Dallas puts brakes on South Hampton Homeless Plan

The Dallas City Council put brakes on a controversial plan for homeless housing at a former hospital building on South Hampton Road on Wednesday.

The two city council members representing the neighborhood said they favor selling the 12-acre hospital campus and using the money for another unfinished homeless housing project.

The former hospital is surrounded by homes, a city library connected to a public school and Kiest Park.

Neighbors were not consulted before the city paid $6.5 million in 2017 bond money earmarked for homeless housing to buy the hospital in January 2022.

NBC5 first reported the plan.

Wednesday city staff asked the council to approve $34,000 of work already done by a consultant and another $110,000 in future work to prepare options for a March city council committee review of the project.

“And those options will include what our intended purpose was, which was to move forward with providing some level of service for those individuals who are unsheltered, but also the potential opportunities we might have for how we dispose of the property,” Deputy Dallas City Manager Kim Tolbert said.

Selling the hospital property is what the two neighborhood council members want after neighbor complaints.

The city council voted only to approve money for the consultant work already done. It delayed the additional $110,000.

“In terms of my community, just talking with them over the past few months, they are getting extremely frustrated with this process. They really want it to be put to bed,” Council Member Carolyn King Arnold said.

Councilman Zarin Gracey said he is still trying to keep an open mind about the options but also wanted residents to hear his preference.

“It is my desire to sell that property and intention to use those proceeds to build out Independence Boulevard,” Gracey said.

The city also purchased the former hotel at 4150 Independence Boulevard as a future permanent supportive housing location for previously homeless people.

The city evicted tenants who had been living there to make way for renovations that were finally approved Wednesday with $2.5 million from Dallas County.

But completing the renovation will require millions more.

Office of Homeless Solutions Director Christine Crossley said a previous proposal was over $8 million.

“We do have proposals that are from an older process. They’re stale now. But I think that given the cost for construction and inflation, I would expect those proposals to be under what we need now,” Crossley said.

Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia sent the city a letter Wednesday saying a homeless facility is not appropriate on the Hampton site and Dallas County would contribute nothing to that project. It would also require substantial additional spending from some other source of money to provide renovation and any services at the Hampton location.

Garcia's letter did support selling the Hampton site to build affordable single-family homes on the land.

Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax said there would be complications from the sale of that property that was purchased with bond funds dedicated to homeless services.

“I would not recommend as the City Manager just selling the property on the open market and let the market determine what it is because the property sat vacant for many, many years,” Broadnax said.

Councilman Omar Narvaez said there is a great need in Dallas for additional homeless services and the Hampton plan should not be dropped yet.

“We have a really fantastic opportunity here to help those with the least,” Narvaez said. “We just want to be sure these people in our city who don’t have shelter are treated with dignity and respect. They’re still human beings.”

After spending millions of public dollars, Council Member Cara Mendelsohn has been critical of the city’s failure to house anyone in these two sites and at a third one on Fort Worth Avenue formerly known as the Miramar Hotel.

She supported ending the Hampton plan.

"We need additional services and locations for folks to go and if this isn’t going to be it, lets find something we can open the door for," Mendelsohn said.

Future meetings will be held to make final decisions but city staff will do the work with no further spending on consultants.