Alters question plan to direct tourism dollars to the homeless

City Council Member Ryan Alter is among the city leaders frustrated with a long-planned agreement with local hotels that was intended to help the city provide support services to the homeless. The Austin Tourism Public Improvement District is on the agenda for Thursday’s Council meeting, with that approval being one of the steps needed for the city’s largest hotels to levy an additional 2 percent tax on room nights. Much of the money generated from that tax would fund marketing incentives for hotels to generate new business, with a portion – estimated at $7 million per year – passed through to the city’s General Fund and likely used for homeless services. That passthrough, which has some stipulations attached, is necessary because the hotel association that helped to conceive the ATPID in 2017 was recently successful in changing state law to restrict the ways those revenues could be directly spent. During a presentation on the ATPID at last week’s Audit and Finance Committee meeting, Alter shared his feelings on the new structure of the agreement. “I’m a little frustrated in how we got here in that there were agreements and prior Council discussion, but there were other agreements that would have potentially allowed for us to get guaranteed dollars, and the law was changed by those involved in this negotiation that prevents us from now doing that. And now we’re stuck in a place where we’re trying to get dollars here and there.” At the same meeting, Council Member Alison Alter said she was also discouraged by the direction the city now has to take for the ATPID to be useful toward the city’s homelessness relief efforts.