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 homelessness during a recent period.

García summarized Neighborhood Housing’s ten‑year Ship strategy adopted in 2021 and reiterated the department’s goal to build and preserve 28,000 housing units over 10 years, with about half targeted for households earning at or below 36 percent of area median income. She described proposed programmatic changes and modest budget reductions, including a $1 million reduction to the city’s minor‑repairs program while saying the city will rely more on nonprofit partners and donated materials to maintain service levels for homeowners. García said the department proposes a total housing budget near $90.5 million for FY2026, including about $34 million dedicated to housing production and preservation.

Council members focused on outcomes, data and long‑term planning. Several said they want clearer metrics tying shelter and hotel spending to longer‑term housing outcomes and to know how many residents served by emergency programs later moved into permanent housing. One councilmember asked for a deeper analysis showing how additional dollars convert into housing placements (for example, how many households 100,000 dollars could help). Carmona and García said the city will invest more in data collection and analysis and coordinate with providers such as Haven for Hope and the housing trust. Garcia confirmed the majority of federal funding for some programs comes from HUD (presented in the transcript as the federal grant line) and that grant amounts are fixed year to year.

Several councilmembers pressed on the low‑barrier shelter lease and operations: whether the city can extend operations beyond the current one‑year extension, the possibility of negotiating a longer lease, and how to maximize the leased capacity. Staff said the landlord has expressed interest in renewing, that the current lease runs through October of the year referenced in the presentation, and that a longer plan would require additional council direction and interagency coordination.

Council members also raised program‑level questions: the average length of stay in certain shelters (a figure cited in the presentation as roughly 132 days for some placements), the cost to clear encampments (the presentation cited cleanup costs of about $2,000 per removal), and capacity of outreach teams. Staff said the city is expanding outreach staffing, is tracking returns to homelessness and is monitoring encampment removals through a recurring 14‑day schedule.

On housing production and preservation, García highlighted bond proceeds and other funding the city has used to preserve units and to support homeowner rehabilitation programs. She said the average per‑unit subsidy from some bond projects was cited in the presentation as about $170,000 and that the city anticipates additional completions in the coming fiscal year. Garcia said rehabilitation and owner‑repair programs together represent roughly $7.7 million in combined investments, and that the department expects to assist several hundred homeowners despite a $1 million reduction in general funds for minor repairs by relying on nonprofit partners.

Council members requested several follow‑ups: a clearer count of people served vs. moved to permanent housing, demographic breakdowns (for example, youth and veteran populations), updated income‑band counts for households at 30 and 60 percent of area median income, a map of encampment locations and an analysis of long‑term options for the low‑barrier shelter (including capital alternatives and county partnerships). Staff agreed to provide more detailed data and to return with recommendations for multi‑year planning.

The presentation also described prevention and eviction‑avoidance programs that remain funded at currently proposed levels; staff said relocation and rental assistance programs are a primary tool to prevent homelessness for households facing displacement.

The council’s discussion made no formal motions or votes on the budget during the presentation; staff said the materials were for review and follow‑up and that additional action items or procurement steps would return to council as required.