Is a Tax Increase How Dallas County Solves Homelessness?

Editor’s Note: Early voting for the November election begins Oct. 19. Dallas County ballots will include a proposition for a 15% increase to the county’s tax rate for homelessness prevention efforts.

The Lab Report is publishing two stories this week on this topic. One examines the tax, which is included in today’s newsletter. The other, which readers can find here, is a photo essay by photojournalist Jeffrey McWhorter, who spent five months following a couple from homelessness to living in their own subsidized apartment.

Beneath the Interstate 45 bridge in South Dallas, a new fence largely walls off a field of dirt that extends about 300 yards. The space is quiet this October afternoon, save for a man with a shopping cart and the thrum of commuters overhead. The tents, burn pits, and debris that had been scattered around the concrete pillars are gone.

Until May, about four dozen people lived in this longtime encampment off Al Lipscomb Way and Cesar Chavez Boulevard, just two miles south of downtown. Nonprofit service providers spent about eight weeks in the spring building rapport with people sheltered here. They helped them secure vital documents before offering them housing or medical treatment. City crews then cleared and fenced off the encampment known as “Coombs,” named after a nearby street. 

On Nov. 3, voters will decide whether to fund a countywide expansion of the approach carried out here. 

Housing Forward, the agency that coordinates the county’s homelessness response, has proposed a tax increase to scale its street outreach efforts and fund rental assistance, mental health treatment, and a new crisis center to divert some people from jail. If approved, Proposition A would generate about $100 million annually through a 2.4-cent tax per $100 of assessed property value. For a property appraised at $350,000, the new tax would cost the homeowner an additional $84 a year, according to county estimates.

Housing Forward CEO Sarah Kahn said 11,000 “households” in Dallas County need help exiting homelessness every year. The organization defines a “household” as anyone — from a single adult to a family with kids — seeking housing stability, who it often tracks through shelter visits or contact with a service provider. Nearly 2,000 are currently experiencing long-term homelessness, while the organization estimates another 9,000 lose their housing every year. With current funding levels, Kahn said Housing Forward can only reach about 60% of them. 

The ballot initiative narrowly won approval from Dallas County commissioners in August. Commissioners John Wiley Price and Elba Garcia voted against sending the proposal to voters after citing concerns that the tax burden was too steep for families to afford. The two criticized the plan for not including specific performance goals or oversight in how the money is spent. The tax also does not expire. 

“You do not have a defined plan, the cost is not clear, the results are not guaranteed, and families are struggling right now with affordability,” Garcia said in an interview. “We couldn’t wait and think on how to implement this in different ways without the big tax increase that we’re asking our taxpayers to do right now?”

The three supporters, including County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, argued taxpayers would actually save money because fewer unhoused people would cycle through the public hospital or the jail before returning to the streets. 

“We need Dallas County to be a place where people choose to live and businesses choose to invest,” Jenkins said at a news conference last week. He promised that a small team of county employees would audit how the tax dollars are spent. Kahn said Housing Forward’s public dashboard will track milestones and outcomes. 

Housing Forward modeled its request on a strategy that it said has resulted in more than 2,500 people being moved from downtown streets since 2024. Kahn said connecting the unsheltered people to housing or treatment led to an 85% reduction in street homelessness; staffers with the nonprofit Downtown Dallas Inc. routinely record the number of unsheltered people sleeping in the city’s core. 

But some Dallas City Council members said they’ve noticed an uptick in unsheltered people elsewhere. “We want to tout the downtown success — it’s not success,” said Council member Adam Bazaldua, whose district includes Coombs and much of South Dallas, at a Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee meeting in September. “This is success by displacement.” 

Kahn told The Lab Report service providers moved those individuals “permanently” off the street. An internal system shared between service providers monitors whether anyone checks into Parkland Health or an emergency shelter as well as if outreach workers locate them again in Dallas or Collin counties. Housing Forward has said that 93% of the people who have been housed through its model have not come back up in that system since 2021.  

Garcia said downtown is not emblematic of other cities and neighborhoods in Dallas County. What works in the city’s central business district, she said, is not necessarily going to work in North Dallas, Garland, or Richardson. “This is not a cookie cutter approach,” she said. “You could have done this in phases, incrementing the amount of funding before we ask for a tax increase.”

Coombs was Housing Forward’s first test outside the city center, and its decommissioning followed a similar playbook to downtown. Forty of the 47 people who accepted housing — 85% — remain in their units five months later, according to data provided by Housing Forward last week. Eight people either declined help or left the encampment. 

“Coombs was a unique site because it was one of the largest, long-standing encampments that really continued to exist in Dallas,” said Hannah Sims, Housing Forward’s director of crisis response. 

For at least eight years, she’d known about the camp in an isolated field next to a SoupMobile and down the street from the nonprofit OurCalling’s homeless shelter. People felt they could shelter there without being bothered, which Sims said led to illegal activity within the camp. Many of its occupants were chronically homeless, meaning they had lived outside for at least one year. 

