuesday, we had a dedicated briefing on our homelessness response system, particularly want to dig into the details around permanent supportive housing, Rapid Rehousing preventative services, and a couple of other areas,” said Council Member Vanessa Fuentes.
The city council is expected to vote on the budget on August 14.