There have been few jobs too big for Tom Dunning. Over the years, various Dallas mayors have called upon him to handle boards and commissions. He’s overseen the DFW Airport Board. He ran for mayor (losing to Laura Miller). And, most recently, he’s been Dallas’ homeless czar, appointed by Miller. (He stepped down just this summer.) Dunning remains a strong advocate for the bond proposal that would build a new homeless shelter in downtown Dallas and even thinks there could be something positive that comes out of the city’s experience with the hurricane evacuees who came to Dallas.
Rowlett: Why did you step down as homeless czar of Dallas?
Dunning: I told Mayor Miller last year that I would take the job for 12 months. So it was all planned that I would step down. And I will chair the Citizens’ Council starting in December.
Rowlett: What was the most surprising or difficult part of the job?
Dunning: I chaired the Homeless Council for Annette Strauss, so I had a pretty good handle on the homeless issues from 15 years ago. But back then I never had anyone come up to me to tell me that a relative or close friend was homeless, or that someone died on the streets because he was homeless. But this time around this has happened to me week after week after week.
Rowlett: You also made some recommendations 15 years ago. What happened to them?
Dunning: Well, that was another big surprise. We recommended that 500 SRO’s [single room occupancy units], transitional housing, be built. Now, 15 years later, we have a lot fewer than 500, while the Dallas homeless population has officially doubled from 3,000 to 6,000, with the chronic homeless from 250 to an official count of more than 1,000—and that 1,000 is an undercount. My best estimate of the chronic homeless is around 1,500, and the overall homeless in Dallas up to around 7,000.
Rowlett: Why do you think there’s an undercount?
Dunning: They disappear on the night of the counting. We go to places where they stay along the Trinity, under bridges, along White Rock Creek, along Turtle Creek, and they aren’t there. Another surprise to me was that the chronic homeless—those folks who just live on the streets all the time—are no longer just in downtown Dallas, but are spread out all over the city.
Rowlett: Is Dallas politically ready to help the homeless?
Dunning: I don’t think we have any choice. We really haven’t done anything in 15 years. We have about 2,200 shelter beds today, and that’s what we had back then, but we have at least doubled our overall homeless population. And I don’t see it as a political problem. After all, the city council voted 14 to one to put this issue before the voters, and 13 to two to put the new homeless shelter in the downtown location.
Rowlett: Dallas leaders seem to be ready to build the shelter, as long as it isn’t anyplace near them. Isn’t that hypocritical?
Dunning: I think that’s going to be true wherever you go. People don’t want it next door to them. What we want to build is called the Homeless Assistance Center, and the shelter portion should be relatively small. We will have a large pavilion outside where people can hang during the day if they don’t want to go inside, and they can also hang there at night, but the pavilion is not intended to be a permanent shelter by any means. Sure, if I own property right next door to it, I wouldn’t want it there, but you have to go where the homeless are and not where you wish they would be. And still the majority of the chronic homeless are in downtown Dallas.
Rowlett: How much overall will the shelter and the property cost?
Dunning: The three acres of property and a warehouse on it would cost around $3.5 million and what we would build would cost around $15 million. So, we’re looking at spending around $19 million. And this would be paid for by the bond program.
Rowlett: The National Coalition for the Homeless ranks Dallas as one of the meanest cities in America, accusing Dallas of criminalizing homelessness.
Dunning: That association is an advocacy group for homeless people, and many of these folks are formerly homeless. And they rank Dallas as one of the meanest cities because the City Council passed an ordinance against panhandling. But the fact is that few people are picked up under that ordinance. They’ve been arrested for panhandling, urinating and defecating in public, and when the judge hears that they are homeless, he sends them out the back door while the police officer is still filling out the paper work. So, unless someone is committing a major crime, the county is not putting these people in jail anyway. And the Dallas police officers I’ve talked to think the homeless like Dallas because we are not enforcing the ordinance against panhandling or the ordinance against sleeping on sidewalks. That has to change, and we have to give the homeless that assistance shelter.
Rowlett: Is there a connection between our growing homeless population and our crime rate?
Dunning: Not violent crime. The police tell me that most of the crime involving the homeless are relatively minor crimes: car break-ins, smashed glass, keying cars, public lewdness, aggressive panhandling, maybe sex in the streets. But I’m not aware of assaults or violent crime. I’m not saying it doesn’t occur, only that I’m not aware of it, and the officers say most of these crimes are minor. And while there are some predatory homeless people, they prey on other homeless. And homeless persons are probably more the victims of crimes than the perpetrators.
Rowlett: Why has the homeless population grown so dramatically?
Dunning: There are many reasons. About half the chronic homeless have mental health problems while others are alcohol or drug dependent. We have about 600 released prisoners coming back to Dallas every month, or people who are placed on probation, and many of them can’t find jobs and become homeless. And then there are people who are homeless only temporarily because they’ve lost their jobs or can’t pay their rent.
Rowlett: So, is it logical that our homeless population will grow because of the poor people displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita?
Dunning: I’m sure that some of them could become homeless here, but no one really knows. My feeling is that those folks who have jobs will go back to them. Others who find jobs here will stay here. I also asked this question of [City Manager] Mary Suhm. And she has no idea of the impact on the homeless population here, either. But I think it’s logical that most people would like to go back to wherever their home is.
Rowlett: Do you see any lasting impact on Dallas from the hurricane evacuees?
Dunning: I think there might be a positive impact. So many local people have reached out to help the homeless survivors of the hurricanes in so many ways. They’ve given money, food and clothes, and some have opened their homes and helped find jobs for the people left homeless. So I think these disasters have helped open our eyes to the problems of the homeless and to the fact that being homeless is not always a choice. Things happen that are beyond our control. And I am hearing more from our churches today, saying they want to help with the homeless issues in Dallas. We will be a better city if we can help those who can least help themselves.
Regular D Magazine contributor Tracy Rowlett is a news anchor and managing editor at CBS Channel 11.
