Dallas City Hall is moving more employees to help keep former homeless encampments from filling back up. NBC 5’s David Goins reports it’s part of a larger effort to end homeless sleeping overnight and outdoors by finding housing for as many neighbors as possible.
Dallas City Manager Kim Tolbert said 23 employees will be moved to another department to help in ongoing city efforts to keep downtown homeless encampments from repopulating.
Tolbert said the employees, currently in the city's homeless response unit, will report to the Office of Emergency Management to bolster the city's responsibility in maintaining cleared-out former tent encampment zones in downtown.
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WATCH HEREIn a memo to city council, Tolbert said Dallas Street Response would lead compliance through "proactive encampment cleanup."
"Having a dedicated cross-trained team will enhance our public safety and health efforts and reaffirms our ongoing commitment to being one of the safest, largest cities in the country," Tolbert said.
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SIGN UP The move comes nearly two months after the city council approved an additional $2.5 million in funding for the "Street to Home" initiative, which has set a target of reducing unsheltered homelessness in half in Dallas by next year.
On Monday, the CEO of Housing Forward, the non-profit which oversees the homeless response in both Dallas County and Collin County said the pilot program has already found permanent supportive housing for approximately 170 people who had been sleeping outside in the Central Business District.
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Sarah Kahn added that having supportive resources from the city directed at keeping already cleared areas of downtown open helps with the overall initiative.
"It clears the runway for us to be able to continue to do the work of connecting people to behavioral health care and housing services," Kahn said.
Street to Home launched last summer with the stated goal of finding housing for 100 people in 100 days in three encampment zones in downtown.
The zones were expanded to three downtown parks, Main Street, Harwood and Pacific Plaza as well.
Kahn says Housing Forward is aiming to be able to largely end overnight unsheltered sleeping in downtown later this summer.
"By that point, we will have assembled the resources to make sure that we can expand this effort across the city," Kahn said.
The Dallas City Council is expected to consider approving another $3.1 million for the program on April 23.
