The city of Austin announced an initiative called the Downtown Homelessness Task Force on Aug. 19 that seeks to understand and address the causes of homelessness in Downtown Austin.
The effort is a partnership with the Downtown Austin Alliance, and will collaborate with other organizations that work with unhoused community members, ranging from law enforcement to mental health services and shelters, to improve the effectiveness of their services.
David Gray, director of Austin’s Homeless Strategy Office, said although the city has been able to reduce the number of encampments in the area through shelters and community partnerships, more work must be done to address the issue.
“The number of unhoused people remains between 400 to 500,” Gray said. “That’s a number that we have not been able to meaningfully reduce over time.”
Bill Brice, senior vice president of investor relations for the DAA, said the group counts the number of homeless people in the area quarterly. In the beginning of February, he said the DAA estimated there were 435 homeless people in the region. Toward the end of July, that number had increased to 547.
Gray said there are several reasons why the number of unhoused community members has not been able to be significantly reduced. “It’s everything from our people exiting our institutions … or other cities or places within Central Texas dropping people off Downtown because smaller communities that are part of the state don’t have the resources to accommodate some of these folks,” Gray said.
“There are a lot of moving parts. … That in and of itself is a challenge.”
Bill Brice, Downtown Austin Alliance
The task force will meet on a monthly basis to discuss how to improve the effectiveness of services. This could be difficult, given the task force is working with different systems that address homelessness, Brice explained. “There are a lot of moving parts,” Brice said. “Anytime that you’re trying to coordinate and identify things … it probably takes some time and a lot of information and understanding to peel that back. That in and of itself is a challenge.”
Although finding and fixing gaps in services may be difficult, Brice said the coordination between organizations allows the task force to hopefully better service residents. “This really provides an opportunity to build bridges and improve relationships and connections between different entities that work in this space,” Brice said. “Whether those are hospitals, social service providers, criminal justice entities … it’s really an opportunity for us all to have a common understanding of how each other’s systems work.”
At the end of the year, the city task force will release a series of policy recommendations and strategies for the collaborating organizations to execute, according to the news release. Gray said these could be funding commitments to make policy changes actionable.
Integral Care, the Travis County mental health authority, is a partnering organization in the task force. Part of its work is to provide health assessments to community members who live on the streets and in homeless shelters. Marlene Buchanan, chief programs officer for Integral Care, said the authority helped 200 unhoused community members improve their overall health last year. The solutions from the task force could serve as continuation of that work.
“What we’re working on is to help people live their best life,” Buchanan said. “It’s important to invest in this initiative and several other initiatives … to ensure that folks are as healthy and as taken care of as they can be in our community.”
Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, a nonprofit that helps coordinate organizations that provide housing services, is also part of the initiative. Matt Mollica, executive director of ECHO, said the task force will not only help housed community members but also those who are part of the economic sector in Downtown.
“Addressing homelessness is the way to support those businesses as well,” Mollica said.
The city will hold a tax rate election in November to determine if voters will approve an increase in property taxes to fund efforts outlined in the $6.3 billion 2025-26 budget. (Read more about the TRE in last week’s cover story.) Some of the items include $5.1 million to support emergency shelter beds and housing navigation services, along with $3 million for rental assistance and case management for people transitioning to long-term housing. Gray said the approval of these items will not affect the task force itself, but would help improve services tailored to the unhoused community.
“These are people who are calling saying that they want to come indoors, families who are looking for a safe place to speak with their kids, and we just don’t have the capacity to accommodate them right now,” Gray said. “In a lot of ways, the tax rate election is focused on us making strategic investments to grow our system.”
This article appears in October 3 • 2025.