Housing Forward worked with MetroCare’s behavioral health teams to create custom treatment plans for each person who agreed to receive help. Partner organizations like The Stewpot, the North Texas Behavioral Health Authority, Austin Street Center, and Under 1 Roof directed their case managers to provide services like mental health treatment and job training and to check in as often as is established in each person’s individual assessment.

Acclimating to a new life wasn’t easy for everyone at Coombs, and their stories highlight the challenges facing service providers once some unsheltered people are placed in housing. As social workers moved people into new apartments and provided necessities like mattresses and dishes, a few returned to the camp for another night or two. That behavior didn’t surprise the leaders of Human Impact, a nonprofit that provides support to people experiencing homelessness. 

Chief Program Officer Nick McLean said people can find it hard to integrate in unfamiliar neighborhoods, like Red Bird in southern Dallas or suburban cities like Garland. They don’t know the transit system or where to get daily essentials and might be alone for the first time in years. Isolation can increase the likelihood of returning to the streets. McLean said providing housing is the first step of a long process to help lift people out of homelessness. 

“Often we’ll see those people will leave their apartments, come back downtown, and spend their time here,” McLean said, speaking generally. “If homelessness is the issue, the house solves homelessness, but we identify loneliness as the larger issue.”

He said case managers seem to do a good job at staying connected to clients, but are “way past their capacity.” 

“It’s hard to be able to stay engaged with people who are housed and actively house people on your caseload at the same time,” McLean said. 

But not everyone agrees to receive help. Human Impact CEO Elisabeth Jordan said service providers often discuss the same people on group calls — those with deep levels of trauma who appear destined to live the rest of their lives outside. The few at Coombs who declined help scattered after the camp was decommissioned, said McLean.

In Texas, unsheltered people can’t be forced to accept help; state law grants a competent adult the right to refuse mental health examinations in most cases without a special order from a judge or if a police officer determines the person poses a risk to public safety. 

Garcia, the commissioner, said county officials discussed asking the Texas Legislature for a legal path to compel people with mental health or substance use disorders to be assessed and treated. If the law passed, they’d incrementally increase Housing Forward’s funding. Commissioners based the idea on Miami-Dade County’s deflection center, where law enforcement can take unhoused people facing low-level charges — like criminal trespass — for mental health examinations and treatment instead of jail time.

Instead, Garcia said she was shocked to receive a proposal for the largest tax increase in Dallas County history. She said if the proposition passes, next steps for implementation appear to be unclear.

“We’re putting the horse on top of the carriage,” she said. “When people are struggling just to buy groceries, access to healthcare, their drugs and medications, with all the issues that we hear right now all over Dallas County, I think that we need to present alternatives that make sense with a good plan.”

Supporters, however, said Dallas has a proven model that needs to be expanded. “We’ve seen people connected to housing and services, and we’ve seen public spaces improve as a result,” Mayor Pro Tem Jaime Resendez told reporters last week. “It shouldn’t be limited to downtown Dallas. Families in Pleasant Grove deserve those same results, families in Oak Cliff, South Dallas, North Dallas, and neighborhoods throughout our city and county deserve them.” 

In its proposal, Housing Forward split Dallas County into six zones that it plans to staff with at least 35 outreach workers each if the tax passes. Kahn said those workers are mapping out encampments to make priority lists. “We have a goal of resolving all encampments in year one,” she said.

Not every encampment is as complex as Coombs, Kahn said. But the larger camps tend to be prioritized because of how often residents report them to 311. After Coombs, the agency addressed an encampment called “Regal Row” in northwest Dallas, a busy intersection near the Sterling Hotel. Out of 30 people, 27 accepted housing, all of whom are still in their units, according to Housing Forward.

There is no one-size-fits-all prescription to help each person in these camps. Kahn spliced the data this way: About 65% of unhoused people need only a “light-touch intervention,” such as a bus ticket or money to travel to family. Around 25% need “transitional assistance,” or rental support for up to 12 months as caseworkers steer them to self-sufficiency through services like job training and placement and medication. The last 10% need “intensive support” because of chronic disabilities or serious mental health problems. Providers said most of Coombs’ population fell into this bucket. Those individuals are often eligible for “permanent supportive housing” plans, which can help fund their units for at least five years. The tax is portioned to serve each of these populations. 

Garcia said she’s prepared to work with Housing Forward and its partners if the proposition passes, but would prefer to go back to the drawing board to find a path forward without a tax increase. The nonprofit, meanwhile, continues to map out how to expand its Coombs approach to every region in Dallas, including by meeting with local municipalities and puzzling through how to make its strategies work across different neighborhoods.

What happens next will be decided Nov. 3.  

Early voting begins Oct. 19. Find more information here. The Lab Report also spent five months following a woman who received an apartment after living at the Coombs encampment. Find photographer Jeffrey McWhorter’s photo essay here.

Kelli Smith is a staff writer for The Lab Report. Read more of her work here. kelli@labreportdallas.com