Advocates call on Austin leaders to prioritize permanent supportive housing in budget
Tuesday, several groups will call on Austin leaders to shuffle more money toward permanent supportive housing, rental assistance and harm reduction in the Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Tuesday, several groups will call on Austin leaders to shuffle more money toward permanent supportive housing, rental assistance and harm reduction in the Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget.
Those groups include the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance and Austin Justice Coalition.
"Despite Mayor Watson’s recent announcement of Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) funds for temporary shelter, the crisis is far from over and will continue without meaningful funding for permanent supportive housing, eviction prevention, and harm reduction services," a release said.
"We're not taking our eye off that ball," Mayor Kirk Watson told KXAN last week when we asked whether that TDHCA announcement would allow the city to shuffle more money toward permanent supportive housing. "But what I have been saying is that what we need to do is we need to not focus just one part of the continuum, we need to focus on the entire continuum."
Watson pointed to prevention, rapid rehousing and bridge shelters as additional priorities.
"When we provide the services, which we will do with the expansion at Esperanza, when we provide the services, over 50% of the people that leave the shelters... they end up in confirmed housing. So we help them come out of homelessness," Watson said.
State awards $65 million for shelter beds, other homeless services
Last week, Watson announced TDHCA allocated $65 million to Austin groups to address homelessness, allowing for expansion projects Watson hopes can start by as soon as the end of the year.
“About $60 million has been earmarked to support the planning for and expansion of the non-congregate shelter model in Austin with a City goal of establishing an estimated 700 additional bed capacity,” Watson said.
The group tapped to help with that shelter bed expansion is The Other Ones Foundation (TOOF), the group that runs Camp Esperanza in east Austin. The mayor said he hopes the money can be an expansion of the model already built at Camp Esperanza.
According to a city newsletter, the additional $5 million would go to Caritas of Austin and LifeWorks for housing stabilization, which includes emergency rental assistance.
The City of Austin’s proposed budget for all of next fiscal year dedicates roughly $55 million to homelessness.