How much money is in Austin's proposed budget for addressing homelessness?

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- In our coverage of Austin's budget process in years prior, we've highlighted for you specifically how much the city spends to address homelessness. But this year, that number wasn't as clear in the city manager's proposed budget.

"We are not tracking the aggregate number any longer. There were too many times where programs that served the homeless had overlaps into other areas, making apples-to-apples year-over-year comparisons very difficult," a city spokesperson for the financial department said.

After city council members requested more information about homelessness spending Tuesday during a budget work session, we're getting a better idea of what the city plans to spend next fiscal year.

Overall, council could allocate $30.3 million of its $5.9 billion budget to the newly-created Homeless Strategy Office (HSO). Most of that will go toward contracts for emergency shelters and longer-term housing solutions.

"$27 million is social service contracts over the service areas or programs of focus listed there [see graph below]. And then the $3.3 million that is listed is for their operating, that's for staff and the operating functions of the office," Budget Officer Kerri Lang told council members.

The City of Austin budgeted nearly $180 million on homelessness assistance from fiscal year 2019-2021, according to a city auditor's report. For fiscal year 2022-23, the city budgeted $79 million for homelessness and for the most recent fiscal year $81 million, we previously reported.

That number looks so much lower this year not because the city dramatically cut services -- in fact, financial staff have said they didn't cut any services this fiscal year -- but because this is the first budget process in which the HSO has operated independently. Homelessness operations used to happen underneath Austin Public Health.

"As part of HSO being created, they are taking over responsibility for developing a consistent methodology for tracking these expenditures going forward, but that work is still in progress," a city spokesperson said.

Changes to the proposed budget coming

It's likely Austin City Council members will choose to increase the amount of money the HSO will get. There are already several amendments to the proposed budget tied to homelessness including one from Council Member Vanessa Fuentes that would shuffle more money toward rapid rehousing.

"So that we can continue to address the need that we have in our community with the 1,000+ individuals on the waitlist for rapid rehousing and to ensure that we have sufficient support for the individuals that we currently have in rapid rehousing that the city is supporting," Fuentes said.

Proposed amendments from Mayor Kirk Watson would help keep Austin's Northbridge and Southbridge shelters operational and fund in wrap around services for permanent supportive housing units coming online.

You can read a running list of council members' proposed amendments here.