Nearly $1 million in local tourism revenue was directed toward homeless services this fall, representing the first seeding of the stand-alone reserve for Austin's homelessness response.

The details: Financing for the city homelessness endowment created in 2023 came in the form of a $942,845 revenue transfer from Austin's new Tourism Public Improvement District, or TPID. The district was set up late last year to support tourism activity and hospitality bookings amid the Austin Convention Center's multiyear closure and redevelopment, and related impacts for major events in town.

Under the TPID, a share of room rental revenues is pulled from its dozens of participating city hotels for the initiative's marketing and incentive purposes. The Austin TPID generated nearly $8 million in less than a year and is projected to add about $20 million more over the full FY 2025-26 ending in September. Visit Austin has reported that just a few months of tourism promotion efforts are showing strong early returns.

In 2026, the Texas Children’s Ambassadors Program will be allocating more funds to the Kangaroo Crew, the hospital system’s transport program. One way the hospital will be investing more in the program is by introducing its own helicopter at Texas Children’s North Austin Hospital which is set to arrive in early January.

How we got here: Assistant Clinical Director Kami Stone said the team spent months identifying a location to store the helicopter which would give them the quickest access to their patients at the North Austin hospital. The Kangaroo Crew spent an additional six months training and securing supplies to make sure they would be on track for the January launch date.

How it works: Stone said the helicopter will be used in situations where a patient is too sick to wait for the responders to arrive via ambulance and cases of “surgical and medical emergencies” in which a patient is stable but there is a high risk of something going bad.

• 9835 N. Lake Creek Parkway, Austin

Unlock MLS market research advisor Vaike O’Grady shared an end-of-year update on the Austin-Round Rock- Metropolitan Statistical Area's housing market, including where the MSA is seeing employment growth and projected housing trends. 

Major takeaways: According to Unlock MLS' year-to-date data on single-family homes:

• Homes spent 73 days on the market on average, nine days longer than 2024 YTD
• Total sales were down 5% from 2024 with 26,455 homes sold
• Median sale prices were down 1% from 2024 at $438,532

• Between 30,000-32,000 closed sales
• Between 10,000-12,000 active listings
• Upward of 5 months of inventory 
• Median sales prices of $410,000-$425,000

The Texas power grid is expected to hold up this winter, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Dec. 9. This is due in part to “tremendous supply growth on the ERCOT grid,” ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said, amid an influx of data centers coming to the state.

The overview: Since last winter, over 11,000 megawatts of generating capacity have been added to the ERCOT grid, Vegas said. That growth, which largely comes from battery storage and solar facilities, could be used to power about 2.8 million homes during periods of peak electric demand.

Zooming in: Under most weather conditions, there is a less than 2% chance of a grid emergency through February, ERCOT found.

However, Texas could be in trouble in the unlikely event that a repeat of Winter Storm Uri hits large parts of the state this winter, although ERCOT noted that the probability of such a severe storm happening again was "well under one percent." The February 2021 freeze devastated an unprepared power grid, resulting in nearly 250 deaths.