"The only solution to homelessness is housing. Start from there
and all the other issues of those living on the streets can be
addressed."
— Christy Respress, Executive Director of Pathways to Housing DC.
On October 27, 2025, the Richardson City Council reviewed and discussed the city's housing needs assessment and strategy. In two hours and fifteen minutes, the words "homeless" and "unhoused" were spoken exactly zero times.
On November 3, 2025, the City Council reviewed and discussed the city's unhoused initiatives. In just under an hour of discussion, that previous meeting about the city's housing needs assessment was referenced exactly zero times. It was like homelessness and housing needs were two completely different problems. Some of us are living on the same planet but in different worlds.
What follows are notes I made while listening to the discussion.
Riley Thomason, Assistant to the City Manager, said, there "is a new initiative called the unhoused internal committee that was launched this end of summer, early fall window, and it serves as a platform for information sharing and collaboration across departments." Better late than never, I guess, but we need more than information sharing. We need actions.
Riley Thomason said, "We developed a new resource to help our city staff quickly and confidently connect individuals seeking assistance with the most appropriate community services." A quick sampling of websites (RISD, various Dallas County ones) shows lots of lists of resources, but none with what's most needed and that is permanent housing.
RPD Chief Gary Tittle, in a bit of mixed-messaging that makes my point for me, said the RPD is "contacting homeless individuals to direct them to resources," but he admitted, "What we need is truly an abundance of resources that I don't know that we have."
Chief Tittle instead talked about things he can do, like using foot patrols for "extra enforcement," riding DART "to address crime," and "locating and cleaning up encampments." He talked about working with "business complexes, churches, restaurants and apartment complexes" to enforce 60 "criminal trespass affidavits." I noted the irony in how "churches" are included in that list. Later, we'll hear about how the city wants to work more with churches. With Chief Tittle explaining how his department is already working with churches through criminal trespass enforcement, maybe we ought to vet which churches we work with. Same planet, different worlds.
Chief Tittle said, "We also offer the warming center out of the Richardson Police Department during those very cold, cold winter nights. Also we have some cooling centers, as it relates to the PD lobby, during the extreme summer months." Good for Richardson. That was the closest that anyone came all night to mentioning something for the unhoused that involved, you know, housing them, even if it's just temporary shelter on cold winter nights.
Chief Tittle said, "Tools of enforcement that we have, the Texas Penal Code prohibits camping, the Richardson city ordinance prohibits sleeping in public as it relates to sidewalk, alleyway, streets or city park. We also have the park curfew. We also have a solicitation without a permit ordinance as an enforcement tool."
Chief Tittle said, "Most recently in the budget, you all afforded us the opportunity to go out and hire a mental health specialist, and just today, we have posted that position." Hooray. It's not housing, but at least it's not stricter enforcement, like so much of the rest of the chief's presentation was, despite the fact that he knows, as he also said, "First and foremost, homelessness, just like mental health, it's not criminal, and we have to recognize that."
Chief Tittle said, "Unfortunately, a lot of times when the officers engage with individuals on the street, they're simply not looking for resources." Or it could be that people know that what resources are offered are inadequate. Homeless people also know, as Tittle said earlier, "What we need is truly an abundance of resources that I don't know that we have."
Chief Tittle made a revealing point when he said, "First and foremost, our HELP team [Homeless Engagement & Liaison Program], they are actually patrol officers first, and they are HELP teams second." We shouldn't be surprised if homelessness gets the short end of the stick. We are burdening the police with a responsibility that they know and admit publicly isn't their priority.
Council member Jennifer Justice asked what the city council can do. Officer Jeremy Savage answered: "When we first started the HELP Program in 2022, I partnered with OurCalling [a 501c3 nonprofit], and we had that for about the first year and a half, where they would come out with me and do monthly ride alongs, and I was bringing resources into the city. And on several occasions, we were able to contact somebody, meet somebody, and pair them up with services and get them off the street that same day. And again, as the chief mentioned, we lost that resource, and that is a shortcoming right now, so I don't have that, and now we're essentially handing out resources that the individual has to go seek out, instead of bringing the resources to them. So definitely that's a shortfall that needs assistance from the council."
