As local business owners continue to complain about vagrancy and panhandling, City officials emphasize these issues are exacerbated by citizens who give no-strings-attached food and cash to the homeless.
The Office of Homeless Solutions (OHS) met on Tuesday with the Stemmons Corridor Business Association (SCBA) to discuss these issues. During the meeting, OHS Community Liason Marci Jackson hammered home her point that a significant factor enabling and even incentivizing public vagrancy is well-meaning citizens who give food and money to the homeless.
Jackson highlighted the City’s Give Responsibly campaign, which 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 and officially launched the Give Responsibly campaign last year. The campaign has been championed by OHS Director Christine Crossley, who was not present at Tuesday’s meeting.
Jackson told business owners on Tuesday that the OHS is implementing a “tough love” approach to homelessness but explained that staff often encounter people living in encampments who choose to stay and reject the services offered by the City.
One reason why vagrants choose to continue living on the street, according to the OHS, is that others continue to give them free food and money with no strings attached.
“It is a job for them,” Jackson explained. “When I go in, and we do an analysis in those communities … we realize that it is a lucrative space for those to remain there.”
She said the goal of OHS is to clear homeless encampments and house the people who live there, but when community members encourage vagrants to stay, it makes that task more difficult.
“In order for us to do what we need to do, we need to dry up the community resources for them so that they would be more apt to take the resources that the City has to offer and other partners who are trained in offering those services,” she explained.
“You may at the corner give your dollar every morning or bring coffee [to panhandlers] … and not realize you’re supporting a sex trafficking ring,” she continued. “But had you supported … an organization [that is] skilled and trained in working in this industry, they have departments that are skilled in this area and will go in and infiltrate it and break it apart.”
This issue was also raised last week by Director Crossley and District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis, as The Dallas Express reported. Crossley also discussed how giving food to the homeless often has the unintended consequence of causing traffic light outages.
Council Member Cara Mendelsohn has previously criticized the OHS for “not doing enforcement that’s necessary” to address the homelessness and vagrancy crisis, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Jackson insisted that the OHS will step up its “tough love” approach with vagrants who do not comply with the City or accept services. She acknowledged that homelessness prevents businesses from thriving as it deters consumers from the area.
“We have been compassionate on how we have [gone] after the homeless issue,” she said. “But … I believe that it is time for us to now make a decision to get a little tougher with those who are resistant.”
However, not everyone was satisfied with Jackson’s statements.
Local business owner Ed Zahra told Jackson that while he finds OHS’s new policies to be “encouraging,” he still does not believe they are doing enough to solve the homelessness crisis in Dallas. He explained that vagrancy drives away consumers, potential business partners, and prospective hires.
“People do not want to work seeing this type of squalor that we have to face every single day,” he said, expressing discontent with the OHS’s current process of decommissioning homeless encampments.
“You clean [the encampments] out. They move back the next day, and nothing’s done for the next week or [month],” he continued. “As a business owner, as a property owner … I see progress, but my patience is kind of wearing a little thin that I can’t get our area resolved.”
Other business owners in attendance echoed these concerns and questioned why vagrants cannot be forcibly removed if they turn down services offered by the City.
Jackson maintained that the OHS is “not an enforcement agency,” and enforcement requires officers from the Dallas Police Department or Dallas Marshal’s Office.
However, as previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas police officers have allegedly been told by City officials not to enforce laws against the homeless.
While Jackson said the OHS is beginning to take a “tougher approach,” she also reaffirmed the OHS’s commitment to housing-first policies, which offer housing without requirements to participate in any other services.
“I know most people don’t like that approach, but it is the approach that we have,” she said. “We believe — that housing-first model believes — that if I get the basics, then I can clear your mind to start thinking on a higher level. … That’s why it is that housing-first model, then the wraparound services that come with it, so I can help reshape and change your mind about how you see yourself.”
While housing-first strategies offer supportive services, such as rehabilitation, mental health care, and job training, accepting those services is not required to take advantage of the housing.
In a recent interview with The Dallas Express, homelessness expert Michele Steeb discussed the shortcomings of using housing first as a “one-size-fits” all approach.
“The vast majority of the homeless can become self-sustaining with the right tools, the right support, [and] the right incentives,” she said. “But instead … we’re straitjacketing them into dependence [and] the misery that they experience in homelessness.”
As an example of an organization that has proven successful in its homelessness response efforts, Steeb pointed to Haven for Hope in San Antonio, which requires participants to engage in supportive services in order to be housed.
Furthermore, Haven for Hope provides these services on the same campus where clients are housed. This “one-stop-shop” approach has polled favorably among Dallas voters but has yet to be employed by the City of Dallas.