70.11% of households served through City of Austin Homelessness Services Contracts moved into housing. Austin Public Health (APH) contracts were below target. The additional funding supplied by federal grants helped to increase client enrollment but a competitive housing market continued to be a barrier, additionally, The Downtown Austin Community Court (DACC) portion requires intensive case management which often creates a lower success rate that can heavily impact the overall numbers. The sum of the fiscal year numerator and the sum of the fiscal year denominator are used to determine the rate percentage.

Going into FY22, the City continued to invest funding into the expanded homeless services programs. American Rescue Plan Act funding will be available for a continued expansion of rehousing programs and additional PSH and affordable housing units are planned to become available which will assist in raising the outcome success rate.

Note: To see the underlying data for this chart, please select the "View Source Data" link to the left.

Austin Public Health requires providers to report on the total program outcomes (households who exit homelessness into housing), regardless of the percent of the program funded by the City. City investments can range from 6% to 100% of funding for the entire program. An important note about this measure is that it counts the number and percentage of households, not individuals. In many cases, services are provided to 1-person households, but many of the households served through these programs are multi-person households. While homeless services programs face many challenges in transitioning clients from homelessness into stable housing, the most commonly cited struggle is the lack of sufficient affordable housing units for clients, particularly for those with criminal backgrounds and/or limited income. The City continues to work with service providers to build capacity and work towards community-based solutions to end homelessness in Austin.

Downtown Austin Community Court’s (DACC) Intensive Case Management (ICM) program aims to end homelessness by providing comprehensive, long term services to individuals experiencing homelessness. ICM prioritizes using an evidenced-based model of wraparound interventions to help individuals served achieve long-term stability and improve their quality of life. All resources, whether provided internally or externally are based on best practices including person-centered services, Trauma-Informed Care, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Critical Time Intervention is one of the most important components of DACC’s ICM Program, which connects individuals to services as soon as they are ready to engage.

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There are multiple pathways into services through the ICM program. These entry points include the ability to receive walk-in clients and referrals from the Homeless Outreach Street Team (HOST), which over time has become the most common entry to services due to the trust DACC has built within the homeless community. ICM also serves individuals with cases that come before DACC. Additionally, service providers seek assistance and refer highly acute and vulnerable clients to DACC when they think an individual may meet the criteria established for prioritizing individuals seeking case management assistance.

1) Definition: "Percent" represents the total number of people receiving homelessness services through City of Austin contracts and Downtown Austin Community Court case management who move into housing divided by the sum of total number of enrollees for both programs.

2) Calculation method: Calculation for this measure is determined by adding the total number of people receiving homelessness services through APH's social services contracts who move into housing and the total number of people receiving homelessness services through Downtown Austin Community Court intensive case management who move into housing, then dividing by the sum of total number of enrollees for both programs and multiplying the result by 100.

3) Data Collection Process: In FY20 APH moved to a new contract management system, PartnerGrants. Social service agencies providing homeless services who have contracted measures to move people into housing report performance in this system quarterly.  Reports are compiled to obtain a yearly total. This total is compiled with an annual report provided by DACC for intensive case management clients for the same period.  Dated content was determined through records review of APH records from a decommissioned system for fiscal years 2017, 2018, and part of 2019.

4) Measure Target Calculation:  APH will continue to monitor Measure Target for appropriateness for FY2023. Target originally set based on a similar APH only related measure and average goals across past five fiscal years.

5) Frequency Measure is Reported: Annually (Fiscal Year)

Date page was last updated: April 2023