The Downtown Austin Alliance and the city of Austin have launched a new task force aimed at reducing homelessness in the downtown core. Formally convened on Aug. 6, the Downtown Homelessness Task Force will meet through the end of the year to develop strategies for reducing the number of people entering homelessness and increasing successful exits into shelter, housing or diversion programs.
The task force includes representatives from city departments, Travis County, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Central Health, Integral Care, assorted nonprofit organizations and local courts. The goal is to produce policy recommendations by December that the participating organizations can work on implementing separately.
While tents and encampments in the area decreased in an April count to fewer than 50 compared to nearly 500 in mid-2021, the number of people experiencing homelessness downtown has remained steady at between 400 and 500, according to quarterly counts conducted by the Downtown Austin Alliance (DAA).
Bill Brice, DAA’s senior vice president of investor relations, said the count taken in July showed a 26 percent increase in the unsheltered population since January. He noted that outreach staff frequently encounter new faces and individuals who report arriving from hospitals, jails or other cities without any support network.
“We would like to see the number of people that are living unsheltered downtown, and certainly across the city, decreasing. But we recognize this is at a really important point in time where, undoubtedly, federal funding will decrease to provide homeless services and housing,” he said.
“We have got to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place, or we have got to have more early intervention,” he said.
David Gray, who leads the city’s Homeless Strategy Office, said the effort is informed by previous neighborhood-focused initiatives around Rundberg Lane, Oltorf and East Seventh Street. However, he noted that downtown poses a unique challenge due to the dense concentration of courts, hospitals, shelters, and the city’s primary transit hub.
“There’s a lot of services downtown, not just our shelters and our community partners, but our major hospitals are downtown, our major bus transit station is downtown, so when you look at all of the resources and entities that operate downtown we’ve been able to achieve a lot of success in driving down the number of tents and structures,” he said. “But in terms of reducing the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, we haven’t seen a sustained reduction in the way that we’ve seen… where we’ve done some more tailored work.”
Gray noted the effort is designed to bring together mental health providers, justice system stakeholders, housing experts and outreach teams to address root causes of homelessness in the downtown area. Rather than replace existing programs such as the Homeless Outreach Street Team (HOST) or the Urban Alchemy-led HEART initiative, he said the task force intends to align efforts and reduce redundant programs.
Brice said DAA wants to ensure downtown remains safe while also pushing for long-term solutions to homelessness. He said the DAA recognizes that enforcement alone is not a viable solution and has committed significant staff and funding resources to collaborative strategies.
He pointed to the high costs and limited supply of permanent supportive housing and argued that earlier interventions across health, criminal justice and social service systems could reduce long-term demand for costly services.
Gray also addressed the limitations of short-term fixes. While he acknowledged that every successful shelter or housing placement is a “win,” he said the purpose of the task force is to generate durable systems change, not just surface-level interventions. He added that the city’s newly-approved budget includes funding for 12 new outreach positions, which will enable his office to respond to more service requests while also engaging more proactively with partner agencies.
The group’s recommendations are not expected to impact this fall’s tax rate election or immediately trigger new funding. Brice said that, with federal homelessness funding expected to decline, there will be greater pressure on local budgets and a growing need for private-sector engagement.
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