The City of Dallas is installing signs across the city to discourage residents from giving money directly to panhandlers, educating Dallasites “on the issues around street charity.”
Deputy City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert recently wrote a memo updating officials on the status of the “Illegal Solicitation Deflection Program.”
The current City budget allocated taxpayer money toward the installation of about 200 signs across 51 locations throughout the city that read, “Say No To Street Charity – Be The Solution.” The signs direct residents to the “Give Responsibly” page of the Office of Homeless Solutions (OHS) website.
“Through these actions, OHS continues to incorporate education on the best practices for efficiently giving to those most in need across the City,” the memo reads. “As of September 2023, over 1,000 organizations, businesses, and residential communities have been engaged through the [Give Responsibly Campaign].”
The Dallas Express asked the City how much funding has been allocated toward the program and whether the City has any metrics tracking how effective the program is, but no further information could be provided by press time.
Through the Give Responsibly campaign, the City of Dallas encourages Dallasites to donate to organizations that offer supportive services rather than giving directly to panhandlers. The City has been developing anti-panhandling initiatives for years. It officially launched the Give Responsibly campaign last year.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the OHS aims to discourage Dallasites from giving no-strings-attached food and cash directly to the homeless as it allegedly enables and exacerbates the issues surrounding homelessness, vagrancy, and panhandling.
OHS Director Christine Crossley has previously said that giving food to the homeless can contribute to traffic light outages. She said food and the trash accompanying it often get left out on the street and attract rats. The rats then chew through the wiring of traffic lights, which causes the already congested city traffic to move even slower.
Dallas residents have said homelessness is a “major” problem, according to a City satisfaction survey.
While the City has undertaken several approaches to reduce homelessness and vagrancy, it has yet to try the “one-stop-shop” model touted by the San Antonio nonprofit Haven for Hope.
Haven for Hope provides homeless services such as counseling, job training, and skills development in the same location as its housing units and requires participants to engage with its self-improvement services.
The strategy has been credited with a 77% reduction in homelessness in San Antonio and has polled favorably with Dallas voters. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson recently visited Haven for Hope, but it remains to be seen whether the City will adopt its model.
