The latest available data from 2022 shows a 48% increase in first-time homelessness over 2021. Close to Home San Antonio, formerly South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless (SARAH), is a nonprofit organization that provides funding, education, empowerment, and accountability to organizations that address local homelessness and housing insecurity. As the coordinating lead of the local homeless response system, Close to Home submits data on homelessness to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The 2021 data has been updated to reflect the most recent data submitted to HUD.
In December 2020, the City of San Antonio's Department of Human Services released a 5-year Strategic Plan to Respond to Homelessness in San Antonio and Bexar County Co-created with a wide range of providers, it offers action steps for reducing homelessness. The City of San Antonio's Housing Assistance Program (HAP) provides financial assistance to renters experiencing emergency hardships. To help with emergency housing needs, HAP has two components: 1) rental assistance and 2) relocation assistance for qualified households facing housing instability. The last application process for emergency housing at the City's Neighborhood Housing Services Department emergency housing was open for one week. They received over 4,000 applications. Each application takes approximately 2-3 months to review and process. Wage stagnation, rising rents, a tighter housing market, and inflation are all systemic issues that contribute to homelessness.
Decrease first-time homelessness by 50% (1,265 by 2030)
Year | Value | Margin of Error |
---|---|---|
2019 | 2,530 | |
2020 | 2,506 | |
2021 | 2,816 | |
2022 | 4,168 |
First-Time Homeless Persons
Close to Home San Antonio
Bexar County
This measure calculates the change in the number of persons entering homeless provider data systems with no prior enrollment
After 12 years of driving progress toward a shared community vision, SA2020, the nonprofit organization, is dissolving. We believe this is the most visionary thing we can do. We made this decision with the greatest care for our organizational values of leadership, community, and accountability, and we hope you’ll read more about it on our blog.
Our website is live with our final data release, showing where San Antonio stands on reaching the shared community vision. The data release is accompanied by our final call to action—a policy agenda for City government based on our unique bird’s-eye view of San Antonio.
While SA2020’s operations ended March 28, these resources, along with the last twelve years of our research and stories, will be available to download from our website through September 2024.
– Team SA2020