As authorities prepared to evict its residents, a reporter spent six weeks in Dallas’ biggest homeless camp.
The murders were the catalyst. Now the authorities had to do something. On February 17, a Dallas Morning News headline declared that “Dallas officials want Tent City shut down after 2nd killing in a month.” In early March, the City Council approved a plan to empty the homeless encampment, a five-block stretch beneath I-45 at the point where it meets I-30, about a mile south of downtown.
“This is no way for any human to live,” Mayor Mike Rawlings declared. “I don’t care if someone says, ‘I want to live underneath this bridge.’ That’s just not acceptable in Dallas, Texas.”
Many of the mayor’s liberal fans were puzzled by the ultimatum. Rawlings had formerly held a volunteer position as the city’s “homeless czar” and was widely credited as the force behind the erection of The Bridge, an extensive donor- and tax-supported shelter that bills itself as the area’s “homeless recovery center.”