What happened to Austin’s $515M homelessness fundraising initiative?

KXAN
by: Grace Reader
Posted: Nov 27, 2023 / 07:28 PM CST
Updated: Nov 27, 2023 / 10:13 PM CST

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A major fundraising initiative aimed at helping end homelessness, which was championed by former City of Austin leaders, has flown under the radar for the last year as the City now has new leadership.

Finding Home ATX was a project created out of the Spring 2021 Summit to Address Unsheltered Homelessness, according to its website. The goals that came out of that summit were as follows: house 3,000 additional unsheltered people, add 1,300 new affordable housing units for people experiencing homelessness and “build a better, more effective Homelessness Response System.”

To get there, the City — under former Mayor Steve Adler — and its partners in combatting homelessness, created an overall fundraising goal of $515 million. That included money from private donors, the City, Travis County, the state and service providers.

City officials have previously given updates on the fundraising effort, but this time directed us to the chair of Finding Home ATX. Travis County pointed us to the same place. Finding Home ATX sent KXAN the following, in-part:

“Finding Home ATX’s long-term goal is to support provider efforts to build capacity within the system and to achieve system equilibrium (monitoring funding commitments, funding distributions, and capacity/support outcomes). Given the many changes at City Hall this year, we are still working closely with government officials toward this. There’s more work to be done.“

Finding Home ATX also said roughly $450 million has been raised so far of that $515 million, which is roughly the same number City leaders reported a year ago. That number represents direct investments into the homelessness response system — donors directly fund projects and providers — not a pool of money to be used.

“Even though these funds go to other entities, they are often labeled ‘Finding Home ATX funds’ because the use of the funds conform to the Summit 2021 goals,” Finding Home ATX said.

KXAN also reached out to Mayor Kirk Watson to ask why the fundraiser does not appear to have been promoted since his taking office and a spokesperson declined to comment. That spokesperson did, however, say Finding Home ATX would be part of an independent review of homelessness services Watson announced earlier this month.

Where we left off

The last time KXAN reported on the effort was a year ago, when city, county, nonprofit and private leaders gathered to update the community on fundraising efforts, specifically pointing to charitable donations from private donors. City leaders have not proactively updated the public on the program since and its public facing website is outdated. Many of the City leaders listed on the Finding Home ATX website are no longer in office.

The last fundraising update on the website — which shows Finding Home ATX is at nearly 90% of its financial goal — was from October 2022. That number does not appear to include major contributions to fighting homelessness that we know about from the City and Travis County in the last year.

Since the latest update on the Finding ATX website, Travis County designated nearly $150 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars toward homelessness, KXAN has previously reported. The City has also secured bond funding for additional affordable housing since that 2022 update.

Where is the money going?

The City has previously told KXAN that the goal of housing 3,000 people and building 1,300 new affordable housing units will be reached — and that the funding from Finding Home ATX has already been designated for those ongoing projects.

In 2022, when KXAN interviewed City leaders about the program, Dianna Grey, Austin’s now-former homeless strategy officer said a little more than half of the funding from Finding Home ATX was going to new affordable housing creation.

“Today, we were able to report that we are on track to exceed our goal of 1,300 new housing units. But the other portion of the money goes towards a wide array of social services,” Grey said.

Outreach groups like We Can Now told KXAN they have received funding to provide some of those outreach services. For We Can Now, it allowed them to expand their operation and provide transport services, the founder and CEO told us.

Meanwhile, according to ECHO’s dashboard, permanent supportive housing production in Austin has gone up in the last two years, as has the number of emergency shelter beds — and more is on the way.

According to that data, there were nearly 926 emergency shelter beds in Austin in the first quarter of 2022 and 1,020 in the first quarter of 2023. Watson has announced additional emergency shelter beds coming online since. Meanwhile during the same time frames there were 1,507 permanent supportive housing units in early 2022 and that number bumped to 1,718 during the early part of 2023.

There are also nearly 1,000 “site-based” permanent supportive housing units in production right now — including Pecan Gardens, Bungalows at Century Park and Burleson Village. Those units will offer wrap-around services for people experiencing chronic homelessness and are all expected to open within the next few years, according to a table provided by ECHO. There are only around 120 of those in operation right now, according to that data.

Kate Moore, the vice president of homelessness response system strategy at ECHO, believes Finding Home ATX and an abundance of federal dollars from the Cares Act and American Rescue Plan Act helped push Austin toward creating more of those units.

“Those two things certainly were a big catalyst for this happening. This increased commitment by the community that we needed this and that we wanted this to happen,” she said.

What the City of Austin is doing now

Watson and the City recently announced a splitting off of its homeless strategy division into an independent office, and a joint independent review of homeless services in the City. Finding Home ATX will be included in that review, a spokesperson for the mayor said.

According to a newsletter from the mayor, the review would include strategy evaluations, an examination of each entity’s contracts related to homelessness, and an analysis of the coordination of services and delivery.

Watson said the review is expected to be completed by early next year.

“We’re too often measuring progress simply by how much we’re spending, not by the actual results of that spending,” Watson said. “Focusing on the money may create the appearance of great effort, but it’s not helping us to get ahead of the challenge.”