DALLAS — The City of Dallas announced a new strategy to shut down -- and keep closed -- homeless encampments in public areas, starting downtown with plans to eventually expand across the city.
The $30 million effort, called Street to Home, is a coordinated initiative from the city, Downtown Dallas Inc., and Housing Forward, the lead agency in the city's coalition working to solve homelessness.
The first three targeted sites are all steps from City Hall, where city leaders held a press conference Monday to announce they had housed 107 people from the sites in fewer than 100 days.
"This is a new way of doing business where we are not just moving encampments from block to block, we’re actually resolving them," said Sarah Kahn, the CEO and President of Housing Forward.
Kahn explained outreach workers first work to connect people living in the targeted areas with housing and other services, and then city crews clear and close the encampments where they previously lived.
Outside the city's main library on Monday, a sign informed people they could no longer camp at the site and provided a phone number for the city's Department of Homeless Solutions. The city will issue citations to people who do not comply, city leaders said at the press conference.
"The city is ensuring that those locations remain open for public use and are not repopulated by people sleeping and camping there," Kahn said.
Starting next week, the groups will focus their attention on three different sites in downtown Dallas. However, Housing Forward will not name the sites in advance, Kahn said to allow staff to best provide services.
"We are targeting public spaces and resolving street homelessness location by location across Dallas," Kahn said.
Some city councilmembers said they want to see other options to address homelessness -- not just a push to immediately put people in housing.
"There are some individuals that will flat out refuse service and don’t want to be housed so that’s the demographic that we really have to focus in on as a city," said Councilmember Jesse Moreno, who represents the district where the first Street to Home sites are located.
He said he supports the effort but wants to continue to look at possibilities beyond "housing first" as well. Some council members have asked for the city to explore designating specific sanctions areas in which people without homes can camp while getting access to services.
"Homelessness is very complex and it's not a one-size solution," Moreno said.
Kahn pushed back on that idea. "We don't need to invest in campsites," she said. "We have a tool that is actually proven to get people into their own homes and get them the support they need so they actually stay in there long-term."
Kahn said people with concerns about homeless encampments in Dallas can call 311 to make sure city staff and the teams at DDI and Housing Forward are aware of them.