“San Antonio is doing better when it comes to staving off those increases that we’re seeing at a national level,” said Katie Wilson, ED for Close to Home SA.
SAN ANTONIO — A newly released report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is saying the country saw a double digit increase in homelessness.
In comparison to 2023, homelessness saw an 18.1 percent increase, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said that federally required tallies taken across the country in January found that more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless.
The same federal tally was done in San Antonio, by the organization Close to Home San Antonio which works to address homelessness in the area.
“San Antonio is doing better when it comes to staving off those increases that we’re seeing at a national level,” said Katie Wilson, executive director for Close to Home SA. “Last year our overall increase was about 6%. But the majority of that was our sheltered population where they’re staying in an emergency shelter, and we had just expanded our shelter beds, so what we see often is if you have shelter beds, they’re going to be filled.”
Wilson isn’t surprised by the national statistic.
“I think we haven’t made enough progress with developing affordable housing options and just producing the housing needed to keep up with our population,” she said. “There have been a lot of challenges with building and getting things moving after COVID. We don’t see the same federal resources coming in now.”
There are correlations between the national statistics and what’s happening in San Antonio. Wilson pointed out both saw a rise in families experiencing homelessness. There was also a decline in veterans experiencing homelessness.
“I think it’s a great example of there is, a health care system for people, for our veterans,” Wilson said. “There are specialized housing options. There are vouchers. There’s a whole system built around housing that group.”
Wilson states, that drop points to a solution to homelessness.
“If we can take that to scale for our families, for people with severe mental health issues, if we can take that model and we see that it works,” she said. “So that’s also an encouraging statistic is, that when you build a system to take care of people, it works.”