Federal Order Might Change How Dallas Handles Homelessness

As summer draws to a close, President Donald Trump has declared that restoring law and order to American cities is a top priority in the coming months. Caught in the crosshairs of that goal is the homeless population and the program Dallas officials credit with reducing downtown crime and homelessness.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order that made it easier for cities to remove homeless encampments and for the unhoused to be admitted into mental health or addiction treatment centers even if they do not consent. That pressure ramped up last week, when the president called for officials across the United States to focus on removing the “slums” of homeless encampments that have surged in number in recent years. After that announcement, a bulldozer was sent into a Washington, D.C., park at Trump’s behest to dismantle a group of tents the president noticed while driving through the city, the BBC reports.

“We’re getting rid of the people from underpasses and public spaces from all over the city,” the president told reporters.

But Trump’s approach to handling homelessness might run contrary to Dallas’ “housing first” model. This strategy states that once people have access to reliable housing, they can take advantage of other services that will help them get where they need to be. Dallas officials credit the strategy with helping to decrease homelessness and crime downtown.

According to Sarah Kahn, president and CEO of the Dallas foundation Housing Forward, 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 possible 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 communities 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 appropriations 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 program], I don’t believe we would have the same level of success we have seen in Dallas,” 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 communities that has actually seen the fourth consecutive 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 administration is focused on this issue.”

The Threat to Veterans

Housing First is a strategy that has also been crucial to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ effort to reduce veteran homelessness. 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 “effective 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 individuals 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 homelessness, a lot more mental health crises, a lot more people going to jail instead of into housing,” Aaron Estabrook, an Army veteran 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 responses on the local, state, and federal levels. While Republican President George W. Bush first embraced Housing First, the program 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 incentivize 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 argument at the local level, but he believes there is evidence that supports the continuation 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.”