Developer Peter Brodsky discussed the Dallas area’s struggle against homelessness and vagrancy with local business leaders at a Metroplex Civic & Business Association luncheon on June 6.
The MCBA is an organization of over 100 area businesses with “a mission to increase charitable and civic engagement among companies and their employees” and “help DFW businesses educate, empower, and mobilize their employee base to step up and make a difference in their communities, ensuring that the region continues to thrive.”
Brodsky is one of the leaders behind the redevelopment of RedBird Mall in southern Dallas and has served on a number of boards and commissions around the City. Notably, he serves as the board chair of Housing Forward, an organization dedicated to alleviating homelessness and vagrancy in Dallas and Collin counties.
“Every agency that touches homelessness in Dallas and Collin counties has to get together and appoint one agency to be the lead,” Brodsky asserted at the MCBA luncheon. “Housing Forward is the lead agency.”
“That agency devises the strategy, keeps the data, helps with the execution,” he continued.
“Historically, we haven’t done a good job,” Brodsky admitted, “but the agency was revamped a couple of years ago and is doing a much, much better job now.”
To combat the rise of homelessness and vagrancy, “we came up with a rapid rehousing program when the American Rescue Plan Act was passed, and this avalanche of money came into the Dallas area into the different governments,” Brodsky noted.
The Dallas REAL Time Rapid Rehousing initiative “seeks to rehouse over 2,700 homeless individuals by October 2023. This initiative is actively changing the lives of our homeless community members and working to make our City a safer, healthier, and more life-affirming place to live,” the City claims on the Office of Homeless Solutions’ website.
So far, 2,052 people have been housed through the taxpayer-funded initiative, according to Housing Forward.
Brodsky continued, “We’ve also significantly improved our rehousing capabilities so that we can cut the timing down of what it takes to house someone from the street.”
He also said that Housing Forward does “a lot of encampment decommissioning,” which is distinct from “encampment closure.”
“Encampment closure is when the City comes and says, ‘Everybody, get out of here,’ and then the police come and escort everyone out, and the sanitation comes in and they clean it up, and the code department puts up a fence,” Brodsky explained. “But they haven’t provided anywhere for those people to go. … They’re still homeless.”
“What we do is we bring in an entire team. We start working with people who live in the encampment about six weeks before the closure and on the day of the closure, every person in the encampment is brought to an apartment that is now their home,” he said.
“We have about a 93% stick rate after one year,” Brodsky added. “So when they are able to get the boost up that they need and get the services they need … they can stabilize, but it’s slow, and it’s painstaking work.”
Brodsky claimed that Housing Forward’s initiatives have positively affected the homeless and vagrant problem in Dallas.
“This year we had a 30% decline in chronic homelessness—meaning there were 30% fewer people who had been homeless for more than a year—and a 14% decline in unsheltered homelessness.”
Brodsky acknowledged that there was “only about a 2% decline in total homelessness, so we have a long, long, long way to go,” but insisted, “the system is working.”
This slight year-over-year improvement was not enough to counteract a multi-year trend of rising homelessness and vagrancy, which grew 2.4% from 2018 to 2023, according to numbers from Housing Forward previously reported by The Dallas Express. From 2021 to 2022, Housing Forward reported a 214% increase in chronic homelessness, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
Alternatively, some experts such as those at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty argue that “housing first” approaches can be counterproductive because they claim they do not address the root causes of homelessness and vagrancy.
The citizens of Dallas have indicated in recent polls that the issue remains one of the City’s most pressing concerns. Homeless encampments in vacant properties have plagued neighborhoods and pestered businesses in developing areas.
Many Dallas citizens have indicated support for a “one-stop shop” response to homelessness that centralizes housing and services, similar to Haven for Hope in San Antonio. However, the City has yet to officially support such a program.