The Dallas Area Partnership to End and Prevent Homelessness was established to address the worsening epidemic of homelessness throughout Dallas County.
The partnership was put in place “as a collaborative structure to address ending homelessness from the broader community perspective, identify priorities, establish alignment, and bring resources to bear from many sources: federal, state, local, and private sectors.”
County Commissioner Theresa Daniel serves as the chair of the partnership, with City Councilmember Casey Thomas II serving as vice chair.
According to a three-year strategic plan for the partnership developed in 2018, the partnership aims to provide “overarching system leadership” and coordinate community responses to homelessness in the Dallas area.
The partnership is one of several organizations responsible for addressing homelessness and vagrancy throughout Dallas. Others include the Citizen Homelessness Commission, the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, and the City of Dallas’ Office of Homeless Solutions.
On Thursday, Mayor Eric Johnson announced a team meant to recommend “concrete solutions” to the City to reduce homelessness — a task force on Homelessness Organizations, Policies, and Encampments (HOPE), as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
Commissioner Daniel told The Dallas Express she looks forward to seeing how the mayor’s new task force fits in with the other ongoing efforts against homelessness throughout the Dallas area.
When asked whether the partnership will collaborate with the mayor’s new task force, she said, “To me, that’s the only way it makes sense.”
On the same day as the mayor’s announcement, the Dallas Area Partnership to End and Prevent Homelessness appointed two new members: Balch Springs Police Chief Brent Hurley and Dallas ISD Trustee Dan Micciche.
As a Dallas ISD school board member now sits on this anti-homelessness partnership, the school system is under fire from parents who are furious about a homeless and vagrant encampment being set up behind Arcadia Park Elementary School, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“Since they started to clean up the freeway, they’re starting to push them this way more,” said a parent identified as Jay by NBC 5. “During the night … I see them with their grocery carts full of their stuff, and they cut through the school parking lot, and they go through the back of the dumpsters of the library.”
Local mother Daily Ocha also told NBC 5, “I think it was Wednesday when [my twins] … told me that the homeless guy that lives in the back, that he was staring at them and that he told them to go where he was.”
These developments occur in the midst of rising homelessness and vagrancy throughout Dallas, despite the Office of Homeless Solutions having an annual budget of $15 million to address this “scourge,” as Mayor Johnson has called it.
Polling conducted by The Dallas Express shows that most residents believe homelessness and vagrancy are serious problems in Dallas.
While various Dallas entities, including both public commissions and private nonprofits, continue to fight against homelessness and vagrancy, one solution that has yet to be tried in the area is the “one-stop shop” model of Haven for Hope in San Antonio.
This approach, which aims to provide streamlined services to the homeless in a single geographic location, is highly favored by Dallas residents.
They continue to throw money at a problem that is only growing. Where are the solutions?.
Like every other governmental agency — there is talk and hand wringing about problems, but nothing is ever done.
$15 million budget for Office of Homeless
Solutions?? For what?? Nothing…
If they were to solve the homeless problem,
the OHS would no longer be needed, and we can’t have that, can we.
There are NO solutions, because YOU don’t have a solution.
Mayor Johnson. Who on the newly established Commission on Homeless represents the concerns and views of home and small business owners dealing with chronic homeless persons sheltering and living on the streets near their communities and businesses?
Keep electing theses same people year after year and wonder why things are getting worse.
May 6 Election – Vote out the entire horseshoe. Politicians think that they are immune to accountability and liability. No matter what they do or do not do, sovereign immunity is their fallback.
Bluh, Bluh, Bluh, not another useless committee that will take so long to come up with even the smallest idea that the general public will forget and no one will be held accountable when nothing ever gets done. It’s just political marketing to increase votes and squelch the hot topic of the moment. The politicians are just trying to make you believe they are doing something. Smoke and mirrors!
The homeless problem is worse. whatever the city has been doing is NOT working. The city council is not listening to its constituents. Makes one wonder, if they are receiving kickbacks to keep the homeless from getting the help that they really need. Mental health services, rehab for addictions must be addressed along with long term supportive housing. Anything short of that is a waste of resources.