Austin City Council members on Tuesday pressed the city’s staff for firmer timelines on efforts addressing homelessness, both to help manage community expectations and to hold the city accountable as it forges ahead with several homelessness initiatives.
The city for months has been working on two key programs aimed at creating new housing units and connecting people who are homeless to services and shelter. But the time frame for when critical components of those initiatives, the Guided Path Program and Motel Conversion Strategy, could be completed or developed has remained amorphous, even as the city drives ahead with plans to expand them.
The council in November approved up to $8 million for the city to purchase the Rodeway Inn along Interstate 35 in Southeast Austin to convert into a homeless housing complex. The 87-unit motel would begin as bridge housing and then be converted into a long-term housing option. However, three months after winning council approval, the date the motel will be ready to take in people who are homeless hasn’t been nailed down.
Rosie Truelove, director of the Neighborhood Housing and Community Development Department, said the city is working through a required environmental assessment of the property that must be completed before the purchase can be finalized. She said the city plans to close on the Rodeway Inn in mid-April, but even after it does, some likely renovations could further delay the motel’s date of occupancy.
The inn is one property the city has tapped to meet its goal of creating 300 housing units for people who are homeless under the Motel Conversion Strategy. However, the strategy does not identify a specific time in which the city hopes to meet that goal. Even after hitting it, there still will be a considerable gap. A coordinated assessment in January by the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition estimated the city needs 1,000 permanent supportive housing units and 2,000 rapid rehousing units to meet demand.
Truelove said the city continues to weigh other motel purchases and hopes to expedite the process in the future. She could not discuss specifics on the motels because of ongoing real estate negotiations.
Mayor Steve Adler asked Truelove when the community could expect to see the city’s goal of 300 rooms become a reality, but beyond the 87 at the Rodeway Inn, she couldn’t offer a date. It would be more than 30 days before those rooms were identified, she said.
“I would like to know what the public can think of in terms of when we can get those hotels and motels identified, and then purchased, closed or rehabbed or whatever it is,” Adler said. “We talk about motel strategy, I don’t know if that’s a 10-year strategy for 300 rooms or if that’s a two-month strategy to get to 300 rooms.”
City leaders approved an expansion of the Guided Path Program in January with $612,336 in contract amendments. The program began as a pilot effort last year targeting 99 people living around the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless with individualized care. With the expansion, homeless care providers hope to reach into more areas of the city to set people up with housing and a caseworker.
Of the 99 people included in the pilot program, 21 have been housed, while 66 remain unhoused but in programs that lead to housing. The average time for people to move into housing after they have enrolled in the program and have case management services ranges from 30 to 90 days, said Vela Carmen, interim homeless services chief. However, she said it’s hard to know exactly when, or if, the 66 remaining people will find a more permanent living situation. Many times, housing availability is influenced by criminal records and past debt, making it harder for some people to land in a permanent home.
Carmen said it will take several months to get the remaining people into case management, so it could also be a while before the program successfully expands to a wider area.
But Council Member Ann Kitchen said she wants a firm date for when the program could grow more quickly, rather than waiting on everyone from the pilot to be housed.
“If we end up only doing these sequentially, it could be quite some time before we expand to other areas,” Kitchen said.
Carmen said because the pilot program steps out of the established housing pathways in Austin, city staffers need to ensure that those coming into the service network through that channel don’t displace others who have been waiting for housing.
“I think we need to think about not doing business the way we have in the past, and I understand the reason for it,” Kitchen said. “But if we’re playing a zero-sum game, and we’re dividing the pie like we (used to), we’re not going to make the kind of progress we need to make.”
Adler echoed Kitchen’s thoughts, saying more solid timelines would help city leaders assess progress compared to goals, more easily identify things that are working and allow the community to understand progress more clearly.
“My sense is that the community will be with us to the degree that they feel hopeful,” Adler said. “But feeling hopeful means that they think that we have a path, and they have a plan, and they can see getting from here to there.”
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