From KERA News:
Richard Garrett’s dog was often the first thing people noticed about him, back when he lived under the bridge. A squat gray pup, Richard says he found Baby when she was young enough to have puppy energy, but old enough to have clearly given birth. Shy but gentle, Richard guessed she was maybe a couple years old.
Last fall, a team of outreach workers approached Richard and the two dozen other people living in the small tent city by the freeway in East Dallas. They had a surprising offer: Work with us and we’ll help you get your own apartment and connect you to services that will help you get your life together.
Richard wasn’t sure these strangers promising help were for real. No one here wanted to remain homeless, Richard says. But homeless services hadn’t done much for anyone around here.
“I wanted to know the real deal,” he says. So he talked to the person who seemed like she was in charge: Hannah Sims, who leads “encampment decommissioning” for a nonprofit organization called Housing Forward.
Encampment decommissioning is a relatively new way that the city of Dallas and local nonprofits are tackling unsheltered homelessness by helping knock down barriers that keep people from moving a place of their own — and giving them the support they need to stay there.
“When Hannah come in talking about apartments, that got my attention,” Richard says. “But I was skeptical.”
Sims also assured Richard that Baby would be able to move with him, and she’d help get the dog certified as an emotional support animal.
Richard says his skepticism waned as, even in the cold and rain, outreach workers showed up week after week under the bridge. It took a team of more than 20 people from at least seven different organizations and agencies almost four months to help nearly two dozen people move out of tents and into their new homes.
So far, 25 homeless encampments across Dallas, with 370 people given the chance to end their homelessness for good. Sims says the goal is the close encampments permanently, so no one else can stay there. And by the time the process is completed, “everyone who wants to be housed has been housed.”