No Shelter at City Hall?

For years, the city’s homeless shelters and outreach programs had an open door to the mayor’s office. Starke Taylor made caring for the homeless a priority, and his successor, Annette Strauss, formed the Mayor’s Homeless Advisory Board and met monthly with the city’s seven major care providers.

“You knew that Annette Strauss and Starke Taylor would listen to you,” says Father Jerry Hill, director of the Austin Street Shelter. “They were aware of what went on around them.”

Things haven’t been so open, some say, under Mayor Steve Bartlett. After Bartlett took office in 1991, the seven members of the advisory board-now called the Dallas Association of Services for the Homeless (DASH) hoped to meet regularly with him. Besides telephoning, DASH sent Bartlett three letters over a five-month period (one hand-delivered). DASH does meet quarterly with City Manager Jan Hart, but Bartlett has yet to respond, care providers say.

“When Annette Strauss was in office, we had much more open access,” says Pam Schaefer, executive director of the Trinity Ministry to the Poor. “Now, that’s not so. If you work within the system, change should be possible, but perhaps not in Dallas. There is just something organically wrong.” ’The urban problems are more out of control,” says Father Hill. “I don’t think [City Hall] is in touch with what’s going on in this downtown area.”