Taylor Daniels tidied up a stack of clothes outside his gray camping tent on an autumn afternoon. The sun was shining after days of cold and rain, and it was time to dry things out.
“Last night was cold,” Daniels said as cars sped along a nearby road. “If I wasn’t here with someone else, it’d be too cold.”
Trees offered little privacy for the makeshift structures built by Daniels and several others on a small slice of land bisected by Dodge Street and Saddle Creek Road.
The camp is seen by hundreds of people who pass by each day. The tents, shopping carts and miscellaneous piles of belongings are a visualization of a reality that’s become increasingly difficult for the general public to ignore.
A daunting number of people are experiencing homelessness in the Omaha metro area, and many choose to live in encampments on public property rather than in emergency shelters. Mental health challenges, public safety concerns and impacts to nearby businesses have pushed the city to find a solution.
City leaders have thrown their support behind a collaborative nonprofit-led initiative to get people off the streets. Its level of success will profoundly impact Omaha’s future response to homelessness.
The plan and the timeline
Over the next six months, the metro area’s leading homelessness response agencies will ramp up their efforts as part of a pilot program supported by the mayor’s office.
The aim is to reduce encampments, connect individuals with safe shelter and housing and help maintain clean, welcoming public spaces, said Jason Feldhaus, executive director of Threshold Continuum of Care. The area nonprofit coordinates data and responses to housing needs for the Omaha area, including the annual point-in-time count.
“Our goal is simple but critical,” Feldhaus said. “Help people move from encampments to safety, and at the same time, support our city departments, local businesses and neighborhoods in building a compassionate and effective community response.”
The plan calls for an electronic reporting system to track encampments, a public dashboard with encampment data and prioritized access to emergency shelter and permanent housing.
Information gathered and lessons learned from the temporary program will be used to develop a long-term homelessness response plan, said Mayor John Ewing, who announced details of the program Friday alongside Feldhaus and city homeless coordinator Tamara Dwyer.
The pilot sets the city on a path of advocacy rather than policy. Ewing publicly supported the program as an alternative to a proposed city ordinance that would have banned encampments on city property.
Introduced by Councilman Brinker Harding, the ordinance would have required that police or first responders give people living in encampments the option of moving to a shelter before issuing a citation or making an arrest. Any person found guilty of violating the ordinance could face a fine up to $300, 30 days in jail, or both.
An amendment to the proposal added a diversion program intended to keep the citations from escalating to jail time. Despite that change being widely supported by council members, the ordinance was voted down two to five. A majority of council members said they wanted to give the pilot program a chance before moving toward potential criminalization of homelessness.
The decision set a clear course of action in a months-long discussion on how to address a rise in homeless encampments across the city.
“We’re not looking to ignore anything,” Ewing said Friday. “We’re looking to say, let’s try and address this from a humane perspective, giving people the opportunity to get the services they need, and if they do, that’s the goal.”
Finding balance
The first priority of Threshold’s street outreach team is to prevent death on the streets. The second is to meet the city’s most vulnerable where they’re at.
“Build up that trust and then hopefully engage them in broader services, housing, mental health, addiction services,” Feldhaus told The Reader. “Try to gain back the faith that it’s worth trying. And do that at a place where they feel most safe.”
For years, the outreach team has operated with that objective. Through freezing cold winters, stifling summers and fluctuating resources, the specially trained team worked to connect homeless individuals with needed services.
There’s a “counterbalance” to those efforts, Feldhaus said.
“There’s also the general citizenry of our community. Businesses, neighborhoods, individuals who also have the same right to that space as an individual who’s homeless,” Feldhaus said. “We are hoping this pilot program balances both of those a little more effectively.”
In the past decade, Omaha has seen a rise in people experiencing homelessness, according to data compiled through an annual nationwide count.
There’s nuance to those numbers. Generally, the homeless population has increased alongside an increase in Omaha’s overall population. In January, the Omaha metro’s (point-in-time) count went down for the first time in five years.
Despite that decrease, Feldhaus notes that the visualization of homelessness, such as encampments, has grown.
For Daniels, the decision to live in a camp rather than a shelter is simple.
“I’d rather be without the crowd,” the 33-year-old said. “With the crowd it becomes more of a hassle to keep track of belongings and the trouble others can bring. Unnecessary problems.”
Two miles from Daniels’ encampment, there was cautious optimism as program leaders met in the mayor’s office to share details of the pilot.
“I want to be really clear, this initiative will not end homelessness overnight,” Feldhaus said, “but his pilot represents a new approach. A coordinated, compassionate and countable response. It’s a recognition that we can’t do everything at once, but we can do something meaningful right now.”