6 August 28 - september 3, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents they can take advantage of other services that will help them get where they need to be. Dallas officials credit the strategy with help- ing to decrease homelessness and crime downtown. According to Sarah Kahn, president and CEO of the Dallas foundation Housing For- ward, which coordinates the city’s response to homelessness, Dallas has recorded a 28% reduction in unsheltered homelessness since 2021. Kahn said that wouldn’t have been possi- ble without a multi-pronged approach to the unhoused community, which helps connect individuals with shelters and then secures them permanent supportive housing and services such as mental health treatment once that housing is stabilized. “Every level of government, including the [Trump ] administration, is calling on com- munities to address public safety and street homelessness,” Kahn told the Observer. “And Dallas is a leading model for the nation in that regard.” But The Washington Post reports that the White House may be changing how it wants cities to fight homelessness. The $3.6 billion federal Continuum of Care program, which helps fund the long-term care options Dallas has championed rather than short-term or emergency shelters, has been identified as an initiative that could be consolidated with other departments that take a more short- term approach to homelessness. Congress will ultimately decide on that potential consolidation during the appropri- ations process, which is underway and could last months. If adopted, Dallas could see changes to how $51 million in annual grants can be dispersed. “Without [the Continuum of Care pro- gram], I don’t believe we would have the same level of success we have seen in Dal- las,” City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert told The Washington Post. “This is not the time to start having these consolidations. … When something is working, you want to amplify that. You want to enhance it.” Housing Forward said that if the funding is lost, or even if significant changes are made to how it can be used, 420 veterans would become homeless in Dallas each year. Thousands of non-veterans would also find themselves without a place to live, Khan said. “Dallas is one of a small group of commu- nities that has actually seen the fourth con- secutive year of decreases in unsheltered homelessness,” Kahn said. “The nation has seen … the highest year-over-year increases in street homelessness since that data started being collected. So that’s why the ad- ministration is focused on this issue.” Housing First is a strategy that has also been crucial to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ effort to reduce veteran homeless- ness. The department has recorded a 50% reduction in unhoused veterans nationally since 2010, a trend that Dallas has followed. In May, city leaders declared an “effec- tive end” to homelessness in the downtown sector. While this does not mean downtown is free of homeless individuals, it means that stricter enforcement of a policy against sleeping in the sector has made it so that if a person is identified as living or sleeping downtown, they are able to be prioritized for Housing First services. The U.S. Census has determined that roughly one out of every 11 unsheltered indi- viduals is a veteran, and The New York Times reports that Trump’s announcements on homelessness came as a shock to advocates who have worked to connect veterans with housing across the United States. If housing first programs are deprioritized, veterans will likely lose housing or fail to seek care, those advocates warned. “We are going to see a lot more homeless- ness, a lot more mental health crises, a lot more people going to jail instead of into housing,” Aaron Estabrook, an Army vet- eran and director of the housing authority in Manhattan, Kansas, told the Times. When pressed by the Times on whether veterans support groups should expect changes to funding for supportive housing programs, Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said only that President Trump “cares deeply about our veterans.” The Times notes that an ideological line has been drawn regarding homelessness re- sponses on the local, state, and federal levels. While Republican President George W. Bush first embraced Housing First, the pro- gram was expanded under the Democratic Obama and Biden administrations. Like seemingly everything else, it has not been immune to politicization. There’s the side that believes cracking down on encampments is necessary to in- centivize sobriety and mental health care, and the Housing First side that thinks the opposite. Dallas City Council member Chad West, who is a veteran, said he is “not surprised” to see homelessness become a “hotbed issue” on the federal level. He’s already seen the line drawn between the two sides of the ar- gument at the local level, but he believes there is evidence that supports the continu- ation of the city’s approach. “Housing Forward and the city have data that indicates that our efforts are working. We still have work to do. There are still too many people who are homeless and don’t have homes, and we’ve got to have all hands on deck to continue our efforts to help them,” West said. “But any pause or shift in the momentum could be detrimental to our