City leaders are continuing to pursue local housing and shelter investments as outcomes for clients leaving those spaces continue to outpace national averages despite limited availability.
The big picture
In recent years, local officials moved to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to promote permanent housing as a cornerstone to the area's response to homelessness.
Plans to build more than one thousand units of permanent supportive housing—where tenants get housing assistance alongside various support services—ramped up after a 2021 community homelessness summit. A resulting initiative, later named Finding Home ATX, called on local governments, philanthropists and others to spend $515 million to house thousands of people through 2024.
The Finding Home collaborative isn't on pace to meet its initial three-year fundraising and housing goals, and its participants will next look to readjust the plan for more gains in the future. However, a majority of the 1,300 supportive housing units called for in that plan are now in some stage of development and expected to open through the mid-2020s.
While Finding Home didn't focus as heavily on shelter, Austin officials over the past year have poured more resources into that shorter-term option for people experiencing homelessness to get off the streets. Local and state efforts are contributing to both permanent and temporary shelter solutions.
Austin Homeless Strategy Officer David Gray said he believes it'll be important to keep up with both sides of the homeless response equation even as more people are connected with long-awaited beds, apartments and assistance.
“The fact of the matter is we don’t have the luxury of choosing if we want to go all in on more shelter or all in on more housing. We need both. And I’m really proud of the fact that we’re making strides and closing gaps in our system," he said during a Feb. 13 briefing.
By the numbers
From 2019 through 2023, just over 170 housing units for the homeless were created with Austin's support. By the end of 2026, that figure is projected to jump to well over 1,200 units across more than a dozen different developments.
“This certainly has been years in the making, and we are just now seeing the tangible progress in motion," council member Vanessa Fuentes said.Supportive housing has been a key focus for the Austin-area homeless response given the strategy's success at moving people from homelessness into a more stable situation. More than 98% of tenants who move through a supportive housing program in Austin were logged as having a successful outcome, a trend that also outperforms national standards.
“What that basically means is everybody who goes into permanent supportive housing has a positive outcome. This intervention works, which is why we’re leaning more into it," Gray said.Council member Ryan Alter noted the "massive surge" in new supportive housing projects stems largely from Austin and Travis County's investment of American Rescue Plan Act relief dollars to address homelessness. Despite recent disagreement on oversight of homeless response, Alter said it'll be essential for the city and county to continue partnering on the issue as that one-time funding dries up.
"This is a regional challenge. And so our ability to continue that good work with the county, have them continue to invest, is the only way we’re going to be successful, is if everybody is contributing," he said. "I appreciate the contributions they made and hope to see it continue”
Austin’s most recent permanent supportive housing addition came earlier this month with the opening of Espero Rutland in North Austin. More than 100 rooms there are reserved for people exiting homelessness.
Three Northwest Austin hotels being converted into supportive housing are likely next up. Those include the city-owned Pecan Gardens and Bungalows at Century Park—in line for April and summer openings, respectively—and Balcones Terrace from Foundation Communities opening this spring.
A map of Austin's city-backed supportive housing pipeline and project details can be viewed below.
While those developments continue to progress, the outlook for Austin's shelter capacity is less certain after a year that saw the city shore up hundreds of beds.
Officials with Austin's Homeless Strategy Office believe the city will be short more than 600 shelter beds for those in need next year. That represents a step down from a more than 700-bed shortfall projected last summer, but the large gap remains despite dozens of new beds coming soon both downtown and on the east side.
"We are making progress to close this gap. I’m really proud of that fact. I’m also proud of the fact that, today, we are providing more shelter opportunities for our community than we have in history," Gray said. "The number of sheltered client count, it’s at record levels."
Despite lacking availability, Gray said Austin's shelters are performing well in terms of positive outcomes for clients, nearly half of whom are chronically homeless.More than 50% of all client exits from Austin shelters in the past fiscal year were deemed positive, well above a national average closer to one-third.“Even though we’re doing better than our national average, than our national peers, we’re not settling for this figure. Our goal is to continue to perform better each and every year and have our trend line continue to go up and up," Gray said.
It still remains to be seen whether city officials will extend operations at the temporary 300-bed Marshalling Yard shelter that's set to wind down later this year, or what other shelter investments might be made to address the persistent need.
More consideration of the Marshalling Yard's future and long-term shelter options is expected later this spring and during council's summer budget deliberations.
A map of Austin's current shelter network can be viewed below.
