Category Archives: Housing Heroes Austin

The Housing Heroes project is the Mayor’s initiative to end veteran homelessness in Austin by the end of 2015. Stay tunes for progress and learn how you can help by subscribing to From the Desk of Mayor Adler.

Letter From Mayor Adler

I wanted to catch you up on what we’ve been up to during the holidays.

First, some good news from Washington — really

We all know that IH-35 through downtown Austin is the worst road in town, and one of the worst in Texas. For years – decades even – the best advice we could give newcomers is how to get around Austin while avoiding IH-35. And as the years go by and more and more people move here, IH-35 gets more and more congested. All of a sudden, the road ahead looks a little better. Just this week, the President signed a new five-year highway bill that provides $305 billion for highways, transit, freight, Amtrak, and passenger rail programs. Even better, the bill, called the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (“FAST”) Act, increases money available for highways and reserves a bigger portion of that funding for larger cities like Austin. In other words, right when Austin needs it the most, we are eligible for a bigger slice of a bigger pie for our biggest problem – IH-35.

Continue reading →

Big News for Housing Homeless Veterans

Housing Heroes

This is a quick note to report back to you on some exciting developments with our Housing Heroes Austin initiative to find homes for each of Austin’s homeless veterans by the end of the year. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer, and we’re going to finish this job!

At the beginning of the year, there were 234 homeless veterans in Austin. When I took up this challenge in May, there were 200 remaining without homes. By Veterans Day, we still needed 118 homes for these heroes. Since then, we have secured an additional 40 leases for homeless veterans! We’ve got 78 more to go and only a few weeks left in the year, but with your help we’re going to complete this mission.

You have already done so much. When I emailed last week, many of you offered up apartments and rental houses. Thank you! And we asked you to contribute money, and boy oh boy did you step up. Since Veterans Day, the Housing Heroes Austin Fund has raised an incredible $42,174.47. This kind of support is what makes Austin such a magical city. I can’t thank you enough, but I can ask for more help. If you have apartments you want to lease to homeless veterans or would like to make your own financial contribution, please click here or call the Mayor’s Office: (512) 978-2100.

People used to think that homeless veterans were an indelible feature on the modern cityscape, that this problem was too big to truly solve. Great cities do big things, and we can accomplish this together if we all do a little – though some of us have done a lot. I’ll be updating you as we get closer to meeting the deadline at the end of the year and asking again for your help. You could be the hero we’re looking for to help house these heroes.

Are You A Housing Hero?

Housing Heroes

We owe our veterans more than a parade and our gratitude. This Veterans Day, I’m writing again to give you an update on the progress of our Housing Heroes project – and to ask for your help in giving some veterans much more than a “thank you.” I need your help to give homeless veterans a home.

We’ve got great news: Since May 1, our Housing Heroes program has found homes for 82 homeless veterans. That’s 82 success stories — with more moving in every week and dozens more leases about to close.

Unfortunately, we are still short of our goal to find homes for 200 homeless vets by today, Veterans Day, November 11. We will get there by the original federal deadline of the end of the year because we are getting better and more effectively and efficiently putting veterans into homes. Consider this:

  1.  We’re pulling in new partners to identifying affordable housing for veterans. Affordable housing is a well-known challenge in Austin, but thanks to the Austin Apartment Association and the Austin Board of Realtors, our nonprofit partners like the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition have unprecedented access to property owners and managers, making the job of getting homeless veterans into apartments more doable. This is a new paradigm for dealing with homelessness in Austin that will survive the Housing Heroes program.
  2.  We’ve surpassed our fundraising goal of $150,000 to help mitigate risks for landlords and property owners who rent to vets. As of today, we’ve raised $355,000 thanks to the generosity of the business community and concerned people like you.

But there’s still more to do. We believe that one homeless vet in Austin is too many, so we’re not giving up just because we’ve missed our goal. In fact, we’re stepping up our efforts.

First, we have increased our goal to $575,000 raised by the end of the year. Knowing what we know now about the obstacles that still exist, we’re going to need even more resources to end veteran homelessness this year.

DONATE NOW to be a part of this ground-breaking initiative. Would you consider observing Veterans Day by donating $11.11 to Housing Heroes Austin?

Second, we are reinvigorating our ask of property owners and managers who are willing to partner with Housing Heroes to commit at least one unit to veteran families that might have barriers to renting.

CLICK HERE to help lift veterans off the streets by giving them a second chance.

We’re so close to achieving what we once thought would never be possible, but it takes ambitious goals and audacious plans to achieve big things. I accepted this challenge on your behalf, and now I’m asking for your help to meet it. There is no question that homeless veterans have earned our help or that it is now within our power to find them homes. The only question is if Austin has enough heroes left to finish the job.

Support our work to end veteran homelessness

ARE YOU A HOUSING HERO?

We owe our veterans more than a parade and our gratitude. This Veterans Day, I’m writing again to give you an update on the progress of our Housing Heroes project – and to ask for your help in giving some veterans much more than a “thank you.” I need your help to give homeless veterans a home.

We’ve got great news: Since May 1, our Housing Heroes program has found homes for 82 homeless veterans. That’s 82 success stories — with more moving in every week and dozens more leases about to close.

