A new homeless shelter

A new homeless shelter: In sharp contrast to his predecessor, Interim City Manager Jesus Garza has initiative. He wants to get things done and he's not waiting for permission from City Council or any other stakeholder. Hence his most recent proposal to convert a city-owned warehouse in southeast Austin into a 300-bed homeless shelter. From the Chronicle:

A Friday memo from Interim City Manager Jesús Garza announcing the plan indicates that the shelter would operate for approximately one year and could be just one among other temporary shelters the city attempts to stand up in the immediate future. The new temporary shelter would be located at the Marshalling Yard, which the Austin Convention Center Department currently uses as a staging area during large events.

...City officials are expected to release a Request for Proposal soon seeking a nonprofit partner to operate the Marshalling Yard shelter. The contract would need to be approved by City Council, and it would be funded through $9.142 million of “unencumbered homelessness funds” from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) investment plan, the roughly $188 million in relief funds the city received from the federal government during 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But unencumbered doesn’t mean that the funds were not already allocated for another purpose, it just means the city has not yet committed them to a contract. It is unclear how much, if any, of the $9 million that will be used to operate the shelter was intended for another use.

Garza also wants to increase the capacity of the former motels that the city has been using as "bridge shelters" by putting two people in rooms that are currently occupied by one.

On one hand, everybody seems to concede that we do need more emergency shelter. But some are clearly concerned that this plan is a rash effort to sweep people off the street but won't move the needle in the long-term.