Houston will revamp its strategy to address homelessness by opening resource hubs across the city aimed at getting people off the street and expanding the civility ordinance city-wide.

To implement the changes, Mayor John Whitmire made a pitch Thursday for $70 million and a sustainable source of funding. 

Houston became a national example in 2011 for its efforts to reduce the homeless population through a “housing first” approach, designed to get people into stable housing and then into long-term support programs.

The new plan aims to put people in stable housing immediately by keeping beds available, partnering with police to get residents to the resource hubs and increasing outreach to unhoused individuals throughout the city.

Part of the strategy already is in effect in the downtown area. To continue, the city will need to enact ordinance changes, get $45 million from outside sources for the first year and successfully petition the state for a mechanism to create an ongoing source of funding.

“You want to eat at the aquarium and go Hobby Center, you got to step over the homeless,” Whitmire said after a Thursday press conference announcing the plan. “We’re very serious. That’s unacceptable. We’re gonna be compassionate, but we’re gonna be firm. And I think you’ll see some changes real quick.”

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The 2024 Point in Time Count – a physical counting of people sleeping on the street on a given night – showed a 33 percent reduction in the number of unsheltered individuals in Houston, Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery compared to 2020, prior to the COVID pandemic. Volunteers found 3,280 people experiencing homelessness, though the number fluctuates every day.

The regional centers will act as the front door of a “library referral hub,” said Kelly Young, CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless. Professionals will be available to connect unhoused individuals with the specific types of assistance they need, such as a missing month’s rent, connection to disability funding or permanent housing. 

Houston nonprofits have worked together for years. Young said the new aspects of the plan include the partnership with local police and government entities, including the Houston Housing and Community Development and the Houston Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security.

“A police officer can say to somebody, ‘You can’t sleep here tonight, but I can get you to the sobering center, and you may stay there tonight,’” Young explained. “They still may leave in the morning, and then we’ll come out and do outreach again, and we’re just gonna keep going and going through that cycle, which before would break often because the partners weren’t all in line.”

Young said the least amount of money will go to the least-needed resource – permanent supportive housing. The majority of the funding would go to rapid rehousing and diversion to initially keep people from becoming unsheltered. 

The city already has committed $25 million for the first year, Housing and Community Development Director Mike Nichols said. The team will petition Harris County for another $20 million, $15 million from philanthropic organizations and $10 million from other governmental entities. 

Houston may not yet have the funding, but outreach teams already have started the work, Nichols said. In recent weeks, he said teams have identified 25 individuals experiencing homelessness in the downtown area and housed 17 of them.

The downtown hubs will operate from existing resources, including the Salvation Army and the Houston Recovery Center’s Sobering Center.

“We don’t want this to be one location and have everybody else spread out to the ends of the county,” Nichols said. “That’s why we like this idea of these various front doors.”

How to pay for it

The Houston homeless response system always has relied on federal funding, Young said. From Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Harvey disaster dollars to American Rescue Plan funding, she said the organizations have never had a way to sustain their work. 

A key aspect of this latest plan includes a funding system beyond year one – but officials do not know what it will be. 

Nichols said Whitmire would leverage his connections in state government for ongoing funding. 

“Think about it as the same way we have funded sports authorities or Houston First,” Nichols explained. “…It is state funding that comes through an authority that is bringing in those dollars every day through some kind of taxing mechanism.” 

Whitmire said the city also would go to its tax increment redevelopment zones, universities and management districts for sustained funding. Several of the zones already provide funding for affordable housing.

Avoids encampment 

The public discourse surrounding the city’s approach to homelessness has intensified in recent weeks after City Council allocated more than $3 million to a navigation center and extended the city’s civility ordinance to Magnolia Park, which prohibits people from sitting, sleeping or laying possessions on the sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. 

Critics argued the ordinance takes the city closer to outlawing homelessness, while local business owners said it keeps people from soliciting in front of their businesses. Whitmire supported the expansion but told community members his administration would take steps toward ending homelessness, including the use of a city sponsored “encampment.” 

He clarified Thursday that an encampment will not be used, but the civility ordinance will be expanded citywide in the coming weeks. 

“We’re going to adjust the laws to humanely and firmly get people off the street,” Whitmire said. “You don’t get arrested for being homeless. Let me emphasize that that’s not a crime. We are going to change the ordinance that you can’t sleep on the streets.”

The city previously could not expand the civility ordinance due to legal challenges, but a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling appears to uphold bans  on “public camping,” meaning cities or states can fine people sleeping on public streets or sidewalks.  

Houston will try to avoid a tent city and be careful not to politicize the issue, Nichols said at a Nov. 12 Coalition of the Homeless event. He said tent cities can become a haven for drugs and crime. Whitmire’s previous comments about potentially using a “tent” for an encampment were made out of frustration, and Whitmire agreed with the plan created by the team, Nichols said. 

“Now, if we don’t solve the problem, it could come to that solution (tent cities),” Nichols said. “That’d be not the right solution for these individuals, not the right solution for the city.”

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