Homelessness plan in Dallas County could require $60 a year property tax hike

Dallas County’s lead homelessness agency wants residents to pay about $60 more a year to keep people off the streets, but county leaders aren’t convinced the group’s plan will work. 

Dallas County commissioners are weighing whether to ask voters in November to approve a property tax increase of 2.4 cents per $100 valuation to fund homelessness services. According to Housing Forward, which coordinates homelessness response in Dallas and Collin counties, the tax would cost the average homeowner about $5 a month and raise roughly $100 million a year.  

Sarah Kahn, president and CEO of Housing Forward, told commissioners Monday that the $100 million would beef up programs her group believes are working. These include expanding street response teams to address encampments and people sleeping outside, adding a central intake location and hiring more staff to connect people to shelter or treatment instead of jail or the streets. 

The proposal comes as Dallas and Dallas County grapple with a growing homelessness crisis that is straining neighborhoods and shelters. In December and January, Dallas and Dallas County officials approved $20 million total for Housing Forward to house about 1,100 people countywide and prevent encampments, mostly in downtown Dallas. Her group’s data shows 10,800 households need help exiting homelessness annually.  

The current system can’t afford to help 4,600 households, more than 40 percent of the homeless population, according to data from Housing Forward. Kahn also noted that around 90% of homelessness funding comes from federal sources, with no sustainable local funding to meet rising needs. 

“The reality is, we’re facing a moment where we are going to pay for this one way or the other,” Kahn said during the committee meeting. 

The other way, she said, is paying nearly $500 million a year in taxpayer costs for emergency response, crisis systems and hospital and jail stays for people without stable shelter.   

The Commissioners Court has until August to decide whether to put the measure in front of voters this November. 

But the proposal faced skepticism from commissioners John Wiley Price and Elba Garcia. 

Price questioned whether the plan would reduce jail overcrowding or Parkland Hospital visits. He noted the Dallas County jail, which has a capacity of 7,600, currently holds 2,000 people on suspicion of criminal trespass, many without permanent home addresses. He added that’s along with hundreds of others who should be in state custody due to mental health or other issues.  

Price said the plan doesn’t fully account for existing efforts or the logistical challenges of managing the area’s homelessness system. 

“My concern is this doesn’t seem to be well thought out,” Price said. 

Garcia raised concerns about the rising financial burden on residents, who recently approved a $6.2 billion Dallas ISD bond funded by property tax increases. Those hikes would already increase the average homeowner’s property tax bill by about $33 a year. 

Voters may also face a potential 3-cent property tax increase for childcare funding on the November ballot, adding roughly $120 a year to the average homeowner’s property tax bill.  

Garcia also questioned how the expanded homelessness program would be managed, saying it lacked clarity on how people would be housed, cost breakdowns, and a plan to prevent people from returning to homelessness after leaving the program. 

“When I make a decision, I have to be sure it’s good for everybody,” Garcia said. 

Commissioner Andy Sommerman, who chairs the committee, told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday that he asked Housing Forward to provide more details on the proposal to each commissioner. He said he’d like to see a clear, data-driven explanation of how tax revenue would be spent and how each funded service would reduce costs and improve outcomes across the county. 

“If there’s enough desire by the commissioners to bring this up to the full vote, then it’ll be brought,” he said. “But it depends on how these individual meetings go.” 

Kahn told The News on Tuesday that her group hopes commissioners will put the proposal to a vote in November but would “look forward to working with them on other solutions” if it doesn’t happen. However, she noted that no sustainable and significant local funding source for addressing homelessness has been identified beyond 2026. 

“We’ve maxed the amount of federal funding that we can bring in, but it’s clearly not enough,” Kahn said. “And if we don’t have a solution to fill that gap after next year, we risk seeing a huge surge of street homelessness and an inability to meet the needs every year after that.”