Unfortunately, we are still short of our goal to find homes for 200 homeless vets by today, Veterans Day, November 11. We will get there by the original federal deadline of the end of the year because we are getting better and more effectively and efficiently putting veterans into homes. Consider this:

1. We’re pulling in new partners to identifying affordable housing for veterans. Affordable housing is a well-known challenge in Austin, but thanks the Austin Apartment Association and the Austin Board of Realtors, our nonprofit partners like the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition have unprecedented access to property owners and managers, making the job of getting homeless veterans into apartments more doable. This is a new paradigm for dealing with homeless in Austin that will survive the Housing Heroes program.

2. We’ve surpassed our fundraising goal of $150,000 to help mitigate risks for landlords and property owners who rent to vets. As of today, we’ve raised $375,000 thank to the generosity of the business community and concerned people like you.

But there’s still more to do. We believe that one homeless vet in Austin is too many, so we’re not giving up just because we’ve missed our goal. In fact, we’re stepping up our efforts.

First, we have increased our goal to $500,000 raised by the end of the year. Knowing what we know now about the obstacles that still exist, we’re going to need even more resources to end veteran homelessness this year.

DONATE NOW to be a part of this ground-breaking initiative. Would you consider observing Veterans Day by donating $11.11 to Housing Heroes Austin?

Second, we are reinvigorating our ask of property owners and managers who are willing to partner with Housing Heroes to commit at least one unit to veteran families that might have barriers to renting.

CLICK HERE to help lift veterans off the streets by giving them a second chance.

We’re so close to achieving what we once thought would never be possible, but it takes ambitious goals and audacious plans to achieve big things. I accepted this challenge on your behalf, and now I’m asking for your help to meet it. There is no question that homeless veterans have earned our help or that it is now within our power to find them homes. The only question is if Austin has enough heroes left to finish the job.

MAYOR ADLER

 

 

Statesman Op-Ed: Time to help our veteran heroes

This article was also published by the Austin American-Statesman on Nov. 7, 2015

We owe a lot to our veterans, and honoring them is what the upcoming Veterans Day is all about. They have sacrificed and given so much of themselves for us, but what does it mean to truly honor our vets?

How about the simple but profound assistance of helping our homeless vets — our homeless heroes — find a home?

Five years ago, the Obama administration set what some thought was an unreachable goal for an intractable problem with an unrealistic deadline: ending veteran homelessness by the end of 2015. My predecessor, Mayor Lee Leffingwell, accepted this challenge for Austin, and I reaffirmed our community’s commitment. Though we’re not going to get there by Veterans Day this week, we are going to finish the job and find homes for these heroes.

One homeless vet is too many. Yet many are surprised to hear how few veteran men, women and their children are on our streets. We have only about 100.

On Jan. 1, 234 homeless veterans were counted in Austin. That’s the number that needs to get to zero by the end of this year to meet the challenge from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. When the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) asked me to accept the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homeless, 200 veterans still needed housing. I immediately signed on and set an even-more ambitious goal of accomplishing this by Veterans Day.

We used to think veteran homelessness was just a fact of life, less an unsolvable problem than a hopeless condition of modern-day America. But it’s not that way at all. We can, and are, solving this problem because we’ve learned some exciting things about what Austin is capable of.

The first thing we learned is that there’s a ton of support for ending veteran homelessness. When we started the Housing Heroes program, we began raising money to mitigate risks for apartment owners. Initially, we thought we needed $150,000. So far, we’ve raised $375,000 and have increased our goal to $500,000 by the end of the year. Turns out, the veterans aren’t the only heroes in this story.

It’s a good thing we raised more money, because another thing we learned is that we were going to need to buy down some of these rents to make them affordable to those homeless veterans who have jobs. Thanks to the unexpected generosity of so many, we were able to handle this unexpected challenge.

That brings us to the last group of heroes we discovered: property owners and managers. For the first time, ECHO is able to partner with the Austin Apartment Association and the Austin Board of Realtors. This gives ECHO unprecedented access to property owners and managers, making the job of getting homeless veterans into apartments more doable. This is a new paradigm for dealing with homeless in Austin that will survive the Housing Heroes program.

We’re not there yet. Since May 1, our Housing Heroes program has found homes for 82 homeless veterans. That’s 82 success stories — and more moving in every week and dozens more leases about to close — but we are still short the goal of ending veteran homelessness by the federal government’s original deadline. Thanks to the new cooperation between ECHO and property owners and the financial support of so many, we’re going to finish this job.

Here’s where you come in — because if Austin is going to end veteran homeless by the end of the year, then we’re going to need some more heroes. We need more contributions to the Housing Heroes Fund, and we’re still looking for apartment owners and managers to step up and provide apartments for these veterans. If you can help, go to housingheroesaustin.org.

This won’t be easy. Often, homeless veterans don’t have the spotless backgrounds that landlords prefer to see on rental applications, but clearly these heroes have earned second chances and fresh starts. To reach our goal, we’re going to need property owners and landlords to look past the perfect to see what is possible.

We’re so close to achieving what we once thought would never be possible, but it takes ambitious goals and audacious plans to achieve big things. I accepted this challenge on your behalf, and now I’m asking for your help to meet it. There is no question that homeless veterans have earned our help or that it is now within our power to find them homes. The only question is if Austin has enough heroes left to finish the job.