{"id":436832,"date":"2025-12-10T02:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/436832\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T02:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T02:22:12","slug":"dallas-officials-spar-over-homeless-encampment-data-ahead-of-critical-funding-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/436832\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas officials spar over homeless encampment data ahead of critical funding vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahead of a critical vote to fuel Dallas\u2019 homelessness response with $10 million<\/a>, the debate over whether the city was succeeding in serving its unhoused population took a new turn Tuesday when a committee meeting devolved into a public spat over homeless encampment data. <\/p>\n

Council member Cara Mendelsohn, who chairs the committee, invited Allen Gwinn, a professor at Southern Methodist University with expertise in IT and data analytics.<\/p>\n

Gwinn, who shared his personal story about helping a person experiencing homelessness, used 311 service calls data<\/a> from 2020 to 2025 and highlighted that residents had made 44,545 service calls about encampments in the past five years. <\/p>\n

He then overlaid crime data that appeared to show 1,200 instances where police reported unexplained deaths in public spaces such as alleys, fields and parking lots, among others. Gwinn said there was a connection between the encampments and deaths. <\/p>\n

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Other facets of his data analysis also showed that the majority of homeless encampments were near Dallas Area Rapid Transit centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trends that are there, even as defective as the data is, would indicate that we\u2019re not effectively addressing (homelessness) right,\u201d Gwinn said.<\/p>\n

At Wednesday\u2019s meeting, the Dallas City Council is expected to approve $10 million for rental assistance and supportive services<\/a> for Housing Forward, the region\u2019s lead agency serving unhoused residents. The goal is to transition more than 1000 residents out of the shelter system into housing and free up existing bed space through the street-to-home program. This latest funding will target more than 425 people. <\/p>\n

However, Tuesday\u2019s discussion underscored that not everyone\u2019s on board with that strategy. <\/p>\n

Once Gwinn was done presenting his research, Mendelsohn lauded his work and said it highlighted \u201cthe nexus between the 311 calls of homeless encampments and the unexplained or natural deaths.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd very often, things will be said around this horseshoe as we\u2019re making policy about allowing people to remain unsheltered, and I\u2019m a big advocate of removing encampments against people\u2019s will because it\u2019s not safe for them,\u201d Mendelsohn said. \u201cIt\u2019s not good for our community, and to me, your data is showing one of the possibilities that happens, which is that people are dying.\u201d <\/p>\n

Then, the meeting blew up. <\/p>\n

Gwinn had not spoken with Housing Forward. He had also not spoken with Dallas Area Rapid Transit before arriving at his conclusions, though his data was based on city data. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just prefer data to be presented with less subjective language,\u201d council member Adam Bazaldua said, as he called on Housing Forward\u2019s CEO and President Sarah Kahn to offer her take on the data. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019d be more appropriate and well-rounded for us to have (Kahn) weigh in on your perspective of this data that\u2019s being presented to us,\u201d he said, adding that he would like to hear from DART as well. <\/p>\n

Mendelsohn stepped in. \u201cThis presentation is from the professor. We\u2019re not going to do this today,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have the ability to yield my time to ask from a stakeholder,\u201d Bazaldua said. <\/p>\n

\u201cYour time has now ended,\u201d Mendelsohn said. <\/p>\n

Bazaldua challenged Mendelsohn\u2019s ruling as chair, and city attorneys called for a recess. <\/p>\n

Bazaldua left. Eventually, all other council members \u2014 including Zarin Gracey, Lorie Blair and Deputy Mayor pro tem Gay Donnell Willis \u2014 followed. The meeting adjourned in less than an hour. <\/p>\n

Bazaldua, Gracey, and Willis raised concerns about the data\u2019s objectivity and were perturbed that they couldn\u2019t request clarifications. \u201cThere were a lot of questions around the data that was presented and the subjective comments that accompanied it,\u201d Willis said. \u201cSadly, most of the committee was prevented from asking questions about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treatment first or housing first?<\/p>\n

The back-and-forth between council members is part of a national discussion playing out in every city and town. Is it better to tackle the mental health needs of people experiencing homelessness before offering them a roof over their heads, or do they need a home first to stabilize? <\/p>\n

