Disaster Recovery Centers For Resilient Communities In Austin
In the past decade, the City of Austin, TX has experienced climate change in the form of record-breaking heat, droughts, historic floods, severe winter storms, and devastating wildfires that have taken lives, displaced community members, and stressed infrastructure. In 2021, Austin’s City Council passed a Resolution to begin building a... Read more
Building the Capacity of Critical Service Providers in Austin’s Homelessness Response System
In the City of Austin, homelessness is a persistent reality that has amounted to a humanitarian challenge. Lack of affordable housing and healthcare, trauma and abuse, and racial inequities are all leading causes of homelessness in Austin. An estimated 9,000 residents in the Austin/Travis County area experience homelessness each year,... Read more
Identifying Innovative Funding Mechanisms to Address Unsheltered Homelessness in Austin
In spring 2021, city leaders facilitated the first Summit to Address Unsheltered Homelessness in Austin – the purpose of the summit was to develop an implementation strategy to effectively and significantly reduce unsheltered homelessness in the city. In the next three years local leaders are determined to rehouse 3000 people... Read more
Combating Gentrification Through Innovative and Actionable Redevelopment
Austin has been one of the fastest-growing major metro areas in the country for nearly a decade, with a population closing in on 1 million and expected to double before 2040. Along with this growth, rising real estate prices, property taxes, and general cost of living have driven many longtime... Read more
Preventing Transit Developments from Displacing Residents
Since the late 1990s, Austin has seen a dramatic rise in housing costs, with affluent young professionals moving into central neighborhoods and pushing established residents to the outskirts or out of the city altogether. This displacement is most dramatic in the same neighborhoods where Black and Latinx residents were previously... Read more
Building a Systematic Response to the Public Health Crisis of Homelessness
In Austin, city officials are working to address persistent homelessness, experienced by nearly 7,000 people in the city and Travis County each year. Moreover, Black Austinites are disproportionately experiencing homelessness; while making up 8 percent of the general population, they account for 34 percent of the unhoused population. Prioritizing homelessness,... Read more