San Antonio council hears detailed budget plan for homelessness, housing programs

Marc Carmona, director of Strategic Services, and Verónica García, director of Neighborhood Housing, presented San Antonio’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budgets for homelessness response and housing programs and answered council questions on program outcomes and data needs.

Carmona said homelessness “is one of the most important care issues” the city is addressing and outlined a mix of emergency shelter, outreach and prevention spending. The presentation showed roughly $26.1 million and $30.5 million figures for different program budgets and cited a $4.8 million allocation specifically tied to operations for a low‑barrier shelter model and related services.

The budget proposal includes continuing a contract to operate a low‑barrier shelter space the city leases; Carmona said the current lease covers up to 313 rooms but the city currently funds operations for 185 rooms. He said existing federal and other grant funding is part of the financing mix and that the city is coordinating with community partners for medical and behavioral health supports. Carmona reported outcome counts from the city’s homeless response system, including numbers the presentation listed as about 3,880 people exiting street homelessness into some form of housing and about 2,070 moving from temporary housing into permanent housing, and that roughly 355 people in the system had returned to…