The city’s housing staff members acknowledge a need to accelerate the pace of new permanent supportive housing projects in the coming years to meet the long-term goal of 5,000 additional units over the next decade to address the long-term needs of people experiencing homelessness.

At its latest meeting, City Council’s Public Health Committee reviewed the city’s pipeline for permanent supportive housing and ongoing efforts to address housing needs, following last week’s resolution directing the city manager to develop policy and investment strategies to construct and operate PSH units in Austin.

Mandy DeMayo, interim director of the Housing Department, discussed recent funding the city has been awarded, including $14 million through the Continuum of Care program, coordinated through the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, as well as a $6.7 million Pro Housing Grant, a one-time award administered over six years.

Also playing into the PSH funding mix, Austin receives approximately $14 million annually in federal block grants, including Community Development Block Grants, HOME Investment Partnerships, Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS, and Emergency Solutions Grants… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Businesses on Sixth Street offer mixed reviews of changes to traffic patterns and sidewalks (KUT)

From the time San Jac Saloon opens at 2 p.m., the country music bar at the corner of San Jacinto and East Sixth Street is usually buzzing with people.

But lately, sales have declined. While the start of the year can be slow, the bar's owners said changes to traffic patterns and sidewalks on Sixth Street could be keeping customers away.

“I’ve seen sales come down compared to the same weeks last year,” Matt McDonald, one of the owners, said. Earlier this year, the City of Austin began piloting a program officials hope will make the entertainment district safer and more vibrant. One change is reopening Sixth Street to traffic on weekend nights, putting pedestrians on newly protected and expanded sidewalks… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

✅ Border Patrol chief calls report that agents will board buses to check students’ citizenship “absurd” (Texas Tribune)

The Alice Independent School District in South Texas warned parents in a letter Wednesday that U.S. Border Patrol agents may be checking the immigration status of students on school buses traveling for extracurricular activities — then pulled the letter down. The Border Patrol's chief on Thursday said agents would not board school buses to check papers.

“We want to bring to your attention an important matter regarding student travel for extracurricular activities, including sports, band, and other co-curricular events,” Superintendent Anysia Trevino wrote in the letter. "We have received information that U.S. Border Patrol agents may be boarding school buses at highway checkpoints in and out of the Valley to question students about their citizenship status.”

Trevino added that if a student does not have identification or other documents that show a pupil is in the country legally, “they may be removed from the bus, detained, and possibly deported.” It also warns that if students lie about their immigration status, they may not get U.S. citizenship in the future. Under current federal immigration law, someone who lies about being a U.S. citizen may be disqualified from receiving a green card or U.S. citizenship… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Health care access and economic insecurity top a list of challenges for Texas children (Texas Tribune)

Gaps in access to health care, economic insecurity and mental health challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic continue to top the list of challenges currently facing Texas children today, according to a new study released by the nonprofit Every Texan on Thursday.

The 2024 Texas Kids Count Data Book follows-up on a similar survey published in June by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that compares data focused on children from each of the 50 states — plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Compared to all U.S. states, the June study ranked Texas 43rd in child well-being indicators — which include economic security, health and education.

Driving many of these factors is the state’s poverty rate, which at 18% continues to exceed the national average, and is among several other areas that Texas trails behind the nation. The child poverty rate has exceeded the national average at least every year since 2010.

According to the Every Texan study, about 2.9 million Texas children live in households that are above the poverty line but earn below what would be considered a living wage… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ Texas needs up to $33 billion in new, improved power lines. Who should foot the bill? (Houston Chronicle)

Everyday residents and small businesses could end up paying for much of the $30 billion-plus in new and upgraded long-distance power lines needed largely to support more data centers, oil and gas electrification and cryptocurrency miners. Almost half of those investments are required in just the Permian Basin, according to a plan for the region approved by state regulators last fall that is estimated to cost approximately $13 billion.

Texas needs new power lines because the current electric grid “has really become fully utilized,” Pablo Vegas, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said at a Tuesday meeting of the grid operator’s board. In the coming years, electricity demand is expected to surge, especially as Big Tech companies race to build data centers to develop artificial intelligence technologies. Transmission lines, the “superhighways” of the grid, are considered a public good.

Thus, transmission costs are paid for by all Texas electricity consumers on their monthly electricity bill over decades. The allocation of those costs, however, is not uniform. Large industrial users can reduce their electricity consumption at strategic times to “very much reduce or even avoid their transmission charges,” said Olivier Beaufils, an ERCOT specialist at Aurora Energy Reseach, an energy consulting firm.

“That means the rest of the costs gets higher for everyone else,” he said. Industrial facilities are the leading reason Texas needs an estimated $30.8 billion to nearly $33 billion in transmission investments, according to a recent ERCOT report. Yet these sectors could shift much of the costs to other consumers, such as households and small businesses.

Examining how transmission costs are allocated is a priority for the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, which handles power grid issues, as lawmakers convene in Austin over the next several months. Sen. Charles Schwertner, chair of the committee, said in a January interview that he believes industrial consumers are “gaming the system, to an extent.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

✅ Trump moves to abolish FEMA, shift disaster response to states (Governing)

Governors and state legislatures may have to bolster their natural disaster response and recovery efforts in the coming years as President Donald Trump looks for ways to shift the federal government’s role onto states.

Trump, who proposed doing away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency altogether last week, has since established a 20-member committee via executive order to review the agency and propose ways to overhaul its work.

The fate of the National Flood Insurance Program, managed by FEMA and relied on by more than 4.7 million homeowners, will also be up in the air as the process gets underway.

“I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” Trump said in North Carolina on Friday. “I think

when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go and — whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ US importers stockpile Italian Prosecco as a hedge against possible Trump tariffs (Associated Press)

American importers have been stockpiling Italian bubbly Prosecco as a hedge against the possible impact of tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump, wine industry data show.

U.S. imports of Italian sparkling wine — 90% of that Prosecco — skyrocketed by 41% in November, after Trump’s election, far exceeding consumer demand as importers filled the pipeline for future sales, according to the Union of Italian Wines trade association.

“It was quite natural at the end of the year to do extra shipments,” said the trade association president, Lamberto Frescobaldi, given the uncertainty over whether tariffs would hit Italian wines or not — and the likelihood consumers would cut back on such luxuries if tariffs made them too pricey… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

✅ GM, Pepsi, Disney, others scrub some DEI references from investor reports (NPR)

Some big companies have been announcing the end of their diversity programs – but many others are quiet quitting.

At least a dozen of the largest U.S. companies have deleted some, or all, references to "diversity, equity, and inclusion" and "DEI" from their most recent annual reports to investors, an NPR analysis of regulatory filings has found.

A year ago, all of these companies made references to diversity and inclusion in their disclosures — but in their new reports, all of these companies have rewritten at least some of this language. In some cases, they no longer mention "diversity" at all… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

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