How a strategic coalition is fighting homelessness in Dallas

Housing Forward is the 'backbone organization' in the fight against homelessness in Dallas, but the solution will require community buy-in, expanded federal funding and far more affordable housing on the ground

Housing Forward is leading the charge in the greater Dallas area against homelessness, a vexing problem that plagues many cities across the county, and in recent years the nonprofit has notched some significant victories in the effort. 

Still, the organization and the coalition of groups it leads face deep systemic challenges that continue to feed the pipeline of economic despair fueling the growth of homelessness in the Dallas area — and across the nation. Chief among those challenges is a lack of affordable housing, according to industry sources in the Dallas area who are attempting to address the crisis. 

As of November this year, Housing Forward and the network of service organizations it coordinates (called the All Neighbors Coalition) have met an ambitious goal by finding permanent shelter for some 2,800 previously homeless individuals in Dallas and Collin counties. That has been accomplished through the Housing Forward-led R.E.A.L Time Rehousing Initiative (or rapid rehousing) — an initiative funded by federal and private dollars that was launched in October 2021 and initially sought to rehouse 2,700 individuals.

The All Neighbors Coalition is a network of more than 140 public, private and nonprofit organizations working together to address homelessness in Dallas and Collin counties — the greater Dallas area. The nonprofit Housing Forward acts as the lead agency of the coalition, overseeing a data-driven homeless-management information system; coordinating access to services within the network; and facilitating training for service providers, among other programs.

The success of the rapid rehousing program to date has attracted additional public and private funding and resulted in a new goal of housing 6,000 individuals by 2025. The expanded goal is a recognition that even as Housing Forward and its coalition of organizations devoted to solving the homelessness crisis achieve important milestones in the greater Dallas area, the scope of the problem it seeks to address also continues to expand — and demand even more attention and resources.

The reality of the nation’s homelessness problem is that the goal posts keep moving. Housing Forward’s job is to ensure the homeless are not left behind in that game by providing them the tools and assistance necessary to effectively find and compete for scarce housing.

“Some of us talk about this system being like musical chairs because there’s only so many apartments that are ready to be moved into on any given day,” said Joli Angel Robinson, president and CEO of Housing Forward. “So, if you have 10 apartments available but you have 15 people needing an apartment, the people who are most equipped, the most connected and who have a support system that may be able to help with a downpayment, to help with moving costs, or they … can go fill out an application in the middle of the day or drive around and find a unit, they are going to get to the 10 available units much faster.”

The annual Point-in-Time count of unhoused individuals in Dallas and Collin counties, a federally mandated survey nationwide, shows that despite Housing Forward’s success in coordinating housing for nearly 3,000 individuals over the past two years, the number of unhoused on the streets of greater Dallas has continued to hover between 4,100 and 4,600 since 2018. 

The most recent report shows 4,244 individuals experienced homelessness in 2023 — evidence that the pipeline into homelessness in the greater Dallas area continues to evade a long-term solution, leaving Housing Forward in a position of swimming upstream against a powerful current.

In large part, the expanding number of homeless in the Dallas area and elsewhere around the nation is being amplified by a lack of deeply affordable housing available in the market, many industry experts argue. As more and more people compete for limited housing in a fast-growth urban area like Dallas, those individuals on the economic margins of society, often a paycheck or less away from homelessness, are often left with few options other than ending up on the street — a reality playing out daily in cities nationwide.

“We have over 4,000 people experiencing homelessness, and we need more housing yesterday — and today,” Robinson said.

Adding to the problem, according to Ian Mattingly, president of Dallas-based property management company Luma Residential, is a lack of federal dollars committed to the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program — a major rental-housing subsidy program for very low-income households. 

“Housing assistance was created under this administratively complicated, paternalistic system, and it’s not an entitlement, so only 2.2 million to 2.4 million families [nationwide] have access to Housing Choice Vouchers in the United States, despite the fact that if you look at it, tens of millions of people would qualify [for vouchers] under the criteria,” Mattingly said. “The real challenge is that [housing] is not an entitlement, and it is not something that the federal government has decided to put sufficient money into — to a level required to make sure housing is assessable to everyone long-term.”

The voucher program, also referred to as Section 8, is designed to cover rental costs to ensure very low-income families, the elderly and the disabled can afford housing. The HCV program has an annual budget nationwide of $27 billion, but demand for the vouchers exceeds supply by a long shot — “with only one in four eligible households receiving a voucher,” according to information released by the Cooper Housing Initiative, a private research foundation focused on the nation’s affordable-housing crisis.

“We have got to get serious about really focusing on creating and maintaining deeply affordable housing, not just for the population we serve [the unhoused), but people who are living at the margins, people that are making less than a livable wage, people that are on fixed incomes, whether that be the elderly or the disabled,” Robinson said. “…I boil it down to people that work in your city should have the opportunity to live in the city in which they work.”

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