July 2025
Austin/Travis County Homeless Service Providers Consortium & Austin Housing Coalition
RE: FY2026 Budget Planning and the Need for a Tax Rate Election
Dear Mayor Watson and Members of the Austin City Council,
On behalf of the Austin/Travis County Homeless Service Providers Consortium and the Austin Housing Coalition, thank you for your continued leadership in addressing homelessness with compassion, urgency, and strategic vision.
We were deeply encouraged by Director David Gray’s April 28th presentation to the Special Joint Meeting of the Public Health and Audit & Finance Committees. The Homeless Strategy Office’s strategic direction offers a bold, comprehensive roadmap for progress.
Implementing that strategy will require substantial and sustained investment. We respectfully urge the Mayor and Council to move forward with a Tax Rate Election (TRE) for FY2026 to fully fund the Homeless Strategy Office and preserve critical services that keep people housed, safe, and supported.
Earlier this year, the Consortium conducted a coordinated analysis of the FY2026 funding landscape. The findings were sobering: we face a projected $39 million gap across prevention, outreach, shelter, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and stabilization services. This shortfall stems from the ARPA funding cliff, declining federal support, an unprecedented rise in first-time homelessness, and structural state limits on local revenue.
We appreciate the complexity of balancing a constrained budget and the numerous competing interests that Council may need to consider in the context of a November Tax Rate Election. We are committed to building a cross-sector coalition, and we believe the City of Austin must play a leadership role in convening that coalition alongside us. These conversations should not happen in silos—homeless response funding must be part of a comprehensive fiscal strategy.
Without new, durable revenue, the Homeless Response System cannot maintain existing levels of service, which risks reversing years of hard-won progress. Homeless
response system providers stand prepared to educate, advocate, and mobilize our networks to ensure that our community understands what’s at stake and what is possible if we act boldly and present this ballot measure.
Austin has the opportunity to build one of the most effective, coordinated homeless response systems in the country. The City’s plan is the blueprint. A Tax Rate Election can lay the foundation. Let’s take this step—together.
Thank you for your leadership—and for your consideration of this urgent and necessary step forward.
Sincerely,
The Austin/Travis County Homeless Service Providers Consortium & The Austin Housing Coalition
Signatories:
Austin Housing Coalition
Family Eldercare
Lifeworks
Foundation Communities
Austin Clubhouse
Trinity Center
SAFE Alliance
Caritas of Austin
Mobile Loaves and Fishes
Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center
Integral Care
The Other Ones Foundation