An Oak Cliff bookstore has stopped passing out food after apparently being told by the City of Dallas to shut the effort down.
The owner of the Pan-African Connection bookstore at 4466 Marsalis Ave. in Dallas said the store has been passing out food for about seven years to anyone who wants it, including homeless people, according to NBC 5 DFW.
After a recent inspection of the bookstore’s shopping center, Akwete Tyehimba said she was told to stop. She was surprised by the purported request from a City of Dallas employee, she added.
“They were inspecting the shopping center,” Tyehimba told NBC 5. “I specifically asked, ‘Are you telling me I cannot do this any longer?’ And the answer was yes. … This is something quiet. People can come on their own time, in their own dignity, and just get food to make ends meet.”
The City reportedly asked her to close down her cold storage, known in the neighborhood as “the People’s Fridge,” and a food distribution table.
Tyehimba said she wanted to know why she was asked to shutter the refrigerator and table. The City worker allegedly told her she was enabling the homeless.
“I’m being obedient and trying to do things in order,” she told NBC 5. “But I have not heard from them at all.”
Dallas has been plagued by homelessness, vagrancy, and panhandling in recent years.
The City of Dallas has several ongoing initiatives led by the Office of Homeless Solutions to mitigate the issue. However, it has yet to pursue the strategy the City of San Antonio employs through its partnership with the nonprofit Haven for Hope.
Haven for Hope offers a “one-stop shop” for supportive services and emergency housing on a single campus, effectively keeping the problems that stem from homelessness and vagrancy geographically bound to an area with available services.
Many Dallas residents registered their favor for such a model in a recent survey conducted by The Dallas Express.
