The Homeless Strategy Office on Wednesday told the Austin City Council Public Health Committee it has convened a Downtown Homeless Task Force to align city, county, health‑care, criminal justice and nonprofit partners around policies and partnerships aimed at reducing unsheltered homelessness in downtown Austin.

David Gray, director of the Homeless Strategy Office, told the committee the task force has two primary goals: “First is looking upstream, how do we curb the inflow of new people who are experiencing unstructured homelessness in Downtown Austin? And the second is how do we maximize our efforts to get folks who are currently living unsheltered on these streets, off the streets and into appropriate shelter housing or diversion programs?”

Gray said the city has seen an overall increase in homelessness nationwide and locally, but that downtown tent and structure counts have dropped while the number of individuals remaining unsheltered downtown has “stubbornly” hovered between about 400 and 550 and “cycles up and down as the seasons go.” He said those dynamics prompted the task force.

The task force will include representatives from the medical community (Ascension, Central Health, Integral Care), transportation (CapMetro), nonprofits (Caritas, ChangeONE, LifeWorks, Trinity Center), business groups (Downtown Austin Alliance), Travis County (commissioner’s office and government relations), criminal justice partners (county district attorney’s office), and state agencies including the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and ECCO as the CLC lead agency. Gray said participants also include people with lived experience; he named Courtney Jones, founder and executive director of Change 1, as an example.

Gray said the group’s work began with a kickoff in August, included a meeting on inflow factors in September, will focus soon on practical ways to move people indoors, and aims to draft recommendations in November with a final set to be published in December. He said the office expects to return to the committee in January to present the recommendations.

Committee members asked several operational questions. One member warned that clearing downtown without shelter or housing capacity simply “disperses the problem” to other parts of Austin; Gray and other staff said the task force’s system‑level approach is aimed at preventing that outcome by fixing discharge and referral pathways and by optimizing existing shelter resources.

Council members also asked the task force to investigate anecdotal reports of people being transported from neighboring jurisdictions into Austin. Gray said HSO has begun “light” data collection and that preliminary evidence points to smaller neighboring jurisdictions sometimes bringing people downtown because of local service gaps; he said the office will share more data and pursue conversations with those jurisdictions about contributions to and alignment with regional response systems.

Gray emphasized that some policy recommendations will require partners outside city control and that the task force will seek commitments from partner organizations to endorse and own strategies the group recommends. He also said the city will report publicly on progress once recommendations are finalized.

Looking ahead, the task force’s stated timeline calls for partner review of draft recommendations in November and a December publication of final strategies, after which the Homeless Strategy Office expects to brief the committee and the public on next steps.