First, an admission: I didn’t see the movie. I am not into comic books or comic book movies, as I shared on our old blog. I had reason to revisit that old post, Homelessness in Dallas is Wakanda, because of what Killmonger himself, Michael B. Jordan, recently said about homelessness: “I learned at a very young age that people who own less are not less than… The people who we help should not be defined by what they lack. Homelessness is not an identity or the result of someone’s mistakes. It is a result of a broken system (emphasis added), people falling through the cracks, racism and discrimination, a lack of affordable housing, and years of unfair pay.”
So, what do you do when you have a broken system, or as our good friend, Jeff Olivet has put it, a system that is not really broken, but is in fact working quite well, if the results we see on the ground are what you really wanted to produce? The answer may be hard, but it’s not that complicated: Build a better system.
This is true on the macro level. Since 2015, we have been building, perfecting and utilizing a homeless response system that will make homelessness, in Dallas and Collin Counties, rare, brief and nonrecurring. This is true on the micro level. Last week, on May 1, 2019, we began a new initiative designed to build, perfect and utilize a better system to end veteran homelessness: Our Veterans Challenge. During our last annual homeless count, we found 100 more homeless veterans than we did last year. So, we are challenging ourselves to house 100 veterans in 100 days.
Now, you might be wondering, how are we going to do that? This might sound boring and bureaucratic, but the core of what we will be doing is as follows: Our Veterans Committee will meet every two weeks, to discuss their general progress, strategies and tactics, what is working and what is not working. Our Veterans By Name List Committee will meet every two weeks too. A By Name List is exactly what it sounds like: It is a list of our homeless veterans. We go down the list name by name, to figure out how to house each and every one of them, crossing them off the list one by one. Our friends at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have already reviewed the full list of all 431 veterans, and we are going to divide the list up into smaller lists, prioritizing those within each of them. We will then assign each smaller list to a specific professional, who will be responsible for housing those on that list.
Just in May, we will hold several what the VA calls, “Admissions Events”. At these events, veterans will come in and have their status verified, so they can unlock benefits available to them, including special housing vouchers called HUD-VASH vouchers. HUD-VASH may sound like a skin condition, but it really stands for Housing and Urban Development – Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing. This is a wildly successful partnership between the VA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD provides housing and the VA provides services to end a veteran’s homelessness. Following these admissions events, we will hold a special event at the Dallas Housing Authority (DHA), and our friends at DHA will issue the vouchers.
So, once the veteran has a voucher, their homelessness has ended, right? Wrong! Now, we have to find them housing. It is a little easier to find housing for veterans, since under Dallas city ordinance, it is illegal to refuse to accept a veteran’s housing voucher. Under Dallas city ordinance, it is illegal to refuse to accept a veteran’s housing voucher. However, with the current Dallas rental housing market occupancy rate, it is still a challenge to find housing.
What happens when you don’t have enough of a specific resource? You can do one of two things: Use what you have in smarter, more creative ways, or obtain more of said resource. We will be doing both!
How do you use the supply of housing in a smarter, more creative way? One great way, which we have highlighted before, is having two veterans share their housing. With one housing unit, we end not one veteran’s homelessness but two veterans’ homelessness!
How do you obtain more of such a scarce resource? Didn’t we just say that the housing market occupancy rate is a challenge? Well, sure, but there are still apartments to be found, if you look for them. And there are still landlords who are willing to step up to the plate, do the right thing, and make smart business decisions, in the process.
This is an “all hands-on deck” effort. How are folks already helping us, and how can you help? Here are just a few examples:
- Asante Apartments, winner of the Newcomer of the Year award at MDHA’s Landlord Appreciation Luncheon earlier this year, has already expressed an interest in not only helping to house veterans during the challenge, but even in setting aside a specific eight unit building for this purpose. Do you have units to rent, to help veterans end their homelessness? Let us know!
- An anonymous benefactor has issued us a challenge: Raise $9,000 for the Flex Fund, to be used exclusively for veterans, and the benefactor will match that dollar for dollar. Give towards this goal and help us unlock this $9,000, for our veterans!
- Faith Forward Dallas at Thanksgiving Square will be providing 100 move-in kits. Hopefully, we will need more!
- All veterans housed will be enrolled in the partnership program we have with DART, which allows them to purchase DART passes for 50% off.
- Project ID will be helping our veterans obtain critical documents, necessary to access housing.
Now, we do have an agenda here; it’s not that hidden, either. As we said above, the idea is not just to help individual veterans during this challenge; the idea is to build, perfect and utilize a better system, so we can end veteran homelessness. We will use this challenge to learn about what works and what does not work, what gaps exist in our system and how we can fill them, what partners we have at the table and what partners need to be brought to the table.
If our community needs one more reason to rise to this challenge, here it is: Our friends at the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition ran a veterans challenge recently, with the same goal, 100 veterans in 100 days, and they housed 181 veterans! Are you really going to stand for Fort Worth beating you, Dallas?!
We ended the aforementioned post on our old blog with this question: “We, in Dallas, stand at a crossroads… There is no escaping that. Will we have the courage to rise to the challenge? Will we have the courage to marshal our abundant resources to end homelessness… Only time will tell.” 100 days is not a long time. The clock is ticking, Dallas; let’s get to it!
