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Opinion

It’s time to change the narrative around homelessness in Dallas

New strategies and dollars offer a chance to reduce homelessness.

Homelessness isn’t a single problem with a single solution.

Homelessness is the sum of many life factors: bad luck; poor choices; untreated mental and medical conditions; addiction; domestic violence; sexual abuse; criminal rap sheets; the lack of affordable housing; and the inability to find an achievable pathway from sidewalks to stability.

Predictably, the response in our community too often has been fragmented, under-resourced and more competitive than cooperative. Nonprofits focused on narrow slices of the problem, treating visible symptoms, but not the underlying pathologies of homelessness. The city of Dallas was caught in a conundrum, too — struggling to find the millions of dollars and sites for homeless facilities while avoiding “Not In My Back Yard” pushback from Dallas neighborhoods.

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At best, modest successes didn’t match the need, and good intentions provided mostly emergency responses but not the comprehensive, coordinated, end-to-end strategy required to transition the homeless from the streets to permanent housing.

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Mandy Chapman Semple, a systems expert who is credited with making a dent in Houston’s homeless population in 2012 and is advising North Texas’ homeless response, said as much to the Dallas City Council last year. “The path out of homelessness is not very clear,” she said, warning that “the components are not organized in a way to make it easy and efficient to resolve their homelessness.”

The pace of homelessness remains overwhelming, presenting negative impacts on the quality of life in neighborhoods, business districts and public spaces. A prime example of this was Camp Rhonda, a high-profile homeless encampment in South Dallas that relocated into the shadow of Dallas City Hall before city officials cleared and shut it earlier this year. Overall, city staff estimates that there are over 400 active encampments scattered throughout Dallas, ranging from fewer than 10 people to over 200 people.

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While Dallas’ homeless population doesn’t rival that of Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York City, there are reasons to suspect that the homeless remain undercounted in North Texas. A point-in-time canvass this year identified 4,570 homeless people in Dallas and Collin counties, with the bulk of those in the city of Dallas and Dallas County where the most resources exist for homeless individuals.

In Dallas, 55% of those who are homeless are Black and 70% are male. Roughly 1 of 3 individuals experiencing homelessness were found on the streets or in other places not meant for human habitation, the point-in-time report notes. Nearly 1 of 5 sheltered persons were in households with children. Among unsheltered persons, 40% had been homeless for one to three years and 37% were homeless for three years or longer. Twenty-four percent self-reported serious mental illness and 22% said they had problems with alcohol or other drugs.

But the overall number is up slightly from 2019 when the homeless census showed 4,538 homeless people in Dallas and Collin counties and substantially up from just five years ago when the count was about 3,000. And this upward trend parallels the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report that homelessness has increased for four consecutive years with just over 580,000 people experiencing it on a single night in 2020. Last year also marked the first time nationally since data collection began that more individuals experiencing homelessness were unsheltered than were sheltered.

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“We all have culpability when it comes to these problems,” said Jay Dunn, managing director of the Salvation Army of North Texas, who held a similar post at The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center in downtown Dallas. Dunn noted that the region has made progress before only to fall back. “We all have to be determined that we can continue to make progress,” he said.

There is evidence that city officials and advocates for the homeless are moving in the right direction and purpose. The homeless response system is more organized, focused and increasingly cooperative at least compared to what it had been. And that gives us hope that Dallas can finally make a lasting impact on homelessness. “It is clear and evident to everyone across this community what it will need to organize investment and scale a response system that can be transparent and effective,” said Semple. “Good data can solve a lot of problems.”

The transition began in the past year when Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, the lead agency in North Texas’ efforts to reduce homelessness, reorganized its leadership and its strategic approach to focus on getting homeless individuals into permanent housing and providing services to deal with their demons. The new MDHA chairman is developer Peter Brodsky, who helped Dallas Animal Services overhaul its operation and leadership to better address the city’s embarrassing loose dog crisis. Just days ago the group chose as its CEO Joli Robinson, who most recently served as Dallas Habitat for Humanity’s vice president of government affairs and public policy.

