Dallas needs a middle ground between homeless camps and ‘housing first’

Though headlines this year announced that the homeless head count in Dallas County had gone down, many Dallasites were skeptical. They only have to look out their window to see tents, dirty mattresses and stolen shopping carts.

“This is a constant battle,” read a recent 311 complaint to Dallas City Hall.

In the past 30 days, Dallas’ 311 service has received more than 1,000 complaints about homeless encampments, records show. Residents and businesses complained about homeless people urinating and defecating on the sidewalk or other public places where children can see them. They complained about tents behind neighborhoods and apartments, under bridges and near retail stores, and reported unsheltered people cutting holes through highway fences.

Dallas’ “housing first” strategy to shut down a camp only once a permanent home has been secured for every camp resident is not quick enough to address the disorder that residents live with every day. The city simply cannot tolerate having people sleeping on the street or in wooded areas for days or weeks at a time. We need a middle ground, and the Dallas City Council is right to explore a pilot program for transitional housing options.

According to a recent council briefing, these would be makeshift homes without foundations, making them temporary structures. Dallas isn’t pioneering anything here; other cities struggling with homelessness have provided a roadmap. Think of tiny, prefabricated homes and refurbished shipping containers arranged neatly on parking lots to create small communities or “villages.” City staff and council members recently visited transitional housing sites in Los Angeles and Atlanta, where nonprofits provide “wraparound” services for residents to get them job training and help them get apartments.

Each person gets his or her own private unit, and it’s much quicker and cheaper for cities and nonprofits to set up these communities than it is to build an apartment complex or neighborhood.

There is some concern that transitional housing could distract from the city’s efforts to get more permanent supportive housing built. Dallas clearly needs both.

“We talk about what we’re getting: a roof over your head, a door that locks, something that’s waterproof, something that has electricity,” City Council member Jesse Moreno, chair of the council’s housing committee, said at a recent meeting. “And I just can’t understand how some folks can argue against this type of housing versus a tent on the streets.”

Of course, there will be lots of complexities to sort through. There is the question of where the temporary housing would go and how operating costs would be covered, including social services and security. Dallas has some capital funds earmarked for homelessness to invest as seed money, and council members are interested in a two-year pilot program.

We have concerns about the idea of city-sanctioned encampments that would keep people outdoors, and we cannot tolerate city-sanctioned lawless spaces. The council has to carefully vet temporary housing options and potential private partners. What it can’t do is sit around the horseshoe and accept things the way they are now.

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