Mendelsohn falls on the side of treatment first, but the city\u2019s homelessness policy has followed national practices under the housing-first umbrella. <\/p>\n

Mendelsohn, who has been critical of Housing Forward\u2019s claims that it had effectively ended street homelessness downtown, said Gwinn\u2019s presentation offered \u201ca compelling case for enforcement of no-camping laws and stronger efforts to bring people inside for mental health and detoxification or addiction treatment, family reunification, and supportive services for their own safety.\u201d She added the hotspots mapped showed areas the city was not addressing successfully. <\/p>\n

Gracey said he would support funding for Housing Forward. \u201cThere isn\u2019t another option right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Housing Forward\u2019s street-to-home initiative was utilized in a campaign to tackle perceptions of rising crime and instability <\/a>in downtown Dallas. In the program\u2019s second phase, the organization now wants to expand the program it used to rehouse 250 residents earlier this year. <\/p>\n

The agency said all its public and private partners were concerned with the number of people sleeping outside, not the number of phone calls. \u201cIt\u2019s completely unacceptable to allow people to die on our streets,\u201d Housing Forward said in a statement when asked about Gwinn\u2019s presentation Tuesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Coalition is integrating mental health, outreach, and enforcement responses to provide immediate relief on the ground, and equipping shelters to bring more people inside,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThis morning\u2019s presentation underscored the importance of continued funding for these critical interventions. The streets can no longer be our waiting room.\u201d<\/p>\n

The data at issue <\/p>\n

Gracey, who had questions about Gwinn\u2019s takeaways, said the professor\u2019s analysis lacked context as to how he arrived at his conclusions. \u201cThe DART lines he would pull up, the death count, and all of the homeless encampments around there. And you know, what\u2019s the point of that? So then when it came time to seek clarification and ask questions about it, we couldn\u2019t,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

But his curiosity was piqued. Gracey wanted to know if there was a way to track the timeline of when the encampments arrived, and whether there is a way to track and prevent habits or characteristics that \u201cmade this an area of opportunity to become an encampment.\u201d <\/p>\n

Blair, who oversees District 8, could verify some of the hotspots in the heatmap, but she too wanted to assess the data, as her district does not have as many DART hubs, yet the heatmap showed more service calls than she expected. It was also the first time council members had viewed the data because the material was only made public the day of the meeting, Gwinn said when asked by The News. <\/p>\n

Bazaldua said he thought the data deserved more scrutiny. \u201cThere were about a dozen stations that I could see that would have had one or at most two encampments measured,\u201d he said. \u201cBut then you look at other ones that were actually highlighted by him, where there is a concentration, and I wanted to know what other attributes were considered in the correlation of these concentrations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gwinn told The News he became interested in analyzing crime data after he saw repeated stories of dead bodies in waterways and in alleys. He looked at police data and filtered deaths that were recorded in public spaces such as alleys, highways, fields and parking lots, among others. <\/p>\n

However, Gwinn\u2019s analysis may come with its own limitations. <\/p>\n

For instance, Gwinn\u2019s data focused on the concentration of calls in a particular area. <\/p>\n

Kevin Oden, director of the Emergency Management and Crisis Response department, leads a team that regularly addresses homeless encampments. In November, city officials assessed 582 locations after they received service requests related to unsheltered residents. <\/p>\n

Of those, 96 were confirmed to have encampments. Thirty-six were within 300 feet of schools or neighborhoods. Nine had pets. \u201cWe were able to resolve 22 of the encampments without needing to do notices to vacate and clean up and all that,\u201d Oden told The News.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get service requests all the time if there\u2019s a guy moving up and down the street who has a shopping cart,\u201d he said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t include that as any sort of encampment. Those are just individuals that we can engage with and see if there\u2019s needs that can be met.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of a critical vote to fuel Dallas\u2019 homelessness response with $10 million, the debate over whether the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":333341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,14840,14841,80,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-436832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-city-council","11":"tag-dallas-city-hall","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115692892685864757","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}