City announces new federal grant that will enable more homelessness help

A $50,000 grant from the National Science Foundation will underpin a new effort to share data and help those experiencing homelessness. Austin’s Downtown Community Court and UT Austin researchers have teamed up to work on the project, which aims to increase access to food, clothing and assistance for the homeless by providing access to better data. It will be funded by the Civic Innovation Challenge, and the initial $50,000 is a Stage 1 planning award. The team, along with other community partners, has also applied for an additional $1 million in funding that would help further develop the pilot with data sharing, service and a community dashboard. “This current grant is the initial phase to co-create a real-time public-facing dashboard and support data sharing to provide summary information to policymakers and the community, and support the information needs of people experiencing homelessness,” said Robert Kingham, interim court administrator at the Downtown Austin Community Court, in a statement to the press. “Additionally, this project will provide us with the tools and data to support analysis that we can use to allocate services and resources more efficiently and effectively, and better inform policymakers and the community. This effort will also improve our outcome reporting, which we can use to advocate for further funding to expand the services that we provide for people experiencing homelessness.”