Dallas homeless center known as The Bridge marks 10 years

DALLAS—David Woody scans the courtyard of The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, directly below his office.

The Dallas Morning News reports from there he can watch people file in and out of the cafeteria. He can see employees directing folks to the barbershop and the laundry room. He can intervene when someone is upset.

Woody has been leading the shelter since the summer, but despite recently being named the permanent president and CEO he still hasn’t moved into a larger office.

He wants to observe how things are working. He wants to understand why people end up at the shelter and— more important—how he can help them leave.

This year, as The Bridge marks its 10th anniversary, thousands of people will pass through the shelter’s doors, at the corner of Corsicana and St. Paul streets.

There are 149 mats for people to sleep on every night, and 100 beds for those staying in transitional housing while they wait for a more permanent residence.

The homeless can hang out at the shelter during the day, eat a hot meal, talk to social workers, attend 12-step meeting and take advantage of counseling, employment and health services.

At a recent anniversary event, Woody called The Bridge a “one-stop shop.”

In the last 10 years, the shelter has housed 2,500 people, served 4.7 million meals, given 23,000 haircuts and hosted 227,000 sessions with social workers.

The Bridge was intended to close the gap between shelters that were open only at night and a Day Resource Center that closed in the afternoon.

Former Mayor Laura Miller said city leaders had a community meeting to ask homeless people what they needed.

Miller recalls being told, “To transition off the streets, we need to stop pingponging around between the shelters and the services, and we need a 24-7 place to go.”

She joked that from that point, “in government years, we acted very quickly.”

The city started a commission on homelessness in 2003 and picked the site for The Bridge in 2004. Voters approved a $24 million bond package in 2005 to build the center.

Woody points to the construction of the shelter as the starting point of downtown development.

“Before The Bridge was built, where we are right now was a homeless encampment,” he said. “Our downtown area was thirsting for rejuvenation, trying to attract more businesses and citizens.”

Now, thousands more people live downtown and the nearby Farmers Market neighborhood is booming.

Lynn McBee, chairwoman of The Bridge board of directors, said no one expected the area to take off the way it has.

“I don’t think anybody would’ve thought there would be million-dollar townhomes by the Farmers Market,” she said.

In contrast to the growth around downtown, Dallas still has an affordable-housing shortage, which affects the people who stay at the The Bridge. And the number of people living on the street continues to climb, with more than 1,000 people living without shelter in Dallas.

The Bridge’s leaders are looking for ways to clear the bottleneck in the system. People in transitional housing can’t find affordable housing, leaving those staying in the emergency shelter unable to move into transitional housing. That leaves no space for people living on the streets to move inside.

“We’ve got to build the inventory,” McBee said. “Housing is going to greatly impact and increase our ability to get people off the street.”

McBee said she can see The Bridge branching out into housing. But first, the center’s leadership needs to communicate better with neighborhoods, the city staff and other homeless services.

“For a long time, we’ve had our head down doing good work and being insular,” she said.

That’s where Woody comes in.

He has taught college social work courses and led programs at other nonprofits. Those years teaching also guide his goals as president— to educate people about what The Bridge does.

Woody often asks: “Who wants to be homeless?”

The question is intended to encourage people to think about what happened in people’s lives for them to end up on the streets.

And he wonders what he can do to get more people to seek help.

He watches people saddled with backpacks and sacks wander along St. Paul Street near Interstate 30, but he notices many don’t come inside.

“It bothers me that folks would get that close to the front door and not come in,” Woody said.