Updated on March 2, 2021 at 10:54 am
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An important endeavor to get a better understanding of the homelessness situation in North Texas is underway in Dallas and Collin Counties.
But with the pandemic and the aftermath of a historic winter storm, this year’s count comes at a tricky time.
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The point-in-time count is required by federal law for anyone receiving grants from U.S. Housing and Urban Development to address homelessness issues. Hundreds of volunteers usually split up into groups and walk or drive to certain areas to literally count homeless individuals and conduct questionnaires to better understand their needs. Unsheltered homeless, those with disabilities and veteran homelessness are key data points gathered during the counts.
San Antonio s USAA donating $350,000 in storm s aftermath
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The USAA Foundation is donating $350,000 to six nonprofit organizations to assist with homelessness and food insecurity. A motorist makes his way down Vance Jackson Road last week.Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer
The USAA Foundation Inc. has committed to donate $350,000 to six local and national nonprofits to assist families in Texas affected by last week’s winter storm.
The six organizations that will receive grants are the San Antonio Food Bank and Haven for Hope in San Antonio; Team Rubicon, a national veterans organization that responds to disasters; and the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, Harmony Community Development Corp. and Minnie’s Food Pantry, all in Dallas.
Dallas 500 Honoree and Executive Director of Trio Programs at UNT Dallas Nakia Douglas
Douglas has a wide range of education experience and involvement in programs servicing “non-traditional” students, their families, and their communities.
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January 22, 2021
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Nakia Douglas’ education experience ranges from Teacher (Kinder, 1st, and 4th) to K – 12 Administrator (Elementary, Middle, Magnet, High School and Central Office) through the collegiate level. His efforts include several senior administrative positions in which he has developed and/or oversaw programs servicing “non-traditional” students, their families, and their communities.
Currently, Douglas serves as the Executive Director of TRIO and Pre-Collegiate Programs at the University of North Texas at Dallas. In this position, he is responsible for the development of Upward Bound, McNair Scholars, and Pre-Collegiate Program Partnerships to increase high
If you care about housing the homeless in Dallas, you need to know Mandy Chapman Semple
For months now, Mandy Chapman Semple has quietly worked behind the scenes to make sense of a homeless assistance network in North Texas that looks a lot like a bowl of spaghetti dozens of good-hearted providers pulling in different directions with no system in place to measure their own impact, let alone their collective impact on getting people off of the streets.
With the support of the Meadows Foundation, Dallas Foundation and six other major foundations, Semple, who is credited with making a dent in Houston’s homeless population in 2012, is working as a consultant on homelessness in Dallas. And what she’s noticed so far is cause for pause. “The path out of homelessness is not very clear,” she recently told the Dallas City Council. “The components are not organized in a way to make it easy and efficient to resolve their homelessness.”
The center launched Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities (SPARC) in 2016 in response to the overrepresentation of people of color in the nation’s homeless population. The city’s report was created in partnership with the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance. About 4,500 people in Dallas experienced some form of homelessness in January 2020, according to the alliance, which conducts the annual count of Dallas and Collin counties homeless populations. The vast and disproportionate number of people of color in the homeless population in Dallas is a testament to the historic and persistent structural racism that exists in this country.
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The report analyzes data from 2011-2016 to compare demographics of people experiencing homelessness with people in poverty and the general public. It also looked at racial and ethnic disparities in where people lived before becoming homeless and where they ended up afterward, all of which is influenced by race and ethnicity. T