Dallas ended downtown homelessness. Trump wants to change the rules.

Washington Post

20 hours ago

DALLAS — After years of homeless encampments spreading across downtown, officials here tried something new: They enforced a local law against sleeping on the streets. And instead of shuffling people to other neighborhoods, they offered wraparound social services — and a permanent place to live.
The approach worked. Even as homelessness nationwide surged to record levels, Dallas has emerged as a national model. The city declared an end to downtown homelessness in May after more than 270 people moved off the streets.
But in Washington, as President Donald Trump decries homelessness and pledges to clear out 'slums' in big cities, the administration is looking to end the program that fueled Dallas's success as part of a broader overhaul of federal homelessness funding. Meanwhile, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner has blasted the program, known as Continuum of Care, as 'a tool by the left to push a woke agenda at the expense of people in need.'
The $3.6 billion program helps cities coordinate strategies that prioritize long-term housing over short-term options and emergency shelters. In Dallas, homelessness advocates, city officials and business owners alike say their approach wouldn't have worked without it. But the White House budget proposes ending Continuum of Care in fiscal 2026 by consolidating it with another initiative, the Emergency Solutions Grants Program. That program prioritizes shelters and transitional housing, street outreach, and services like substance abuse treatment and mental health services.
HUD officials said the changes would leave more than $4 billion to combat homelessness, get people in treatment faster and cut dependency on federal aid.
'Maintaining the status quo is unacceptable for every person sleeping outside and every taxpayer entrusting HUD to steward their resources,' HUD spokeswoman Kasey Lovett said in a statement. 'HUD is committed to prioritizing treatment and recovery, holding grantees to higher standards of effectiveness, and empowering local leaders to protect public safety.'
The proposals come as the administration says it is cracking down on homelessness. Last month, Trump issued an executive order making it easier to remove outdoor encampments and put people in mental health or addiction treatment, including involuntary commitment. On Monday, when announcing he was putting the D.C. police under federal control, Trump said he would also clear the nation's capital of homeless people.
'We're getting rid of the people from underpasses and public spaces from all over the city,' he told reporters.
Housing economists and advocates say the proposed changes will make it harder to address chronic homelessness. They note that places like San Bernardino, California, and Montgomery County, Maryland, also have made strides under Continuum of Care, which funded more than 1,000 recipients in 2024. Estimates from the National Alliance to End Homelessness predict that Trump's budget proposal would end funding for more than 166,000 permanent supportive housing units and increase homelessness by 36 percent.
In Dallas, the proposals threaten $51 million in annual grants, according to Housing Forward, the nonprofit that coordinates the area's work through Continuum of Care. If that funding isn't replaced or can't be used in the same ways, about 420 veterans would become homeless each year, and about 400 building owners and landlords would stop collecting rental aid, the group warned. Emergency shelters would not be able to absorb everyone, the group said, and people would have no place to go but back outside.
'Without it, I don't believe we would have the same level of success we have seen in Dallas,' City Manager Kimberly Tolbert told The Washington Post.
'This is not the time to start having these consolidations,' Tolbert added. 'This is the time when something is working, you want to amplify that. You want to enhance it.'
On a warm June afternoon, the sidewalk in front of the Dallas Public Library — once home to 50 tents — was clear. A grassy hill over the highway was empty of the tarps and construction signs that had once served as ceilings and walls. The people who used to camp downtown were in their own apartments, local officials said. Many had gotten mental health treatment, started jobs and reconnected with family.
Among them is Donald Wilson. For four months last year, Wilson slept in a tent in a downtown park with some clothes and a red wagon. Then an outreach worker came to tell him he wasn't allowed to sleep outside and offered him his own apartment.
Within days, nonprofit employees helped Wilson get his birth certificate and update his driver's license. A street medicine team got Wilson back on medications. City officials drove him to appointments. He moved into a studio the day before Thanksgiving.
'Ever since then, I've been comfortable,' said Wilson, 58.
The well-oiled machine that got Wilson off the streets didn't always exist in Dallas. Less than a decade ago, a slew of private and public groups took a siloed approach to tackling homelessness. The area's lead agency, a predecessor to Housing Forward, wasn't coordinating organizations under a shared strategy. Grants from HUD got smaller because of the lack of progress.
