Council reviews 2024 homelessness report; members press for clearer metrics and data access

San Antonio City Council received the city's 2024 annual homelessness report on March 26, 2025, and followed with more than an hour of discussion about results, spending and unanswered questions about prevention and long-term outcomes.

Melanie, a Department of Human Services staff member who presented the report, summarized the city's coordinated response system and the fiscal-year 2024 investments. She told the council the report compares San Antonio's system to those in other large Texas cities and summarizes how local, state and private dollars were used.

The report said that a January 2024 point-in-time count identified 3,372 people experiencing homelessness in Bexar County: 2,484 were staying in shelters and 888 were unsheltered. Staff reported more than 4,500 people moved from the street into a shelter or from shelter to housing during fiscal year 2024; about 3,000 of those entries were people who were newly homeless or had returned to homelessness. City staff also summarized expenditures: $32.3 million cited to address homelessness (with roughly half of that described as general fund support) and $12 million identified as COVID-era funding; about $3.5 million in multi-year grants remained unspent and available for future years, according to the presentation.

Councilmembers praised aspects of the work but repeatedly pressed…