Mayor Eric Johnson hopes new task force will help reduce homelessness in Dallas

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced Thursday the formation of a new task force to help the city tackle homelessness. He calls it the Mayor’s Working Group on Organizations, Policies, and Homeless Camps, or HOPE for short.

“An issue that is current and on the minds of many of our residents and many of our businesses in this city is homelessness,” Johnson said at a press conference at City Hall on Thursday. “Like any major US city, Dallas has seen an increase in the number of homeless people in recent years. We know from our experience that this is a difficult problem.”

Johnson said: “To put it simply, solving this problem is not easy, but we must be ready to do everything possible to solve it.”

That’s why, he says, he’s assembled a task force HOPE, which will be led by leaders from several local housing and homeless organizations. He brought together similar task forces to improve economic development and public safety in Dallas, a method he calls his “kitchen sink approach.”

The city’s homeless response system is improving, Johnson said, but challenges remain. So the mayor wants members of his task force to look at what city and local organizations are already doing to reduce homelessness and recommend ways to improve the situation. He told them to focus primarily on people who, for various reasons, continue to live on the street.

“While the city of Dallas has moved forward significantly over the years, this cannot remain a problem that only the city government of Dallas needs to address,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson.

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Many of those selected for the working group came from organizations that are working with the city on something called the REAL Time Rapid Rehousing Program. Thanks to this program, more than 1,600 people have moved from the streets to homes. Now the goal is to relocate more than 2,700 homeless people to housing,

According to Johnson, the people who run these organizations and their employees are “doing God’s work by constantly seeing the ugly side of society.” But he doesn’t want residents to see that side of society. If his task force was successful, they might not have to.

“They see people who need a helping hand, people who need warm food, people who need a roof over their heads, and people who need a little bit of hope to get back on their feet,” Johnson said. “Meanwhile, we also have residents in this city who are also trying to survive and do right with their families and their communities, who want to go to work every day and return home, unfortunately to see a growing number of camps in their neighborhoods.

“…They come to us as the leaders of this city and say that they want and expect to live in a city that does not tolerate and certainly does not promote disorder, and no doubt everyone in this room and everyone in this city agrees with them. All we do.”

To guide the task force’s efforts, Johnson asked the co-chairs to answer 12 critical questions as part of their policy recommendations.

He wants to know what should be the starting point for comparison when measuring the increase or decrease in the number of homeless people in the city. From there, he wants to know if homelessness is getting better or worse in Dallas. He also wants the task force to study how homelessness in Dallas compares to other major cities, and what the underlying causes of this homelessness are. These may include factors such as mental health or substance abuse problems, a criminal history, family problems, and financial difficulties. Once the members of the task force have identified these various root causes, Johnson wants to know what percentage of homeless and vulnerable populations are due to each root cause.

The mayor also hopes to better understand what legal tools the city can use to combat homelessness.

On top of that, he wants the task force to identify how other local governments can help. “While the City of Dallas has moved forward significantly over the years, this cannot remain a problem that only the City of Dallas needs to address,” Johnson said.

The task force must submit its recommendations to the mayor by June 15. After that, the group will be disbanded.

Petr Brodsky, Chairman of Housing Forward; Betty Culbreth, chair of the Dallas Housing Authority and former director of the Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services; and Ellen Magnis, President and CEO of Family Gateway, are co-chairs of the task force.

They will carry out the work of a seven-member task force from organizations such as the Department of Adult Rehabilitation, Downtown Dallas Inc., Austin Street Center, and others.

Magnis said Family Gateway has already shown that it can learn to do more with less. Family Gateway, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing affordable housing for families, once served approximately 400 families annually. The organization now serves four times as many people with nearly twice the budget. But there is still work to be done, she said.

“The truth is that the problem of homelessness is very complex and there is no one-size-fits-all solution,” Magnis said at a press conference. “What I really hope for is that as a community we can understand that the homeless are not to blame. They are not different. They are not like us.

“Broken systems and politics have contributed greatly to their plight, and we must remember that I am going there, but by the grace of God.”