Dallas city leaders are considering using tiny homes, converted shipping containers and campsites to address the city’s homelessness problem.
There is also consideration of providing parking for residents who prefer to stay in RVs or their cars.
Earlier this year, officials looked at cities like Austin that have dedicated resources to bridging the gap between the streets and permanent housing.
They toured a tiny home built on a 6.8-acre former parking lot in a Los Angeles community and inspected a shipping container home south of downtown Atlanta.
This is all in an effort to quickly move homeless residents out of public spaces like City Hall, the library and off major roads.
Like most municipalities in the United States, the City of Dallas follows a “Housing First” approach to ending homelessness, based on the idea that the best way to end homelessness is to first give someone a roof over their head.
However, rehousing and rehabilitation is complex. No two people are the same.
Progress often seems slow, with mental health issues and resistance to housing taking time to overcome. At a May briefing, City Council Member Gay Donnell Willis said the pace is turning “our streets, parks and other places into waiting rooms.”
“We’re very grateful for the support,” said City Councilman Jesse Moreno, who chairs the Committee on Housing and Homelessness. Dallas Morning News He saw homeless encampments growing across the city and was concerned there was no standard for determining how long it would take for the city to rehouse people.
Moreno said he’s focused on finding out.
Officials have submitted plans for a two-year pilot program in which the city would build 50 housing units and find adjacent campgrounds and parking for those who turn them down. The intention is to partner with a developer or nonprofit operator to run the project and include comprehensive mental health, behavioral health, public transportation and food services in the program.
Tiny house costs add up
Homeless Solutions Director Christine Crossley said the city had $1 million set aside in the last budget cycle to build the building. That money expires at the end of this fiscal year in September, but the city also has bond funds it can tap.
Voters in May approved a $19 million bond proposal for projects to address homelessness.
A similar wood-frame building in Seattle had a capital outlay of $350,000 for 24 homes, each the size of a small bedroom with a window and door, and residents sharing kitchen and bathroom space.
Austin has a similar program with 225 units and $18 million to build.
This isn’t the first tiny house community in Dallas: Just west of Fair Park on Malcolm X Boulevard is a 50-home village called Hickory Crossing.
Jamie Zachary, executive director of the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation, the nonprofit that manages the homes, said the homes were expensive when they were first built in 2016. They were expensive because there wasn’t a market for them at the time. They cost about $80,000 each, he said.
But the market for tiny homes is growing — they can be built for about $15,000 to $18,000 each, Zachary said — and the nonprofit is considering expanding the program to build more homes.
James Adams, 55, had been living in a small house in South Dallas for six years before he broke his hip, was diagnosed with Hepatitis C and gave up his drug addiction.
“I don’t see any reason to quit (alcohol and drugs). Part of me feels like I want to quit, but part of me feels like it doesn’t make sense,” Adams recalled telling a doctor at a clinic affiliated with the program.
The physician, a specialist in internal medicine, responded in a way you would never expect from a scientist: “John, will you pray with me?” he asked.
Years at the intersection of Oak Lawn Avenue and Stemmons Freeway had cemented Adams’ optimism, but the clinic sparked hope. It takes a village to raise a child, Adams says. Pointing to the 50-home community south of downtown, he said the village saved Adams’ life.
Adams returned to camp life after he brought another occupant to live with him, which led to an argument with the caretaker and led to him leaving the cottage.
“I would never abandon (the cottage) because they helped me out,” Adams said, adding that he is now drug-free.
He was ecstatic to hear the city was considering a new program to help shelter people living on the streets.
Advocates and housing officials say building the buildings is the easy part. The hard part is finding operators capable of managing the program.
Crossley said the city doesn’t have the funds to maintain the community. Instead, city officials hope to use the construction money as “seed money” to attract partners who can bring in additional funds to maintain the community.
City Council members will have a lot to consider when they return from their July recess. Crossley’s team is looking for a site to house the program, but one of the conditions is that the new community be in a City Council district that doesn’t have any homeless assistance projects.
Wayne Walker, CEO of Our Calling, a nonprofit that is building a 500-unit community in Ellis County, said the program’s success depends on execution and political will. Dallas city leaders haven’t added significant space to its homeless shelters since Bridge, a homeless recovery center, began 16 years ago, Walker said.
The facility, which the city acquired as permanent supportive housing with enhanced educational services, mental health and rental assistance, is still waiting to be operational.
The Hotel Miramar at 1950 Fort Worth Avenue has hired St. Jude to operate it after three years of arguing with neighbors over the number of units allowed, while a vacant medical hospital in South Oak Cliff is in uncertainty due to neighboring opposition.
That pales in comparison to the ongoing costs associated with hospital visits, medical treatment, incarceration and emergency shelters. A May report on the economic costs of homelessness put the bill for Dallas and Collin counties at nearly $200 million.
Sanctioned campgrounds aren’t a silver bullet either: They can be expensive and difficult to maintain, according to a 2018 report from the US Joint Committee on Homelessness.
“People in these settings remain unhoused, outdoors and homeless – and in many cases, these settings do not provide them with a truly safe, healthy and secure environment,” the report said.
At the same May briefing, City Councilman Chad West questioned whether projects like tiny homes, which would likely cost the city more money, would detract from work the city is already doing.
He said the city celebrated a 24 percent decrease in unhoused homelessness and the “virtually” elimination of veteran homelessness in Dallas and Collin counties.
“I hesitate to have any discussion about putting something new and shiny out there that would get in the way of these efforts,” West said.
The city is currently partnering with a consortium of more than 100 organizations that provide outreach, social workers, crisis centers and shelters.
Housing Forward, the lead agency tackling homelessness in Dallas and Collin counties, recorded a significant drop in its January homeless population count to 3,718 people. This is the lowest number of homeless people in the region since 2015.
Experts like Daniel Roby, CEO of Austin Street Center, one of Dallas’ largest homeless shelters, say a point-in-time homeless count isn’t perfect — it’s just a snapshot of the homelessness crisis — but it tends to be the most reliable tool nationwide.
The reality is that it’s difficult to gauge exactly how many people in Dallas are chronically homeless, as many live fluid lives, moving from place to place.
Roby was part of a task force created by Mayor Eric Johnson to assess Dallas’ homeless needs and responses, which produced the HOPE report, a collective term for homelessness, organizations, policies and encampments.
The report linked a “significant shortage” of housing units for low-wage residents to the growing unhoused population, stressing that temporary solutions like tiny homes are costly and risk drawing funding away from permanent housing programs. “The city needs to approach temporary measures carefully, prioritize long-term solutions, and learn from the experiences of other cities to avoid worsening the homelessness problem,” the report said.
Roby said the city would benefit from bringing in providers early on to develop metrics and avoid designing something “no provider has any interest in implementing.”
Moreno is optimistic.
“We’ve never had everyone at the table like we have today, and I’m grateful for that,” he said. “The city is at the table. City council members are at the table. We have continuity of care. We have health care providers at the table. We all have the same mission.”
