The homelessness task force launched by Mayor Eric Johnson found “significant increases” in homelessness and vagrancy in Dallas over the past decade.
Johnson formed the Mayor’s Task Force on Homelessness, Organizations, Policies, and Encampments (HOPE) in February. He tasked it with finding concrete solutions to reducing homelessness and vagrancy in Dallas, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The report, initially due on June 15, was released on June 30. It found that “Dallas has seen significant increases in homelessness, especially unsheltered homelessness over the last ten years,” which outpaced the nationwide average.
Such findings were not mentioned in the City of Dallas’ press release announcing the report’s publication.
However, while the task force found long-term increases in Dallas homelessness, the report also claims that “actions and activity over the last 12-18 months have shown improvement in homelessness trends, especially when compared to the growth in the city’s total population.”
Furthermore, the report notes how mental illness and substance abuse have exacerbated homelessness and vagrancy throughout the Dallas area.
The task force cited the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, which claimed that 40% of homeless adults in Dallas County have a severe mental illness, 32% are addicted to drugs or alcohol, and 14% have both a severe mental illness and addiction simultaneously.
City officials previously suggested that people giving money to panhandlers could be part of the problem, instead urging residents to donate their time or money to nonprofits that provide services to homeless people.
With these findings in mind, the task force made several recommendations to the City of Dallas regarding its homeless response efforts, including continued enforcement of laws against encampments in public places.
“We advocate that violence and crime be essential factors in deciding which encampments to target for decommissioning to address the legitimate concerns of citizens,” the report reads, alongside recommendations that the City use taxpayer money to provide housing to those living in decommissioned encampments.
However, also included in the task force’s advice to the City is a recommendation to dissolve entities intended to create accountability in the government’s effort to combat homelessness and vagrancy.
The stated reason for the specific recommendation is “to reduce redundancy” in homelessness response efforts, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
In particular, the task force recommended dissolving the Dallas Area Partnership to End and Prevent Homelessness, which is supposed to maintain accountability across homelessness response agencies, according to the Partnership’s 2018 strategic plan.
The task force released its report shortly after a satisfaction survey from the City of Dallas revealed that 75% of residents believe homelessness remains a “major” problem.
Additional polling conducted by The Dallas Express has shown that parents, in particular, are significantly concerned about homelessness, vagrancy, and panhandling.
While the City of Dallas continues to employ several approaches in its response efforts, it has yet to consider the “one-stop-shop” strategy undertaken by San Antonio through its partnership with the nonprofit Haven for Hope.
The strategy offers housing and supportive services in a single location rather than maintaining several sites dispersed across the city, thereby keeping the problem and its potential solutions relatively contained in one geographic area. Polling suggests that Dallas voters support such a strategy.