Behind the system helping Texas communities respond to homelessness
For many of Texas’ rural and under-resourced communities, Continuum of Care funding is often the primary source of support for housing and homelessness services.
When people think about homelessness services, they often picture shelters, outreach workers or housing programs. But behind those direct services is a system that helps communities coordinate resources, track outcomes and ensure people can access the support they need.
That system is called a Continuum of Care, or CoC.
In a recent episode of A Little Louder, the Texas Housers podcast, Texas Homeless Network’s Billy Streu and Hope Rodgers joined host Michael Depland to talk about what CoCs actually do, why they are essential in Texas, and what’s at stake as federal funding priorities shift.
A statewide system supporting local communities
For many people outside the housing and homelessness sector, the term “Continuum of Care” can feel abstract. But as Hope Rogers explained on the podcast, CoCs are central to how communities coordinate their response to homelessness.
“A continuum of care, or a COC, is a community wide group that works together to prevent and end homelessness in a specific geographic area,” Rogers said. “CoCs help communities work together as one coordinated system to help people access safe and permanent housing and maintain it long term.”
Texas has 12 Continuums of Care across the state. The largest is the Texas Balance of State CoC, which covers 214 of Texas’s 254 counties — about 85% of the state’s land mass and nearly half its population.
Texas Homeless Network serves as the lead agency for the Texas Balance of State Continuum of Care, helping coordinate homelessness response systems across this vast region, including many rural and under-resourced communities. For many of these communities, CoC funding is a primary source of housing and homelessness support.
Why CoC funding matters
The Continuum of Care program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), supports both housing programs and the infrastructure needed to operate a coordinated homelessness response system.
That includes data systems, local planning processes and staff who help ensure providers can work together effectively.
On the housing side, CoC funding supports evidence-based programs such as Rapid Re-Housing and Permanent Supportive Housing, which help people move out of homelessness and maintain stable housing over time.
But as Streu emphasized during the podcast, those resources depend heavily on federal funding stability.
“When CoC funding isn’t there, whether that’s being delayed, reduced or disappears altogether, housing capacity can drop quickly,” he said.
Housing programs typically rely on those funds to keep operating. Without them, units can disappear and people who are currently housed, or on the verge of being housed, can lose that pathway to stability.
The ripple effects of funding uncertainty
The ripple effects reach far beyond housing providers.
“When that option goes away, people don’t suddenly find another path out of homelessness,” Streu explained. Instead, communities often see people cycling through shelters, emergency rooms and jails, systems that are more expensive and less effective than permanent housing solutions.
In 2025, many communities across the country faced uncertainty after significant changes were proposed to the federal Continuum of Care funding process.
The proposed changes included major shifts in funding protections and new caps on permanent housing programs, which raised concerns across the homelessness response sector. Advocates, providers and national partners mobilized quickly, leading to litigation and legislative action aimed at stabilizing the program.
Why partnerships matter
While recent developments have created some short-term stability, the conversation highlighted that uncertainty still exists as future funding cycles approach.
For Streu and Rodgers, the conversation reinforced the importance of collaboration across organizations working toward the same goal.
“The collective impact just really is so powerful in these collaborations,” Streu said, reflecting on the partnerships between organizations like Texas Homeless Network, Texas Housers and national advocacy groups.
For communities across Texas, those partnerships, and the Continuum of Care system itself, remain essential tools in the effort to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring.