SAN ANTONIO – A new city department has identified sizable gaps in the local homeless response system: a need for hundreds of extra shelter beds, many more housing units and vouchers, and more rental assistance.
And while the total cost to close them isn’t clear yet, the head of the department says it won’t be just the city paying for it.
The Homeless Services and Strategy Department, which was created as part of the current city budget year, has been working on a new “Shelter and Housing Framework” to show what’s needed to create a “meaningful reduction” in homelessness in San Antonio.
Homeless outreach, services, and encampment cleanups are consistently top resident priorities in city budget surveys, but the department says there are still gaps.
“I think they’re significant enough that we’re still seeing 1,327 people on the street today; we’re seeing a record number of people that are coming into homelessness for the first time,” said Mark Carmona, the city’s chief housing officer and director of the new department.
In fiscal year 2025, Carmona told council members during a Wednesday briefing there were over 4,100 people living on the street. Through outreach and other methods, more than 2,800 got into shelter or housing, leaving 1,327 people.
Even out of those who accessed shelter, Carmona said 609 returned to homelessness. Another 1,738 people became homeless for the first time.
Going off those numbers, the city identified three main gaps:
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Rental assistance to keep another 1,738 people from slipping into homelessness
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550 emergency shelter beds
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Enough housing units and vouchers to help get, or keep, 1,475 homeless or formerly homeless people off the street
The city is already investing over $30 million across those three areas, but it also works with numerous governmental and nonprofit partners.
And Carmona emphasized the effort to close those gaps is “not a city-only funded plan.” He plans to provide a final framework plan during his August budget presentation.
“We’re going to take the summer to work with stakeholders, really fine-tuning what lanes people are in, and then fine-tuning cost estimates so that we can give council in August a clear cost number of what this is going to look like and who’s sharing in it,” he told TheTXLoop.
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