efforts.” ▼ TRANSPORTATION ‘ABSOLUTELY MOVING’ COMMUNITY REACTS TO DART ABANDONING PARATRANSIT CUTS. BY ALYSSA FIELDS T he Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) system recently axed proposed changes that would have significantly affected disabled travelers reliant on the ser- vice’s paratransit system. The changes, which would have nearly doubled the fees for curb-to-curb transpor- tation and limited eligible transportation zones, were abandoned after significant pushback from the disabled community and their advocates at a public hearing in July. Lines of Dallasites who use wheelchairs were crammed into the waiting room and left to sit in the foyer for hours as the board- room hit capacity early on that night. “I have to speak for those that cannot at all, that would not put themselves out there,” Candace Wicks, a double amputee, said to the Observer after the July hearing. “There was no way that I could have missed that meeting. Looking at the other people that are affected just as much as I am, shame on me if I had stayed at home. When they don’t see us, they forget us.” Paratransit service changes were just a few of several proposed by the organization. Other changes still being negotiated include separate fee changes for all riders, fixed route reduced stop frequencies, and the ter- mination of several bus routes. However, the paratransit changes were the least popular of the proposed changes. DART has been offering paratransit ser- vices in all of its member cities since 1986, according to its website. The transit system offers a better-than-standard service, offer- ing curb-to-curb transportation for its entire zone, covering 13 cities, and costing $3.50 one way. But the proposed changes would have reduced service zones to the federal standards set by the Americans with Dis- abilities Act, which only requires paratransit services within three-quarters of a mile of all fixed routes and at a cost not to exceed double the regular fare. The cost per ride would have increased to $6. “I think it’s one of the most vulnerable parts of the community,” said Jesse Beck, a Preston Hollow father whose 25-year-old son is reliant on paratransit services to get to My Possibilities, a nonprofit offering con- tinuing education courses to adults with cognitive disabilities. “And it was hard for that vulnerable community, per se, to have a voice to align, coalesce, and really have their input heard. I think it was amazing… I thought that was absolutely moving.” Beck spoke at an information session be- fore the public hearing to express his dissat- isfaction with the changes and pointed out that lots of families would not be able to af- ford the rise in prices. Several community members reliant on the service, which is not reserved for the cognitively disabled, but also includes the visually and physically im- paired, attended the pre-hearing sessions spread across the region to express their worries, and the outpour was unignorable, says Beck. “First of all, I’m very appreciative of DART to actually listen to the community and people,” he said. “And not to say I was shocked. I was pleasantly surprised by their decision. But I think it goes to show the few and far between times where actually the people and the government agencies can ac- tually listen and have a voice and actually have a decision that truly benefits the com- munity.” A representative of My Possibilities joined several of their students in July to speak out against the changes. The organi- zation highlighted that the service changes would have made it increasingly difficult for many of their students to attend socializa- tion and career-building courses. “Coming together to fight for this popu- lation’s accessibility of transportation to their livelihoods and having those with the power to make the decisions hear, as well as understand the need, is a big step in the right direction,” Tripp Hemphill, health and safety manager at My Possibilities, said in an email. “We still have a long way to go in the way of making this world the best fit for those with disabilities, but this change in real time shows that the totem pole of peo- ple, from the top to the bottom, are starting to align in a way that signifies hope for a bet- ter future to all those who will need it one day.” DART has been at battle with the city of Plano since the municipality indicated it would elect to restructure its tax contribu- tions to the transit service if given the op- portunity. The state legislator representing Plano in the Texas House of Representatives has been vying to give his city that opportu- nity through a piece of legislation he has filed each session. The bill would have allowed Plano and other member cities to redirect a quarter of the 1-cent sales tax collected by DART to a general fund that each respective city could use on other general mobility projects. The total losses for DART would have equated to billions of dollars and would fully derail on- going projects and advancements to existing services, according to the transit service. The bill, dubbed the DART Killer Bill, failed to make it to the House floor Adobe Stock President Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric surrounding homelessness is similar to talking points espoused by opponents of the Housing First program. Unfair Park from p4 >> p8