It is a wise reboot. Numerous studies show that comprehensive housing-first programs are less expensive to operate and more likely to return homeless individuals to a normal life than programs that at best offer temporary shelter or don’t offer sustained rehabilitation services.

MDHA doubled down on better data collection and analysis, pulled key nonprofits into complementary efforts, tapped the resources of the city and county, and sought support from local philanthropies. In mid-June, MDHA announced a potentially game-changing partnership with Dallas County; the cities of Dallas, Mesquite and Plano; the Homeless Collaborative; and the Dallas Housing Authority, all agreeing to spend over $70 million to house over 2,700 individuals by October 2023.

Dallas County and the city of Dallas agreed to contribute $25 million each from federal pandemic relief funds, and the DHA, Dallas County and Mesquite promised Section 8 housing vouchers valued at $10 million. MDHA also promised to tap private, philanthropic and corporate donors to raise another $10 million, some of which could be used to provide landlord incentives such as rental deposits. Already, MDHA has at least $4 million privately pledged to this initiative.

The collaboration wants an additional 2,000 homeless individuals to receive housing with their rent paid for 12 months and for case managers to help homeless individuals receive health, employment and substance dependency services and other assistance to stabilize their lives. And these goals come on top of MDHA’s previously announced plans to end homelessness among veterans by the end of this year, significantly reduce chronic unsheltered homelessness by 2023, and reduce family and youth homelessness by 2025.

Brodsky, who says “without adequate housing we cannot end homelessness,” calls this collaboration “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to have significant financial and administrative resources to pivot from emergency crisis responses to a comprehensive effort to get people into stable housing with access to services to address the issues that caused them to be on the streets.

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With better data, Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance and nonprofits should be able to do a deeper dive into individual stories and differences between homeless individuals who are substance abusers and suffer from mental illness and those who may have lost a job or home. For example, domestic violence and homelessness are linked, which is why about 100 housing vouchers will be allocated for survivors of domestic violence.

Better data, for example, could open pathways for smarter analyses and responses. Advocates could better direct resources and answer questions such as how race and opportunity factor into who ends up on the streets and, even worse, stays on the streets. And it could provide new insights into the challenges of generational poverty facing women with children, veterans and other subsets.

That is important because some perceptions run counter to reality. Statistically, homeless individuals are more likely to be a victim of a crime than commit one, though often that crime against them is committed by another homeless person. In part, this is because the homeless are extremely vulnerable and less likely to complain to law enforcement. And there’s more to learn about the role sexual exploitation contributes to women, girls and young boys being locked into a life on the streets. Human traffickers are known to prey on runaway teens who are living on the streets in desperate situations.

Innovative efforts are underway to address the shortage of housing for the homeless. During the height of the pandemic, the city of Dallas purchased former motels that can be repurposed to house homeless individuals and hopes to transform 12 acres of city-owned property in Lake Highlands into an urban farm with job training, transitional housing, a co-working facility, market, cafe and acres of gardens and green space.

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Separately, the Salvation Army continues to work on turning an industrial area along the Stemmons Freeway frontage road at Viceroy Drive into a new campus with over 600 beds for transitional housing, substance abuse treatment, emergency shelter and permanent supportive housing for homeless veterans and those over 55.

As a community, we are learning that reversing the upward trajectory of homelessness and providing pathways toward permanent housing and ultimately self-sufficiency require innovative, interlocking strategies. And of course, we must determine how best to avert homelessness and make sure that a fall from stability isn’t permanent.

Work still must be done to improve safety nets to catch people when they stumble and to support public and private sector programs that have a proven track record of helping the homeless out of crisis. The region, for example, needs to increase shelter capacity; incentivize more landlords to accept housing vouchers; address the needs of the elderly, disabled, families with children, and young adults; and develop day centers to provide seamless wrap-around services for the homeless.

Refining and improving homeless response, addressing drug and mental health issues, building career pathways, improving affordable housing and reducing criminal justice involvement that can add hurdles to restoration are all key to reducing homelessness.

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And our community has the best opportunity in years to make it happen.

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