Gary Pollack leads the Policy and Planning team of the City of Austin Homeless Strategy Office. In this role he works with partners within the City of Austin and across the community to ensure local policy reflects the community’s needs and priorities while also being rooted in best practices. Gary loves how Austin’s community response to homelessness continues to grow and evolve, presenting challenges and opportunities for partners to innovate while preventing and ending homelessness for thousands of individuals every year.

Gary has been working in the fields of homeless and human services since 2013, when he joined the team at the CUCS Institute in New York City to support technical assistance and consulting projects. He soon took on support for the NYC Coalition of the Continuum of Care, program support for the citywide Single Stop program, and support for the launch of The Academy for Justice-Informed Practice. His work took him to the NYC Dept. of Homeless Services, and the NYC Dept. of Social Services, where he focused on supporting shelter and post-shelter programs and he provided lead analysis for NYC’s certification from USICH for ending chronic veteran homelessness in 2015.

Gary was raised in Northern New Jersey and holds a BA from Syracuse University and an MPA from the Evans School at the University of Washington in Seattle.