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 staff for more detail on outcomes and causes. "This painting is not pink — what we've been doing is not working," Councilmember White said, characterizing the report as informative but insufficient to declare the city's efforts a success. White and other members urged clearer definitions of success, stronger prevention metrics and better tracking of people who exit services and later return to homelessness.

Councilmembers asked whether the city collects or can analyze reasons people return to the street. Councilmember McKir Rodríguez asked which data the system collects and whether staff could provide demographic breakdowns (for example, what share are veterans, young people aging out of foster care, or people with serious mental illness). Melanie and other staff said the system does collect intake information and that much of the client-level data is held in the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS); staff offered to work with council to run the requested analyses and to provide follow-up reports.

Multiple members raised the importance of prevention. "We're putting out fires but not focusing enough on why they start," Councilmember Castillo said, urging more information about eviction risk, income shocks and other upstream drivers. Staff pointed to existing programs that aim to prevent homelessness, including rental assistance programs and targeted initiatives such as Ready to Work and nursing-staff outreach pilots launched last year.

Several councilmembers asked for more transparency on program capacity and the inventory of available housing units. Staff said some information is available on the public dashboard and that project-level inventories are being updated; they offered to provide short, council-only summaries with current bed and unit availability. Councilmember Cor and others asked for greater access to HMIS-derived reports so district offices can follow cases and better coordinate constituent services; staff said HMIS contains protected personal data (HIPAA/other confidentiality constraints) but that the city can produce sanitized reports and consider limited data-sharing agreements.

Councilmembers debated the role of low-barrier shelters and whether the council should commit to renewing operating dollars now budgeted for temporary, low-barrier sites. Councilmember White said the council must decide whether to continue funding low-barrier shelters into the next fiscal year and recommended the item be discussed in the May budget conversations.

Several speakers highlighted programs and partners cited in the report. Staff said ARPA funds helped expand bed capacity and that partnerships with nonprofit providers and county programs contributed to placements and supportive services. Councilmember VillagrE1n and others praised local providers' outreach and recovery-of-identification efforts but urged easier public communication about where services are available.

Councilmembers also raised public-safety and quality-of-life concerns related to unsheltered encampments, drainage channel occupations and shopping carts used to collect materials. Speakers emphasized that these concerns are symptoms of a larger problem that requires both compassion and strategic investment: "We can't solve homelessness by criminalizing survival," Councilmember Baquir RodrEDguez said, urging focus on prevention and long-term housing solutions.

Staff and council agreed on near-term follow-up steps: provide demographic and re-entry analyses from HMIS where possible, issue a short inventory update on available shelter beds and housing units for each council district, and add a May budget discussion on whether to continue funding low-barrier shelters. The presenter closed by offering to return with the requested outcome metrics that tie spending to the five-year strategic plan goals.

The council thanked staff and providers for the presentation and asked that future reports emphasize prevention metrics, clear definitions of "successful exits" and routine updates on inventory and HMIS-derived outcomes.