While the City of San Antonio tightens its spending amid increased costs, city officials proposed increasing spending on one of City Council’s and the community’s top priorities: addressing homelessness.

The proposed $3.96 billion budget for fiscal year 2025 includes $44.2 million for direct homeless prevention services, outreach, shelters, housing and encampment cleanups. That’s $6.35 million more than it spent last year. Several City Council members signaled support for that increase during budget discussions last week as well as using some of the last-remaining unallocated coronavirus recovery funds to support housing needs even further.

“Our homeless response system still needs more resources, and that’s where I think people are going to be feeling the most trauma as we get to a more … normal budget and economy moving forward,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Thursday.

The city has $5.8 million available for re-allocation from its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) fund after a review found that some agencies or programs could not spend that funding before it expires in 2026. During his draft budget presentation last week, City Manager Erik Walsh proposed using $3.1 million to continue extended hours at senior centers for the next two years. That leaves $2.7 million to be allocated elsewhere.

“My recommendation is for us to consider using that $2.7 [million] for our homeless response system and housing assistance,” Nirenberg said.

Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) agreed.

Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4), who is running for mayor, said the remaining funds should be used to address health disparities on San Antonio’s South Side. In a press release sent Wednesday, councilwomen Phyllis Viagran (D3), Teri Castillo (D4), and Sukh Kaur (D1) supported that move.

The area’s 2024 point-in-time homeless count, which provides a one-night snapshot of the homeless population, showed a 6.8% percent increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness compared to last year; for a total of 3,372 individuals. Of those, 888 people were unsheltered.

The proposed $44.2 million for housing services next fiscal year does not include all the indirect spending next year that helps address homelessness, Walsh said, including expenses for the public health, police and fire departments.

The increased spending on homelessness next year is largely due to the expenditure of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant aimed at homeless prevention, including rental and utility assistance. The city is slated to spend nearly $3.7 million of that grant, more than double the amount it allocated last year.

Walsh proposed setting a net goal of finding a shelter bed for at least 500 people experiencing homelessness — 100 more than 2024’s goal. But the city estimates the local homeless response system will surpass that by getting 530 into shelters by the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Between October 2023 and July 2024, the homeless response system helped 1,371 individuals move from the streets to either shelter or permanent housing, the city’s data dashboard shows. During that time, more than 3,700 unsheltered people found shelter or housing, but nearly 2,400 people became homeless or returned to homelessness.

Walsh also proposed increasing the amount of homeless encampment cleanups, also called abatements, from an estimated 1,100 in 2024 to 1,300 next year. Currently, it takes crews an average of 18 days to clear an encampment reported to the city — quicker than the 44-day average at the start of 2024 but longer than the 14-day goal.

The proposed budget includes nearly $440,000 for the Solid Waste Management Department to add a tractor, tailor and a pickup truck to clean both illegal dumping sites and encampments. Outreach workers offer to connect encampment residents to services and housing ahead of and during each cleanup.

McKee-Rodriguez, a longtime critic of abatements, said the city’s time and money could be better spent on support services and housing.

“They’re just going to keep coming back, and we’re going to keep getting complaints and we’re going to keep sweeping money away,” he said. “That’s not compassionate, it’s not humanitarian or even effective at the bare minimum. So I would really challenge us to be a little bit more creative there.”

But the city can’t ignore the frustration coming from residents who are housed, Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7) said.

“I definitely don’t want to punish unsheltered residents who might be down on their luck, but we need to balance that with the needs of our housed residents who are frustrated with this problem,” she said.

Getting people housed requires more time and resources than a cleanup, said Katie Wilson, executive director of Close to Home.

“We understand why there is a priority for encampment cleanups to make sure the community feels responded to however, we don’t see them as a strategy to reduce homelessness,” Wilson said.

Close to Home is the federally-designated Continuum of Care agency that works with governments and service agencies to coordinate homelessness mitigation strategy and funding. For many people experiencing homelessness, access to a shelter bed is the best path to receive services and find permanent housing, she said.

But ARPA funding for the 200-bed, low-barrier shelter that SAMMinistries operates out of a former Holiday Inn will run out at the end of 2026.

“We have a lot of work to do to manage shelter expansions,” Wilson said. “It’s going to be really important that next year, when we lead our community-wide homeless strategic plan, we need to talk about sustainability.

“… But there’s is a whole system to consider, because if we can prevent more people from falling into homelessness that impacts our need for shelter,” she added. “You really can’t just look at one part, you have to look at the whole [affordable housing] picture.”

Advocates say the need for more shelter capacity could be reduced by adding permanent supportive housing and other affordable housing options in the city.

By the end of 2025, Walsh estimates that the city will reach 40% of its 10-year affordable housing goal to preserve or produce 28,094 homes by 2031. That’s 11,238 homes built, under construction or in the pipeline.

Now that federal housing assistance is winding down post-pandemic, “cities across the country are having to take a look at their budget and say: How do we maintain some of these programs and interventions and capacity that was actually working?” Wilson said. “We’re happy to see that it’s still a priority [in San Antonio].”