Inflation, rising housing costs are making homelessness in Denton even worse

She spent four years in Dallas and one year in Denton among them on the streets, including eight months waiting on an affordable apartment to become available. Her addiction led her to the streets. She’s been battling it for 26 years. Becoming sober was difficult without a permanent home, but she said she overcame her addiction and left the streets in April.

But the memories of the unsheltered lifestyle still haunt her.

“I don’t forget where I came from, and very easily, I could be out there any minute,” Duckworth said. “It happens that quick.”

It’s part of the reason she has become an outspoken advocate for the street population and appeared in front of Denton City Council members at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

Her family knows her as “Mama T.” They turn to her for advice and for help. She told council members she doesn’t know what to tell them. There are too many people for the services that are being offered in Denton to keep all of them off the streets. There is nowhere for them to go.

“I’m here to ask again for a solution to the overflow of people who cannot get a bed in the shelter,” she began during the public comment period Tuesday night at City Hall. “Even for inclement weather, when they put cots out, it’s not enough. There’s people everywhere. If you drive around, there’s people everywhere, all over the place. And there are repeated people who cannot get a bed, cannot get a bed on repeated nights.

“Whether we open another place, put up more cots in more space there, whatever, there needs to be a solution to it. I know there’s another facility opening in December. But it’s not open now. There’s people out there suffering now. It is hot. It is hot. Um, it’s gross and sticky, insect-infected …”

She paused and bowed her head, wrestling with the tears. A few moments passed, and she looked at the six council members on the dais in front of her.

“And I don’t know what to tell people,” she continued. “I don’t know where to tell them to go for help. I really don’t. That’s why I’m here asking.”

Homelessness is not an unusual issue in Denton. The city and nonprofits have been working to help people without housing for decades. Their campsites have appeared all around Denton since at least 2014, when this reporter began covering homelessness in Denton. Their cry for help has appeared in headlines in the Denton Record-Chronicle and in statewide and national media over the years.

In July, The Washington Post reported that inflation is making homelessness worse, forcing more families out of their homes because many living paycheck to paycheck can no longer afford to pay rent and have depleted what reserves they might have saved — if any — for emergency situations such as car problems, health care issues or job loss.

Earlier this year, CNBC reported that 64% of U.S. residents are living paycheck to paycheck because of increased cost-of-living expenses, up from 61% late last year, while 48% of people earning six figures were now experiencing the paycheck-to-paycheck life, which is a 9% increase from June 2021, based on data provided by a March 3 LendingClub report.

The astronomical rent increases in Denton — due to a number of factors such as growing demand exceeding the housing supply, gentrification of neighborhoods throughout the city with an imbalance of unaffordable apartment and housing projects, salaries not keeping up with inflation — only exacerbate the problem, leaving those living paycheck to paycheck with limited options. The dilemma they face is either leaving the area where their jobs are located or finding shelter on the streets or in motel rooms, which at $75 daily and $400 weekly on average isn’t as affordable as it sounds.

And in many cases, homeless advocates said, the cheaper rooms are getting harder and harder to find.

“We’re talking about $1,600 a month — that’s what you pay for a nice house,” Duckworth said in a Friday morning interview with the Record-Chronicle. “That’s what you pay for a nice house. That is ridiculous. Who can afford it? You’re talking about people on ground zero — on the streets.”

A growing problem

And once you’re in a motel room, you’re no longer considered homeless, Duckworth and several other homeless advocates have pointed out.

This year alone, according to a July 2 Serve Denton report, about 1,200 people have been affected by homelessness in Denton County, and more than 80% of women and children who are without housing have been victims of domestic violence. And when they find themselves on the streets, their choices for resources and shelter are minimal, said Leighanne Christon, the interim CEO of Grace Like Rain.

“Pre- and post-COVID, we saw a significant increase in the number of families and a lack of resources for the families, including shelters,” Christon said.

At Tuesday night’s council meeting, Duckworth told council members about this need for women and families.

“When one shelter is full, there’s nowhere else,” she said. “… There are 18 beds for women. Eighteen. That’s definitely not enough. Nowhere close.”

The Salvation Army, both Duckworth and Christon pointed out, is focused on helping women and children, but the Denton shelter’s bed count is limited.

“Denton has grown,” said Carrie Powell, the street outreach coordinator for Giving Grace, a nonprofit that goes into the homeless community and tries to help people. “I’ve been here 30 years and seen it grow, and with that growth, there is going to be growth with the homeless. For whatever reason, we grew during that time in the pandemic due to the differences in financial stability. We have a lot of clients who have been here a long time and the newly homeless due to evictions and losing jobs, [as we’re] seeing happen nationally. We’re no different than what we’re seeing across the board.

“I think there are a lot of different solutions,” Powell said. “We stay in our lane and build relationships so that we can identify resources. Every individual is different.”

Several nonprofits such as Bedtime Resources from Cloud 9 Charities, Denton Basic Services, Serve Denton and United Way are doing their best to offer those solutions and help individuals as well as families experiencing homelessness.

Cloud 9 Charities founder Kim Cloud started the organization 25 years ago but began focusing on helping families experiencing homelessness about three years ago after she saw a 60 Minutes episode about a self-employed father who was forced out of his home with his children when he was unable to pay bills in the wake of his wife’s fatal illness. They moved into a van he had converted into a home.

“I saw the surprising amount of homeless families in nice communities,” Cloud said. “I decided to do research and see if that was a problem and was shocked to find out about the number of homeless families … and that number has increased greatly.”

Through money garnered from two events — a golf tournament in the spring and the Best Little Brewfest in Texas, slated for Oct. 15 in Old Town Lewisville — Cloud estimates Cloud 9 helps about 180 to 220 families on average each year. Last year, they housed 360 families, and she said they’re on pace to do that many again this year.

Cloud gets the families into hotels quickly and then makes a long-term plan for them, gives them information on other nonprofits that can help them long-term and helps them find discounted rent programs on an apartment.

“Every single family we help, it was a crisis,” Cloud said. “It’s regular people and seems like they had two or three things that became a storm of things that happened.”

Waiting on solutions

But waiting on those solutions is a process that for many homeless individuals and families can take months, or even years. Advocates claim there are people on the streets with housing vouchers who have been waiting years to get into homes.

The Denton Housing Authority is closing its Housing Choice Voucher Program at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 30 because of the Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines regarding the length of waiting lists.

“Current applicants can expect a wait of 5 years or longer,” DHA pointed out in its flyer posted on its website.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank, blamed the long wait times for people with housing vouchers on inadequate funding in a July 2021 report.

This wait time, Duckworth said, is causing people who are experiencing homelessness to give up and not seek the services being offered, due to complicated paperwork to qualify and an overwhelmed bureaucratic process to work through those claims.

“I waited eight months for my apartment, and that’s still a long time,” she said. “I get a disability check. I have a job, and I couldn’t afford to pay for a motel room. People who just have a job or just a check, there is no hope.”

It’s another reason she requested Tuesday night that council members meet with her and other homeless people to put a face on the issue. Powell, from the street outreach program, said that’s the reason they don’t like the blanket term of “homelessness.”

“There is a person experiencing homelessness,” Powell said. “It’s an individual person and all attached to a name. We know them and their stories.”

Those people and their stories are what Duckworth wants to introduce to council members at a date to be announced.

“It’s like my mom used to tell me: ‘When you’re cooking, you can put anything in the kitchen in that pot of food, but until you put love into it, it’s not going to be right,’” Duckworth told council members Tuesday night. “I didn’t understand that until recently. When you put everything into the homeless problem and the issues that we want — but until somebody cares and we put love into the issue, it is not going to change.”