Inside Austin's Agenda: Meet VOCAL-TX, the homelessness group makes waves at City Hall

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- On Thursday's episode of Inside Austin's Agenda, host Grace Reader chats with Paulette Soltani, co-director of VOCAL-TX, a nonprofit that has put people actively experiencing homelessness in front of city leaders as they make decisions about the issue.

VOCAL-TX describes itself as a group "of low-income people dedicated to ending the AIDS epidemic, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and homelessness across the country."

Over the past few years the group has rallied in favor of city council's approval of a tax rate election -- which if also approved by voters in November, would fully fund the Homeless Strategy Office's plan -- regularly warned of the end of American Rescue Plan Act funding and what that could mean for the city's homelessness response, and brought people who have stayed at city homeless shelters to council meetings to advocate during items tied to those shelters.

Inside Austin's Agenda airs every other Thursday. Watch at the top of this article, on Facebook and our KXAN+ streaming app. You can find previous episodes here.