Dallas area program helps over 2,700 move from homelessness to a home

By Christopher Connelly

On October 18, 2023

Advocates for ending homelessness in the Dallas area marked a significant milestone Tuesday after an ambitious effort to house more than 2,700 of the region’s the most vulnerable people in two years met its goal.

Now, they say they’re ready to house even more unhoused people in the next two years.

“We are now more equipped to help our neighbors help connect to housing resources, and we are not done yet,” said Joli Angel Robinson, who heads Housing Forward, the agency charged with coordinating the homelessness response network in Dallas and Collin counties.

In 2021, a huge coalition of local governments, nonprofits, foundations, and other advocates launched a $72 million effort to move the needle on homelessness in Dallas and Collin counties.

They gave it a bureaucratic name — the Dallas R.E.A.L. Time Rapid Rehousing Initiative — and set a goal: Help over 2,700 unhoused people leave homelessness by the end of 2023 by moving them into homes of their own and providing an array of services to help them stay housed.

That goal was met this month, and advocates say the effort reduced the number of people on the streets, attracted even more federal resources for the effort, and knitted the whole system together so people get the help they need more quickly and efficiently.

Robinson said the system is housing people at a faster rate than ever before.

“Our focus on housing our most vulnerable neighbors — specifically those living outside — has and continues to produce incredible results,” Robinson said.

‘The speed of trust’

Most of the funds for the DRTRR came from federal pandemic relief money sent to local governments. Dallas County, the Dallas Housing Authority, and the cities of Dallas, Mesquite, Grand Prairie, and Plano pooled over $60 million to support the program. Private donors gave another $10 million.

About 200 of the 2,700 people housed through DRTRR were living in encampments before they were enrolled. Robinson said it sometimes takes weeks to build enough trust with people who’ve been failed by the system to get them to agree to enroll in the program.

Robinson calls it “moving at the speed of trust.”

For some – those with complex health or legal challenges, or with special housing needs – practical considerations can slow down the process, too.

“That money has allowed us to do those things that take away some of those barriers and hurdles to getting people housed,” Robinson said.

The funds paid for additional case managers and outreach workers, for help replacing essential documents like ID cards, for staffers who worked to find landlords with available apartments willing to participate. The money paid for rent and utilities, for move-in costs and furniture and for an array of ongoing services to help people adapt.

The availability of massive, once-in-a-lifetime COVID funding sent to fight homelessness dovetailed with a years-long effort to make the whole homeless response system coordinate better to more efficiently help people.

Homelessness to housing

Advocates say the plan worked.

A survey at the beginning of 2023 showed 14% reductions in chronic homelessness and 32% fewer people sleeping outside compared to the year before, though the overall number of people experiencing homelessness dropped by just 4% to 4,244.

Because of results from the rapid rehousing program and other initiatives, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has veritably flooded Dallas and Collin Counties with even more money to curb homelessness.

The region got a $22.8 million grant to reduce unsheltered homelessness and build up diversion programs that catch people on the verge of losing their housing and connect them with resources so they don’t fall into homelessness.

Last month, HUD delivered a giant check for $9.4 million to support work with young adults experiencing homelessness. And the feds are stepping up technical and program support for anti-homelessness efforts and increased the annual funding for the regional homeless services system.

In all, Robinson said the additional $36.4 million in federal funding increases the budget for the system by over 70%.

That will drive the system’s new goal of housing another 3,300 people experiencing homelessness by the end of 2025.

More falling into homelessness

But there are headwinds pushing more people into homelessness even as the system does a better job of helping people find homes.

Housing costs have soared in North Texas, pushing more people to the brink, said Peter Brodsky, who chairs the board of Housing Forward.

“The fundamental cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing,” Brodsky said. “You can have all sorts of mental illnesses, people use drugs, and they’re still housed, if they can afford to be.”

The other side of affordable housing is income, and huge swaths of the workforce — disproportionately women and people of color — don’t earn a living wage.

In Texas, 40% of adult workers earn less than $15 per hour, according to Oxfam America. That’s short of the $15.24 that Massachusetts institute of Technology researchers calculated as the living wage for an adult with no children. And it is well below the $21 per hour “housing wage” needed to rent a modest one-bedroom apartment.

Because the market doesn’t produce enough affordable housing, Brodsky said the region needs step up subsidies for affordable housing, while also helping low-wage workers improve skills to increase their wages.

“We need to both make more people able to afford market rate housing and create some more affordable housing. That’s one through 10 on the list of things we need to do,” he said.

Brodsky also said making sure people returning home from prison or jail can find stable housing, and preventing discrimination against people who use housing vouchers to help pay rent are additional ways to reduce the number of people becoming homeless.

Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax said a key challenge moving forward is figuring out how to sustain the funding. He said Dallas is committed to increasing affordable housing, and has rolled out programs to help people strengthen their financial stability and get help when facing crises, but added that “this is not something that we will solve overnight.”

Broadnax said more neighboring cities across the region need to step up more to address the structural issues driving homelessness.

“It’s bigger than the City of Dallas,” he said

This piece was republished from KERA News.