Mayor Steve Adler addressed the city’s continued fight against homelessness at a forum held today.

The event was hosted at St. David’s Episcopal Church by the nonprofit organization Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, or ECHO, and the Downtown Austin Alliance, an association tasked with managing the downtown improvement district. The interactive forum brought together a crowd of volunteers, public service employees and residents to engage in a discussion focused on the growing issue of homelessness in the city.

Homelessness, along with mobility and affordability, is a consensus top three issue among the city’s elected officials, Adler said. While there are short and long-term strategies in place, he said the city lacked an overall strategic plan to deal with the issue in a “complete and final way.”

“That will take it being a high enough priority where we are willing to put real resources against it,” Adler said. “It will be a challenge and a focus of this upcoming council.”

Until last year, Austin’s homeless numbers were in decline for five consecutive years, ECHO Executive Director Ann Howard said. Last year, however, Austin saw a 20-percent spike in the homeless population. According to ECHO’s 2016 annual report, as of March this year 3,700 people were homeless in the Austin area. The group claims this number is “easily” undercounted because “not everyone who is literally homeless engages with the homeless services system.”

According to Howard, the spike in homeless population was not attributed to one factor but several.

“People fall into homelessness because of healthcare crises, because of job crises, family crises, and then it can snowball,” Howard said. “By the time a person is homeless, they’ve got lots of issues that we need to help them address.”

Howard also attributed part of the problem to an “amalgamation of policy over the decades.”

Adler agreed that part of the issue is rooted in policy shifts over the decades, but he also cited a substantial loss in affordable housing and the incongruous relationship between rising cost of living and stagnant lower wages.

“If homelessness becomes a direct result of policy decisions, then it can be policy again that can find a way out and a way forward,” Adler said.

The mayor pointed to issues the city has with housing all of the homeless population. He said the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, the city’s homeless shelter, is overcrowded and is becoming an unsafe area, and there is also a concern about the growing number of people seeking shelter under I-35.

Adler did make mention of some successes in the city. In August, Austin effectively ended veteran homelessness and put systems in place that would ensure a reported homeless veteran is housed within 90 days. The city is working with the Salvation Army to expand women and children shelters and Austin was one of three cities in the country selected by A Way Home America’s 100-Day Challenge, which aims to house 50 homeless youth in 100 days.

“We should take just a second to be proud of what it is that … we are doing as a community,” Adler said. “But just a second, because the challenge exists and we need to get out and do something about this.”