UT Athletics pledged $10M to address homelessness. But the money may go elsewhere | Grumet

The $10 million pledge "to help fight systemic homelessness," announced by University of Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte in February, seemed to come out of nowhere.

In fact, the questions at the Feb. 13 Texas Athletics Town Hall had already moved on to the next topic — an inquiry about students’ access to tickets — when Del Conte jumped back to discussing the plans to build a new football practice facility and how that would involve demolishing the historic building that houses UT's Steve Hicks School of Social Work, a leading research program on social issues including homelessness.

The demolition plan has been controversial for a year now, as UT wants to raze the 1930s schoolhouse that’s on the National Register of Historic Places to build another athletic facility. But Del Conte suggested the plan will serve a greater good.

“I think one of the things that we're looking at, too, is that the athletic department has committed a gift of $10 million to the School of Social Work to help fight systemic homelessness,” Del Conte announced at the town hall event.

It was the first the public was hearing of any such pledge.

“It starts early, it starts from little kids,” continued Del Conte, who grew up on a New Mexico ranch that his parents converted into a large group home where they helped scores of underprivileged youth each year. “You become a foster kid, you become (a part) of the system, and all of the sudden you're 18 years old, and what's next?”

If people aging out of foster care don’t have the right support, Del Conte said, “things can happen, they spiral out of control,” and people can become homeless. He said the money from the athletic department could help “create an endowment to go out and start to get the very best minds to look at how we can deal with the homelessness.”

“So I know it may not be saving a building,” he said, referring to the historic University Junior High building slated for demolition. “But at the end of the day, I think us being involved with the school on a visceral level is going to be really, really fantastic.”

I was eager to learn more.

Yet in my quest over the past two months to better understand this $10 million pledge, UT has provided few details, heavily redacted emails and notable backpedaling.

For starters, the $10 million won’t come from the athletic department’s budget. It will need to be raised from donors, "including from Athletics donors who support the mission of social work," over an unspecified period of time, UT spokesman Mike Rosen told me via email.

Plus, the money might not go toward homelessness.

“Specific uses will be determined,” Rosen's email said. “While homelessness was mentioned during the (town hall) meeting you reference, it is just one of many critical social problems that the School of Social Work helps to solve, and the plan approved by the University provides the Dean the necessary latitude to strategically distribute support.”

There’s a plan?

Well, nothing UT can share in writing.

“I don’t know that there is anything formal,” Rosen said, adding that “there is a long-standing, close relationship between (the School of Social Service) and Athletics, so it’s a natural connection.”

Internal emails raise questions

In any context, $10 million to address homelessness would be a big deal. But Del Conte’s comments also offered the first public glimpse into the dealmaking over the coveted site for the new football practice facility.

In announcing the School of Social Work’s relocation plans in a March 2023 email to students and faculty, Dean Allan Cole said the school’s old site would be “utilized as a part of Athletics’ ongoing facility needs.”

In exchange, Cole wrote, “through their existing resources and philanthropic gifts, UT Athletics will provide our school with considerable support for faculty, staff, students, and programs for decades to come.”

But UT has never put a dollar amount to that promise nor outlined how the money would be used. Neither Cole nor Del Conte responded to my requests for interviews.

When I filed a records request with UT for communications involving Cole and offers of support from UT's athletic department since January 2023, I received about two dozen emails, many of them heavily redacted. UT cited the exemption under state law that allows the university to withhold information about internal planning before a deal has been finalized.

Still, in the unredacted passages, Cole says in January 2023 that he and Del Conte “have agreed on language” for a memorandum of understanding.

“Please note that he will sign it once we can be public with the plan,” Cole wrote in January 2023, two months before the announcement that the School of Social Work would move to a larger building on campus.

The Provost’s Office even gave its blessing to some kind of deal in March 2023. But, for reasons no one will discuss, Del Conte never signed off.

When I filed a records request for any signed agreement between the athletic department and the School of Social Work over the past year, UT told me it had “no responsive documents.”

What is the plan for the $10 million?

No one who heard Del Conte’s heartfelt pledge for $10 million to address homelessness could doubt his sincerity on this issue.

And yet the fact remains: UT says the $10 million for the School of Social Work could go to any need, not necessarily homelessness. And the university has not shared any plan for what UT athletic department’s support will look like for the School of Social Work.

I shared my findings with Edwin Bautista, the recent UT alum who asked Del Conte at the Feb. 13 town hall meeting about the plans to demolish the historic building. (Bautista also filed the Feb. 8 application seeking state historical landmark protections for the old University Junior High building, which played an important role in the desegregation of Austin schools.)

At first, he was surprised to hear of UT’s backpedaling on using the money to address homelessness. But then he reasoned, “We know that it's not for what they are saying, because if it was, they would have a plan.”

UT’s School of Social Work continues to rank among the best social work programs in the nation, training dedicated students to confront the difficulties that tear at families and communities. The school deserves the space and money to pursue this important work.

At the same time, UT is a public university making decisions about the use of public lands. If UT officials are going to argue that razing a historic building to make way for athletic fields will bring other important benefits, they need to outline those benefits with clarity and specificity.

UT must have a plan. It should share it with the rest of us.

Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com or on X at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/opinion/columns.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: What happened to UT's $10M pledge 'help fight systemic homelessness'?