Housing Forward has been coordinating efforts to address homelessness in downtown Dallas. Although challenges persist, recent counts and outcomes indicate significant progress.
The nonprofit leads a comprehensive homeless response in Dallas, coordinating public and private groups to build a unified strategy that helps people stay off the streets.
Since Housing Forward launched its “Street To Home Initiative” in July 2024, it has helped rehouse more than 7,400 people who were living on the streets – including close to 277 from encampments downtown, President and CEO Sarah Kahn told The Dallas Express.
“We obviously have a long way to go, but downtown Dallas has seen an immediate decrease in crime, and quality of life violations are down by 42%,” Kahn said.
“We now are working on, ‘How do we maintain a response that allows us to prevent street sleeping and encampments from ever popping up again in the downtown area?’” Kahn added.
Housing Forward has completed Phase 1 of its Street to Home Initiative, which focuses on enhancing public safety and ending street homelessness. It is now moving to Phase 2, which requires “ongoing funding” to expand these strategies across Dallas.
Phase 2 will require $28 million — $20 million in public funds and $8 million in private funds, according to a budget proposal obtained by The Dallas Express. The funding will be allocated toward rehousing rental assistance, diversion rental assistance, case management, and complex-needs and housing navigation services.
Kahn told The Dallas Express that Dallas has already committed $10 million.
Housing Forward is also a major partner in the “Safe In The City” campaign, which officially launched in May – bringing together the City of Dallas, Downtown Dallas Inc., and other groups to implement a six-step plan to end homelessness.
“The coalition has a central focus on eliminating and preventing street sleeping, and obviously addressing overall public safety concerns,” Kahn told DX.
Mark Nunneley, senior managing director of Ashford Inc., has been compiling frequent homeless counts and reports for downtown Dallas over the past two years. He shared the latest report for the Central Business District with The Dallas Express.
“There are no more encampments in the Central Business District – zero,” Nunneley told DX. “They’ve totally eliminated encampments.”
The most recent count, on October 23, found only 30 homeless people downtown. This represents a significant decline from February 3, 2024, when the count reached its peak of 411 homeless individuals. Since June 18, 2025, the count has fallen chiefly into the double digits.
“It’s been a tremendous success,” Nunneley said. “What we’ve been able to do is to get the homeless off the streets in the Central Business District, and get them the help they need.”
As part of Safe in the City, officials send homeless individuals to The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center — Dallas’ largest shelter, located in the heart of downtown — as a first step toward finding an exit pathway. As The Dallas Express previously reported, high demand has been straining the shelter’s capacity.
“We are evaluating the option of creating a larger ‘one-stop-shop’ in Dallas, outside [the] Central Business District, large enough to help homeless people stay off the street and find the help they need,” according to Nunneley.
As an example, Nunneley pointed to Haven for Hope — a comprehensive “transformational campus” in San Antonio — a community campus with a network of service providers that can help people on the street find a safe place to stay while working with Housing Forward and other partners to find a longer-term solution. There are not enough shelter beds to help people temporarily transitioning from living on the street. This solution can help streamline local efforts, ensuring that people have access to basic needs and medical services.
Housing Forward employs three strategies to address the homeless crisis, according to Kahn: integrating mental health and homeless response, adopting solution-focused enforcement, and clearing roadblocks for enforcement by offering exit pathways and freeing up shelter beds.
“We’re kind of the quarterback of the homeless response system, so we lead a unified approach to solving homelessness by bringing together public and private partners to make sure we are implementing high-impact strategies and remaining accountable for results on the ground,” Kahn told DX.
Kahn pointed to Housing Forward’s All Neighbors Coalition, which is composed of more than 150 groups — including cities, ministries, and nonprofits — that coordinate homeless response across the metroplex.
“We all agreed that the old way of doing business was not working, and the Safe In The City campaign and All Neighbors Coalition are really answering the calls from local businesses and community members to resolve this issue,” she said.
The former approach was to simply clear homeless people, but the lack of coordination left them without exit options, according to Kahn. Too often, homeless people would pack up and move a block down.
“It’s behavior, health care, law enforcement, outreach, and the homeless response coming together to figure out for each household, ‘How do we get them off the street as quickly as possible?’” Kahn explained. “That required us to really meet people where they’re at, and to make sure that we are connecting people to behavioral healthcare and treatment from the very first point.”
Housing Forward has adopted its recent strategy of integrating code enforcement with mental health response and working to build sustainable pathways off the street, according to Kahn. She said the group tailors exit strategies for each individual — from supportive housing to treatment facilities to institutional care.
“I really believe Dallas is demonstrating a leading model for the nation, and showing we don’t have to choose between managing our public spaces and providing a compassionate response,” Kahn told DX. “We’ve demonstrated we can do both.”
Once this strategy proves itself, Housing Forward hopes to scale these programs across Dallas and Collin counties, according to Kahn.
“We’re really only limited by the amount of resources that we can align to make that happen,” Kahn said. “We’ve got to be able to enforce local ordinances. We can clear the way for that by all working together to support people to get off the streets, and to move into stable living and recovery.”