Dallas County and the City of Dallas have an ambitious goal: to accommodate more than 2,700 people who will be homeless in two years.
While it may seem daunting, the feat isn’t entirely unattainable thanks to a woman who did the same in Houston.
Since starting working with Dallas in April 2020, Mandy Chapman Semple has won the support of eight major Dallas foundations and has become involved with the city’s homeless support organizations.
In June, the city of Dallas and Dallas County merged with the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance; DHA Enclosure Solutions for North Texas; Mesquite; Great prairie; and the Homeless Collaborative announced a $ 72 million partnership inspired by Chapman Semple’s work that would house at least half of Dallas County’s homeless population. The city and county each contribute $ 25 million. The region’s homeless population has increased by 32% since 2011.
Chapman Semple was Houston’s first special assistant to the mayor for homeless initiatives from 2013-2016, and she is credited with developing a strategy that has helped reduce the city’s homelessness by 60% in four years.
Chapman Semple is now in demand nationwide and would like to bring Dallas on the same path through her company Clutch Consulting Group.
“So far, we’ve redesigned the entire governance structure, we’ve redesigned MDHA and put new leadership in place,” she said. “We’re rethinking the design of the system.”
Chapman Semple’s work in Houston
When Chapman Semple arrived in Houston in 2012, the city’s homeless number exceeded more than 8,000. With permanent housing solutions, she devised a plan to quickly accommodate people and incorporate services to keep them from relapsing into homelessness.
“These were the two most important things we could do to create a permanent solution: build the system infrastructure to support individuals moving and support individuals moving into these apartments,” said Chapman Semple.
People who experience homelessness live in what Chapman Semple describes as a “crisis environment” or an unstable life situation. Most of the services that help with homelessness are offered in this crisis environment, which makes it difficult to succeed.
Chapman Semple’s plan merged services and housing into one package.
“If you can take the services out of the crisis environment and attach them to the case … you are not dealing with people in crisis, you are now dealing with people in recovery,” she said.
Under the direction of Chapman Semple, more than 100 Houston public and private agencies helping with homeless solutions worked with the mayor’s office for homeless initiatives. The plan carried out by the Coalition for the Homeless Houston was called “The Way Home”.
Members of the agencies turned to homeless camps to offer permanent housing. Depending on their needs, a person can use a voucher program to find an apartment or live in a new or existing building.
“Everyone gets their own lease because the goal here is to start rebuilding that tenant history and then people can stabilize over the long term,” said Chapman Semple.
Customers are evaluated to find the type of intervention that works for them, Chapman Semple said. Everyone would also have access to voluntary services such as case management or mental health resources.
In these apartment buildings, customers are not bound by rules such as mandatory meetings or curfews. Chapman Semple said these rules make people feel like they are being treated as children.
“Just because they’re homeless doesn’t make them any different,” she said. “And that has to be an important aspect of your system design and the solutions you bring with you.”
The results
Since Chapman Semple’s plan was launched in 2012, over 23,000 people have been permanently housed in Houston, according to Marc Eichenbaum, the mayor’s special assistant for homeless initiatives. About 90% of those stayed, he said.
According to Eichenbaum, the number of homeless people in Houston in 2020 has decreased by 55% since 2012.
The backbone of the city’s success is Chapman Semple’s plan, he said. The housing strategy, coupled with volunteer services, kept people off the streets and paved a path for them to succeed, he said.
“An unhodged person cannot fully engage because they are still worried about where to sleep and where to get their food and how to survive,” Eichenbaum said. “As soon as someone is accommodated, this increases their commitment and effectiveness.”
Chapman Semple worked under Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and former Mayor Annise Parker, who both supported the project.
Without the influence of the city tour, the plan would quickly have failed, said Eichenbaum.
“It is vital that political will and high-level elected leadership have this as a top priority – without it, no city will be able to handle the issue,” he said. “It cannot live and die with the elected official.”
Peter Brodsky, chairman of the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, said Houston was a prime example of what Dallas wanted to achieve with its homeless population. Brodsky attributes the city’s success to Chapman Semple.
“A lot of the best practices and a lot of the philosophy that was adopted in Houston seem to be working,” he said. “We are trying very hard to implement this here.”
The limitations
Not every project is perfect. One major constraint is funding, and initially, Chapman Semple said, Houston did not invest any general income in homelessness or social services.
Houston has an income cap that limits the income it can collect, so the city has reallocated federal funds for the project. It still redistributes that money every year, Eichenbaum said.
But the problem isn’t that Houston isn’t funding the initiative. It just doesn’t have the resources to put more money on the table.
The city also spans a huge geographic area, which, according to Chapman Semple, adds added complexity to providing services in different parts of the city. Most homeless services are concentrated in downtown Houston, and when housing is provided for people in an area of 669 square miles there is an additional cost to provide these services to them.
Chapman Semple also said she needed to work with organizations as they began to work as professional homeless services rather than charities. This came with a learning curve – organizations no longer focused on raising money to promote their services, but now had the means to ensure that services were provided to those who needed them.
The biggest constraint, Chapman Semple said, was developing strategies to make sure there were homes for the people, and that meant having to constantly work with landlords to get deals done.
Traditionally, a case manager vouched for someone living in a particular apartment complex and hoped a landlord would agree. That worked on a case-by-case basis, but Chapman Semple had to work on a larger scale to accommodate more people.
She diversified her workforce by bringing in property hunters with a real estate background to help negotiate with landlords.
“If we were to do this on a large scale, we had to break some of the prejudices that exist in this rental market and start negotiations based on business values,” she said. “It’s all the things you would imagine switching from an informal charity system to a professionalized relocation industry.”
Note: This article is part of our State of the City project in which The Dallas Morning News examines some of the most critical issues facing our communities. Find more topics in the coming days as we explore homelessness.
[ad_1]