Tent City officially closed; new camps popping up in Dallas
The City of Dallas officially closed Tent City on Tuesday, but the problem of homelessness now seems to be popping up in other parts of the city.
Homeless advocates tell FOX4 that most of the people who lived in Tent City have simply picked up their tents and moved down the road to a different part underneath Interstate 45. Clothes and trash left behind was the only sign of the hundreds of people who used to live in Tent City.
“Some of them are getting into shelters, some of them are getting into housing, but a lot of them have to go to other smaller tent cities,” said David Timothy, Executive Director of the SoupMobile.
A new tent city popped up overnight right behind the SoupMobile's church.
“I started moving yesterday, I finished up this morning,” said a man known as Blue Eyes, who moved with his wife and dogs to a new camping location. “You got two big, full grown dogs, and 7 pups, where are you going to get an apartment?”
FOX4 found other tents popping up just outside the city's fences and under I-35 at Oak Lawn.
“That could become a homeless whack-a-mole situation, we're trying avoid that by reaching out further, we're trying to get ahead of the problem this time,” said Dave Hogan, Dallas Police - Crisis Intervention Team.
City leaders and police plan to meet later this week to figure out what they're going to do about new tent cities popping up.
Police also plan to patrol the Tent City site to make sure no one gets back into the sections just cleared by officials.
But advocates say the reality is that simply closing down one big campsite can’t fix homelessness in Dallas.
“There is no easy solution to the Tent City problem,” Timothy said.