That changed in 2021, when fresh leadership and a rebrand breathed new life into Dallas's Continuum of Care. Today, Housing Forward coordinates more than 150 partners — city hall, police, shelters, housing providers, business owners — to patrol downtown, strictly enforce local laws, take newcomers to shelters and keep beds turning over by getting people permanent housing. Those who need mental health care can get it, or the police are called if someone is committing a crime.
Housing Forward President and CEO Sarah Kahn said people have become much more willing to go to a shelter because they know it isn't a dead end. Instead, 'shelter becomes the place where you go to get housed,' she said.
For years, this 'housing first' strategy has been a leading approach to homelessness. The idea is that with stable housing, people can better take advantage of other supports like drug treatment. They can get homes without a requirement that they have jobs or be sober.
The Trump administration is proposing to direct more dollars to emergency shelter and short-term transitional housing, plus support services to get people self-sufficient and living on their own. HUD officials familiar with the proposal said it wouldn't drastically cut funding but would add new guardrails on how money should be used.
While Congress considers Trump's proposal — including House and Senate draft budgets that fund the program — HUD is reexamining the current process. At the end of the Biden administration, the Continuum of Care cycle shifted from one year to two. The first year of funding has been distributed, and second-year funds were expected to be renewed without new applications.
But HUD is asking communities to submit fresh paperwork, in part to filter out projects the administration doesn't support, according to documents reviewed by The Post and a HUD staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. A July 3 email to grantees, obtained by The Post, said the application cycle would offer opportunities for 'new types of projects,' including street outreach and transitional housing programs. It would also focus on treatment and recovery and increasing peoples' incomes. Faith-based groups, which were already eligible, are encouraged to apply.
HUD said the moves ensure that grants aren't green-lit on autopilot and boost accountability during a homelessness crisis. Since 2013, even as America's supply of permanent supportive housing units has risen by nearly 40 percent, chronic homelessness has gone up by 63 percent, they said.
HUD officials also pointed to a 2021 study from researchers associated with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program that tracked dozens of chronically homeless people in Boston who were put in permanent supportive housing. Over 14 years, nearly half died. Housing retention was strong after the first year, but fell to 36 percent at or after five years.
Homelessness advocates counter that swift and permanent housing, combined with other supports, produces the best outcomes. Research by the Urban Institute and the Evaluation Center at the University of Colorado at Denver looked at supportive housing outcomes over five years. It found that people in Denver's supportive housing program stayed housed much longer and received more housing assistance than those who got usual services in their community. They also stayed in shelters and jails less often, and had fewer interactions with police.
Meanwhile, in 2015, the National Alliance to End Homeless analyzed a study that looked at multiple crisis interventions — including transitional housing, rapid rehousing and usual care — as well as long-term housing subsidies. It concluded that long-term subsidies were the most successful at ending family homelessness. It also found that transitional housing was the most expensive 'by a considerable magnitude, but it had no better, and in some respects poorer, outcomes compared to the other crisis interventions.'
No one in Dallas says the job is done. Even with an end to downtown homelessness, new people turn up daily, arriving on Greyhound buses and spending hot days inside the public library. On a recent afternoon, one man pushed a wheelchair filled with pillows and other possessions. Another chewed a slice of free pizza.
If they tried to sleep outside, Continuum of Care would kick into action: Outreach workers would approach the men, and offer to take them to shelters and find them permanent housing.
Kahn said she routinely fields calls asking why the group doesn't just fund another emergency shelter and stop there. Her response: And then what?
Wilson said he would probably still be on the streets if he had been booted from his tent without somewhere more permanent to go. Over the years, he worked at warehouses and construction sites but struggled to cover his rent. He lived off and on with family members before settling into the tent where outreach workers met him last year.
Eight months after moving into his studio, part of downtown is still with him: the friends who gather to play chess outside. When everyone got apartments, Wilson wanted them to stick together.
He doesn't have a job yet, but Wilson said having a real home has stabilized many parts of his life. Between a bathroom, a bed, a television and a kitchenette to make his favorite cornbread, he said, he has what he needs.