As volunteers set out Thursday night to count people in Dallas and Collin counties experiencing homelessness, local officials have cautious optimism and a heavy heart.
While the area’s homelessness response system has transformed into a cohesive coalition of partners, it couldn’t come at a more necessary time. Local homeless service providers have reported dramatic demand on their systems, especially from new faces seeking help for the first time.
Although the results of the federally mandated, annual point-in-time count, a survey designed to measure trends in homelessness, won’t be released until the spring, city and county leaders are energized by a series of actions and transformations on the ground in Dallas and Collin counties from the past few years that they believe will house more people in 2023.
“Our more intentional approach to thinking about this regionally and engaging not only elected officials but our direct service providers in a new and different way, not only from a city of Dallas perspective but countywide for us in Dallas and Collin County, has been really integral,” says Joli Robinson, president and CEO of Housing Forward, the lead agency for Dallas and Collin counties’ homeless response system.
The political will to solve homelessness in North Texas communities is growing, local leaders say. With it comes targeted solutions: a growing urgency to support affordable housing policy, partnerships with communities in a region, and the centering racial equity when rehousing people.
Couple those actions with President Joe Biden’s federal plan to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025, and Dallas is turning in the right direction to better house people and even divert them from homelessness altogether, Robinson says.
But solving and preventing homelessness in North Texas is going to take more than federal initiatives and funds, Robinson says. Public-private partnerships and reforms across an expansive region must drive the solutions for homelessness in North Texas.
The 2022 point-in-time survey counted 4,410 people experiencing homelessness in Dallas and Collin counties, down slightly from 4,570 people who were counted in 2021, despite a nearly 90% increase in chronic homelessness.
About 2,250 people have been enrolled in the $72 million Dallas Real Time Rapid Rehousing initiative, a collaborative effort fueled by COVID relief money to house about 2,700 people experiencing homelessness by the end of 2023. About 1,500 people have found housing through the program so far.
Think outside the box, says Robinson
With a transformed system, Robinson says hard goals have a clear path in sight.
In November, Housing Forward received a $1.25 million grant from the Bezos Day 1 Families Fund, which would bring more money into the local system to help divert families from ever experiencing homelessness. The number of local families experiencing homelessness has doubled since last year, according to data from nonprofit Family Gateway.
“We know there is a benefit in diverting people from the system, before they even get into the system,” Robinson said. “We know our dollars can stretch even further.”
Robinson wants to see an effective end to veteran homelessness locally, which means a veteran is housed within 90 days of being identified as unhoused.
She wants to significantly reduce the unsheltered homeless population and renew focus on cutting youth homelessness, a population often undercounted by the annual point-in-time count.
The city of Dallas has also increased funding that would allow its Office of Homeless Solutions to build the system capacity needed to solve a growing housing problem, says Director Christine Crossley. About $1 million in the city’s fiscal budget will help support organizations that provide services to the unhoused.
“The intent is to help raise up the smaller nonprofits who are doing good work, and who might need a little extra help,” Crossley said. “Helping increase the pool of providers is something that’s important to us.”
The core strategy for Housing Forward’s approach for solving homelessness has been “thinking outside the box.” The buzzword in 2022 when expanding this approach: partnerships.
The lead agency for Dallas and Collin counties changed its name from Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance to Housing Forward to include an expansive region inside and beyond the city where it partners with dozens of nonprofits.
This regional approach puts the onus on every community to be a part of a collaborative solution instead of letting the major urban areas alone shoulder the burden of serving people in need.
Racial equity at core
To end and prevent homelessness, people focused on solutions must put racial equity at its core. That’s according to Biden’s federal plan, which the White House has touted as combating the persistent effects of systemic racism that lead to disparities among people experiencing homelessness.
Robinson says Housing Forward is a model for local organizations seeking to transform with racial equity in mind.
“There has been a renewed focus and energy and concerted effort from our organization and from others to continue to hold up the mantle of what it truly means for our system to be diverse, to be equitable, and to be inclusive in our processes,” Robinson said.
Externally, the Dallas Real Time Rapid Rehousing Initiative uses racial equity as a lens to help target solutions to better house Black residents, who make up a disproportionate amount of the population experiencing homelessness.
Of the 4,410 people experiencing homelessness who were counted in the 2022 Dallas and Collin counties point-in-time count last January, more than 54% were Black, African American or African, while making up about 24% of the total population in Dallas County and 12% of the total population in Collin County, according to U.S. Census data.
Of the 1,500 people who have been housed through the program in the past year and a half, 73% of them are Black, African American or African, according to the community dashboard.
Dallas City Council member Casey Thomas, who chairs the city’s housing and homelessness solutions committee, said focusing on housing Black men is a key tool in solving homelessness in general.
“It’s an effective strategy as it relates to addressing homelessness from an equitable standpoint because you’re talking about a majority of individuals who are homeless are older African American males,” Thomas said.
Persistent policy roadblocks
Despite sharpening focus on equity and partnerships, local leaders say they have tremendous public policy and structural roadblocks standing between people on the streets and housing solutions.
Robinson’s work includes advocating for the best solutions but also against practices that could harm people experiencing homelessness and “criminalize poverty.”
Texas banned camping in public in 2021, and Dallas banned standing on medians last year, two policies that at times harm the efforts to house people or fly in the face of hard-earned work by local homeless service nonprofits.
“Some of these things can exacerbate the problem that we’re already trying to address,” Robinson says. “And so while we are trying to address these kinds of things on the back end, we’re seeing an ever increasing front-end pinch on our systems’ capabilities.”
In 2015, the state also banned cities from approving ordinances that would stop landlords from disqualifying potential tenants based on their source of income, an effort that would aid in higher rates of voucher-holder acceptance.
“We’re seeing a housing market that is even more competitive and there’s fewer vacancy rates, that greatly impacts our ability to get individuals housed,” Robinson says. “Landlords oftentimes can be a bit more selective on who they are renting to.”
Dallas-Fort Worth saw a 20% decrease in the number of affordable ZIP codes between 2013 and 2019, according to the National Equity Atlas, America’s report card on racial and economic equity. Only 2% of ZIP codes in D-FW in 2019 were considered affordable to households earning 80% of the area median income.
Since 2019, D-FW area rents have risen by double digits, according to Richardson-based RealPage, leaving fewer affordable units for people whose incomes have not increased at the same pace. RealPage has been sued by renters following a ProPublica investigation showing the company’s influence over rising rent costs across the U.S.
“If we had enough available units of deeply affordable housing, we wouldn’t continue to see an influx of individuals falling into homelessness, and we’d be able to get people housed at quicker rates,” Robinson said.