Ding! Ding! Ding! That's an alarm bell ringing loud and clear. There should be services either offered by the city itself or at least subsidized by the city that RPD can offer to unhoused people that will "get them off the street that same day." I expect that Justice knew what kind of answer she was going to get before she asked her question. Now I hope she follows through by using the answer to support her future request for funding to meet the need.
Council member Curtis Dorian said, "It's interesting that we are talking about this tonight, because literally, this past week, I met with the owner of a few of the buildings in my district... And he says, at night, the homeless will come in to a corridor between the buildings with restaurants and outdoor seating. And he says that they will be caught sleeping there. They take all the cushions off the chairs, the benches, and he says, I don't know what to do... And I wanted to bring this to your attention, because it happens over and over, especially in that area."
Dorian acts like this will be news to Richardson police, or maybe that this meeting's purpose is for council members to file requests for police service. He can use his time that way if he wants but it's Dorian's and the rest of the council's responsibility to try to solve homelessness through policy changes and funding. That's the message Chief Tittle and Officer Savage are sending loud clear. Listen to them instead of bringing your problems to them.
Council member Arefin asked, "Now this is my last question, ...do you think you need more resources?" Chief Tittle answered, "Yes, sir, we need more resources. What's that look like? I think that's for the greater discussion." I hope Arefin didn't ask this question without knowing what the answer was going to be. I hope he planned to use the obvious answer to support a call for more resources. If so, that didn't come from Arefin, at least not right away.
Council member Dan Barrios asked, "OurCalling was the one we were working with... They don't have the resources we thought initially. Are there other people in that space that we should be looking at?" Chief Tittle answered, "There's really not a true replacement for us in that vein, if you will. And so we're kind of in the same boat a lot of people are in, and that is looking for more resources."
Ding! Ding! Ding! There's that alarm bell again calling for council response. As was said earlier, there should be services either offered by the city itself or at least subsidized by the city. That's the city council's responsibility.
Council member Joe Corcoran asked, "What value do some of these regional organizations that we're a part of provide to resolving [the problem] of different cities just trying to move people across these various city and jurisdictional lines? That seems like a pretty endless game of cat and mouse." Right. Too many people see the solution as moving homeless people somewhere else, when in fact, as Christy Respress said, "The only solution to homelessness is housing."
City Manager Don Magner interjected here, "We provide two organizations a million dollars a year. If this is a priority, just like other social issues are, we need to be working with those two organizations to decide what part of their work plan and how much of their resources they can put towards this. If this is a priority for the council, we shouldn't accept the answer, 'We don't do that.' I truly believe that we have existing partnerships that we can help evolve and we can help refine their mission so that it meets our goals." Magner was the first one to bring up funding from the city. And a ballpark number that suggests that millions of dollars might be what's needed.
Mayor Amir Omar responded to Magner's comments about funding. "Do we have any paid partnerships outside of the ones you referred to earlier? You mentioned that OurCalling was kind of here for a while, but maybe they went away when there wasn't necessarily an active participation financially, perhaps, with us as a city. Is that still a possibility? And does something like that at least begin to be a potential option, versus expanding some of the scope that we have with the others?"
Omar then took a stand on increased funding, saying, "I think it's a priority, and I'm one of seven, but I personally think it's a priority...I'd very much be interested in at least understanding what kind of investment we're talking about, considering a fixed budget, what sort of thing we would have to step away from in order to make that investment in this cycle and then go from there."
Omar wants the council to answer the alarm bells. So do I. By all means work with our partners, expand our partnerships, but don't give up when those partners collapse under financial strain. Richardson needs to do more itself.
Justice replied, "I will just echo everything you said. I think you said it really well." Seeing heads nodding approval all the way down the dais, Omar questioned, "Everyone generally is okay with that?" and then said, "All right. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Officer Savage. Thank you, Riley. Great presentation."
The next agenda item was to discuss a potential bond package for 2026 for traffic control infrastructure. Council members were freely throwing additional millions of dollars into the package to complete ADA compliance at intersections. My optimism rose. Surely, I thought, they will be generous with funding to address homelessness, too. And not just giving the police more money for enforcement, but investing in solutions that get at the root of the problem, which, to repeat for the n-th time, is:
"The only solution to homelessness is housing. Start from there and all
the other issues of those living on the streets can be addressed."
— Christy Respress, Executive Director of Pathways to Housing DC.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
"A room full of plans,
but none with an open door.
Home is the first step."
—h/t ChatGPT
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