Richard Garrett lost his job, his girlfriend and his home. With help, he’s on a new path
From KERA News:
Richard Garrett's dog was often the first thing people noticed about him, back when he lived under the bridge. A squat gray pup, Richard says he found Baby when she was young enough to have puppy energy, but old enough to have clearly given birth. Shy but gentle, Richard guessed she was maybe a couple years old.
Last fall, a team of outreach workers approached Richard and the two dozen other people living in the small tent city by the freeway in East Dallas. They had a surprising offer: Work with us and we'll help you get your own apartment and connect you to services that will help you get your life together.
Richard wasn't sure these strangers promising help were for real. No one here wanted to remain homeless, Richard says. But homeless services hadn't done much for anyone around here.
"I wanted to know the real deal," he says. So he talked to the person who seemed like she was in charge: Hannah Sims, who leads "encampment decommissioning" for a nonprofit organization called Housing Forward.
Encampment decommissioning is a relatively new way that the city of Dallas and local nonprofits are tackling unsheltered homelessness by helping knock down barriers that keep people from moving a place of their own — and giving them the support they need to stay there.
"When Hannah come in talking about apartments, that got my attention," Richard says. "But I was skeptical."
Sims also assured Richard that Baby would be able to move with him, and she'd help get the dog certified as an emotional support animal.
Richard says his skepticism waned as, even in the cold and rain, outreach workers showed up week after week under the bridge. It took a team of more than 20 people from at least seven different organizations and agencies almost four months to help nearly two dozen people move out of tents and into their new homes.
So far, 25 homeless encampments across Dallas, with 370 people given the chance to end their homelessness for good. Sims says the goal is the close encampments permanently, so no one else can stay there. And by the time the process is completed, "everyone who wants to be housed has been housed."
The first hurdle, Sims says, is getting buy-in from people who've been let down before. Some may have had promises of help that never materialized. Sometimes, people were offered housing that came with conditions they couldn't or wouldn't meet — like getting sober. Many of the residents at this encampment worried they'd get housing now, only to lose it again and wind up back on the streets.
Sims says there's a lot of shame, vulnerability and trauma in the experience of being homeless, and that the team works to convince people living in encampments that they want to get them on a path to healing and stability, "to make sure you don't have to come back out here again."
When Sims started working in homeless outreach six years ago, she says the system wasn't set up to help people living on the streets end their homelessness.
They needed permanent supportive housing — a model that combines long-term housing vouchers with on-going help from a caseworker to make sure folks remain stably housed — but there weren't very many permanent supportive housing units available.
Largely, she says, when encampments like the one Richard lived in were closed, pushing people out with nowhere to go. She'd try to keep in touch with clients, but she didn't have much to offer them.
"The options that we had at the time were to close an encampment, but you're not really offering a viable housing option. So those people just inevitably scatter," she says.
This decommissioning process, she says, is a sea-change in the way nonprofits and local agencies deal with homelessness, made possible by a massive surge in federal funding starting in 2021.
Outreach teams show up consistently to build trust, and help each individual clear dozens of complicated obstacles. Sometimes just keeping track of people is hard — many don't have phones, they don't keep regular schedules.
On one day in December, Sims enlists Richard's help to track down his friend.
"You know how you met with the housing people? He hasn't done that yet, so he's way behind and he really needs to do it," she tells him.
These conversations happen a lot over the months. Over time, outreach workers learn each individual's unique set of needs and challenges, move them through dozens of bureaucratic hurdles, and help them troubleshoot short-term needs to keep them from falling off track. They also hear their stories.
Never saw it coming
Like most people, homelessness came as a surprise for Richard. He says he left home in his teens to move to Texas, where he started working in the construction industry. He's done pretty much every kind of job in the field — from helping build big box stores across the country to fine carpentry in the homes of wealthy Dallasites. His eyes light up talking about complicated woodworking projects in the past.
Things hadn't always been easy for Richard, but he thought he was in a good place when the pandemic hit. Not long after that, he'd lost pretty much everything. He was building houses out of state until COVID shut down his work. He came back to the home in Fort Worth that he shared with his girlfriend of 10 years. And then, she broke up with him and kicked him out. He'd barely recovered from COVID and he says he still doesn't understand how things went so wrong.
"I went from having it all to having nothing. And being on the street. And that threw me for a loop," he says. "I ended up going back to drugs. I was just totally overwhelmed and heart broke too."
Richard crashed at a friend's house until he couldn't. And before long, he was homeless and reduced to panhandling for money to buy food or drugs or whatever else he needed — he says he often avoided leaving his tent.
"They look at you like you're the scum of the earth, and it's hard to deal with sometimes," he says. "It's not easy being a bum."
During the decommissioning process, workers from the North Texas Behavioral Health Authority offer to connect folks under the bridge to mental health and addiction treatment. Richard says that helped him. While most people with substance abuse disorders or mental illness never become homeless — it becomes an added challenge for those who do.
"I've got manic depression so sometimes it's hard for me to just get out of bed," he says. "Now I'm starting to get some good things in my life where I do have some things worth living for."
Help on the way
People who are unsheltered represent a minority of people experiencing homelessness, but their needs are often the greatest. Most have been homeless for a long time, and many have a mix of complex challenges to overcome. So outreach workers call in specialists to help get them off the street.
That includes a blue Parkland Hospital mobile clinic, which parked across the street a couple days in December to meet with encampment residentsSims says most people here haven't seen a doctor for years — and their health has been degraded by life on the street.
"They are getting them connected to primary care, scheduling follow up appointments," she says. "They have an actual pharmacy on board."
These medical check-ins are also crucial to diagnose disabling conditions that qualify them for permanent supportive housing programs.
Next to the Parkland bus, another team — this one from The Stewpot, a nonprofit organization that focuses on helping the homeless, gets started on a major bureaucratic challenge: Replacing identification documents like birth certificates, social security cards and state IDs that have been lost or stolen.
Twana Northcutt leads that effort, and says certified medical records from Parkland can be used to begin the weeks-long process of working across at least three different bureaucracies.
"So when they come up for housing, everything's already in the system, they have their state ID, and then they can transition into housing," Northcutt says.
A setback
In February, Richard finally gets word that he's approved for an apartment. But that good news was overshadowed.
Days before, someone stole his dog, Baby.
"I've been kind of stuck I don't know what to do," he says, laying in his tent, dejected.
After waiting so long to finally move out of here, Richard says now, if he leaves, he knows he'll never see his dog again.
"I never thought I'd be wanting to hold off now, I've been waiting for so long for it to happen," he says.
This kind of setback can derail getting someone off the streets, says Alonzo Grape. He manages encampment decommissioning for the city of Dallas.
"Relationships are important, and we're not here to be the arbiter of what relationship is important or not. It's a dog to you, it's a companion to him," Grape says.
Grape and the other outreach workers navigate setbacks with others in the camp. One man, a veteran with PTSD, refuses to see a doctor. One ended up in jail, and another — a cancer patient — in the hospital. Others disappear when they thought they might be able to move in with family, only to come back later.
Grape says his priority when working with folks in the encampment is to get them housing.
"If there's an alternative route that's just as safe, just as effective, where you can change," he says, "I'm all for that too."
The loss of his dog doesn't ultimately derail Richard. Days before he was set to move, he gets a welcome surprise.
His friends give him an abandoned puppy — white with brown and tan spots.
Richard names him Marvin — and soon, Richard and Marvin are settling into their new home.
