The City of Dallas plans to convert an abandoned Oak Cliff hospital into a “homeless services” center, but many local residents have voiced opposition to this plan.
“My concern is that the school is literally directly across the street,” said resident Christina Anne during a neighborhood meeting at Kiest Park Recreation Center.
The former University General Hospital at 2929 South Hampton Road sits right across the street from Jimmie Tyler Brashear Elementary School, Hampton-Illinois Branch public library, and Kiest Park.
Stan Aten, another resident, said, “I see when the City does homeless shelters or projects, it tends to be uncontrolled and those people spill out into neighborhoods and cause problems.”
The former hospital has been vacant since 2014. In January of this year, the city council unanimously voted to purchase it for $6.5 million during a private executive session rather than a public session. Real estate deals must be done in private, according to Councilman Casey Thomas.
However, residents said the City has communicated poorly with the community throughout this project’s whole process.
“I think that has been kept under the radar intentionally to cram this down our throats,” said Craig Wheeler.
Aten added, “They threw it at us and said it’s a done deal and can’t do anything about it.”
However, Councilman Thomas said the City has no intentions of deceiving the community, and no final decisions have been made regarding the former hospital other than its general future purpose.
“The only thing that’s happened is the City has purchased the site using bond funds for homeless services, not a homeless shelter,” said Thomas. “Let me say that again, there will not be a homeless shelter.”
Despite Thomas’ insistence that the hospital will not be a shelter, he did say homeless people will be housed in the facility.
“There’s a vetting process for anyone who will be considered to live there,” he said, explaining the City has assembled a work group to determine the hospital’s residents. “Once they have a place to stay, they’re no longer homeless. That will be their home.”
Opponents of the project maintain that the City should find a different location — not so close to an elementary school.
“We’re not against helping the homeless,” Wheeler said. “We just feel that there’s just more appropriate ways to do it in more appropriate locations.”
As recently reported by The Dallas Express, government efforts to address the homelessness and vagrancy crisis are said to be “doomed to failure” because they “begin with an inadequate diagnosis of the causes” of the problem, according to a new report from The Center on Wealth & Poverty at the Discovery Institute.
The report explains that although lack of housing is a “major factor” in homelessness and vagrancy, these issues are not solely housing problems and therefore cannot be solved through a “Housing First” approach.
Providing only housing ignores the untreated mental illnesses of many homeless people, the Center asserts, and the related “harm reduction” initiatives enable vagrant addicts to continue their drug abuse.
The “Housing First” approach was built on the false premise that “homelessness is primarily a housing issue rather than a mental illness issue with co-presenting substance use disorders,” according to the report.