“I don’t think the voters appreciate how deep the cuts are going to have to be,” Austin City Council Member Mike Siegel told the Chronicle last week as Prop Q, the ballot measure to increase property taxes to fund a variety of city services, went down in flames.
Siegel was talking about the cuts that will have to be made to the city’s 2025-26 budget with the defeat of Prop Q, which was envisioned as an opportunity to get homeless people off the streets and fix holes in the social safety net torn open by the federal government. City Manager T.C. Broadnax released a new proposed budget last Friday which showed the depth of the cuts. The proposed budget eviscerates funding for homelessness programs, compared with what would have been available with Prop Q. It cuts tens of millions of dollars from other social services.
The cuts to homeless services include over $10 million intended for more emergency shelter beds and long-term supportive housing. Additionally, $1.6 million is cut from public health initiatives like free vaccinations; $1.3 million is cut from the Family Stabilization Grant, which helps families avoid becoming homeless; and $1 million is cut from community violence intervention programs. Millions more are cut from programs for food pantries, city libraries, and wildfire prevention, to name just a few.
Some of that funding may still be restored by moving money from other areas of the budget, but a coalition of community groups led by Equity Action is demanding that city leaders revise last year’s police contract in an effort to find more money. “[The city leaders’] proposal protects the bloated police budget while forcing cuts to every other essential public service including EMS, Austin Public Health, parks, contracts to community service organizations, and more,” Equity Action’s Savannah Lee wrote in a press release Tuesday. “In short, they have once again prioritized police over fully staffed city offices, services for folks experiencing homelessness, and quick and accessible healthcare for Austinites.”
The community groups argue that a clause in the police contract approved last year allows the city to reduce APD’s budget when voters reject proposals like Prop Q, if reducing the budget is “necessary to meet the funding obligations set forth in [the] agreement.” Austin’s chief financial officer, Ed Van Eenoo, sent a memo to the mayor and City Council on Nov. 7, writing that a reduction in the police contract will not be “necessary” this fiscal year because the budget that will be adopted in coming weeks will be balanced. Lee called that statement a falsehood. “The clause refers to the budget that passed,” she told us. “Not the proposed one and not a future one. It exists to prevent exactly what’s happening now, where the police budget is deemed necessary and everything else is on the chopping block.”
Broadnax’s proposed budget also decreases funding for the city’s public safety system, particularly its EMS response. The budget cuts $6.3 million from EMS, compared to what was provided in Prop Q, along with $3 million to provide mental health responders on emergency calls. The Austin EMS Association, which strongly supported Prop Q, joined the city’s fire and police unions in condemning the cuts on Monday, writing, “we cannot compromise the essential services that keep our community safe and functioning.”
Prop Q’s opponents also complained. Matt Mackowiak, the leader of Save Austin Now, declared the cuts unacceptable. Personal injury lawyer Adam Loewy wrote, “If Broadnax and the City Council can’t find $6.3 million more for EMS in a $6 BILLION budget, everyone should resign. Move it from the ridiculous homeless spending.”
However, Mackowiak and Loewy told the Chronicle they believe the city should continue to spend money on homeless services. Mackowiak said the city must hire an outside auditor to conduct a thorough examination of its spending before it decides how much to provide, but praised the Community First! Village. Loewy agreed, saying homelessness is “intertwined with public safety,” and that groups like Foundation Communities and Mobile Loaves & Fishes are helping the homeless people who want help. “And I think those groups should continue to get funding,” he added.
The community’s complex relationship with homelessness was on display in other ways last week, as the city conducted homeless encampment sweeps, in which law enforcement and city staff descend on camps, give the homeless people an hour or less to retrieve their possessions, and then throw away everything else that they own right before their eyes.
Vincint Valentino, a person experiencing homelessness and member of VOCAL-TX, described to Council last Thursday his recent experience at a camp off Riverside Drive. “We were given one hour to clean everything out, and we didn’t even get that full hour,” Valentino said. “When I returned, everything I owned was destroyed – my clothes, my important documents, my dog’s records, all crushed. And among those things were my little sister’s ashes. That’s something no one can ever replace. That day broke something inside me. I wasn’t just losing my belongings. I was losing my progress, my stability, my hope.”
Watson announced Monday that the sweeps are over for now and that 1,347,000 pounds of debris has been removed from 669 camps. He added that city workers connected 181 individuals with shelter and 87 with other resources.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated since publication to correct the spelling of Vincint Valentino’s name and to note he is a member of VOCAL-TX, a grassroots group that organizes people experiencing homelessness.
This article appears in November 14 • 2025.
