Austin Revises Homelessness Plan, Drops Shelter Bed Goal

Santos Briseno, who said he has been homeless for three years, carries hot drinks from the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center back to his tent at a nearby car wash during extreme cold on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. Overnight temperatures fell into the teens.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman

The Austin City Council approved a roadmap for tackling homelessness in the city on Thursday — the first strategic plan since Austin’s Homeless Strategies and Operations office became a standalone agency three years ago.

The plan, updated since it was first released in February, eliminates its previous goal of expanding shelter system capacity by 650 beds and adds goals to track the percent change in permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing households since 2025.

The updated language also clarifies that youth are included in the subpopulations for shelter capacity expansion.

“With funding uncertainty at both the federal and local level, I’s not comfortable setting numerical targets for shelter capacity when we’re currently unable to plan for future Permanent Supportive Housing and Rapid Rehousing units,” Council Member Ryan Alter, who worked with Homeless Strategy Officer David Gray on the changes, wrote in a message to council.

Alter also proposed that the council’s Public Health Committee reevaluate the strategic plan, including staff recommendations for numerical targets for each program, by October.

The strategic plan calls for sweeping changes through 2027, including tighter performance tracking measures and contracting procedures, as well as improved transparency.

The council requested last year that the city launch public dashboards to track homeless encampment management and the performance of homeless service providers.

The encampment dashboard’s implementation began in 2025, and it is set to go live in fall 2026. The second dashboard, tracking the performance of homeless service providers, was supposed to be completed by December 2025, but Gray extended the deadline to June 30.

A link to a homeless dashboard on the city manager’s “Addressing Homeless in Austin” webpage — intended to track progress — is broken after the city rolled out its new website last week. The $1.48 million redesign cut close to 16,000 pages, including some public records.