Krystall Haymon-Williams has found shelter in Fort Worth\u2019s East Lancaster corridor for about three months \u2014 long enough to see the area noticeably change.<\/p>\n
This stretch of the roadway, which lies about 1 mile southeast of downtown, has many of the city\u2019s resources for those experiencing homelessness, and it often sees high concentrations of people.<\/p>\n
A month ago, illegal encampments, including Haymon-Williams\u2019, would crowd the curbs of the corridor, she said. But in mid-January, Fort Worth police began devoting extra officers to the area to address a rise in crime and remove the camps.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, there\u2019s nobody there,\u201d Haymon-Williams said, standing in a line she said she frequents all day, every day, outside the Presbyterian Night Shelter\u2019s True Worth Place<\/a>.<\/p>\n The police\u2019s focus on the area is temporary, and the efforts are expected to run into the near future, a police department spokesperson said.<\/p>\n But already the area has seen a drop in crime, said Toby Owen, CEO of the Presbyterian Night Shelter.<\/p>\n Owen\u2019s shelter is one of the state\u2019s largest, providing 757 beds a night, he said. Each day, people line East Lancaster \u2014 napping, waiting and sitting on the sidewalks and streets surrounding the buildings.<\/p>\n The area is no stranger to tension and conflict, Owen said. But in November, his team and city officials noticed a significant rise in crime, both from homeless people \u2014 in the form of illegal camping \u2014 and from people trying to sell drugs to the homeless.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of just a snowball that rolls downhill \u2014 it gets bigger and bigger,\u201d Owen said. \u201cIt\u2019s just important that we realign the neighborhood, to say, \u2018We\u2019re going to enforce the laws that are on the books,\u2019 and to realign it so that it\u2019s a safe and productive environment,\u201d Owen said.<\/p>\n Much of the police department\u2019s homeless outreach program<\/a>, or HOPE, team has been reallocated to East Lancaster to address \u201cnarcotics activities, assaults, prostitution, and city ordinance violations,\u201d a statement from the police department\u2019s community alliance division read.<\/p>\n Officers clear the area every morning of encampments, people loitering and any open illegal activity, Owen said. The teams then clean the area of litter with city workers and UpSpire<\/a>, a nonprofit that aims to put homeless individuals on a path to employment by hiring them to clean streets.<\/p>\n Haymon-Williams has noticed the crime \u2014 \u201cmeth and crack and things like that\u201d \u2014 and she\u2019s watched the officers address the illegal camping. Both she and Owen said people are told by officers to either stay in the shelters or leave the area.<\/p>\n When people opt to leave, Haymon-Williams said she \u201chas no clue\u201d where they go. When she was told to clean up her tent, she started sleeping in the nearby women\u2019s night shelter<\/a>.<\/p>\n A noticeable drop in reported crime followed the police\u2019s efforts, according to crime records reviewed by the Report.<\/p>\n Over December and January, the area and its surrounding neighborhoods saw 18 to 40 incidents a week, with a majority being immediately around the night shelter. During the week of Jan. 26 to Feb. 1, reported incidents dropped to eight.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a big shift. There was very little camping, and it was a much calmer environment,\u201d Owen said. \u201cWe\u2019ll always be a place for those individuals, as long as they\u2019re willing to take our help.\u201d<\/p>\n Owen said homeless people resort to illegally camping when they don\u2019t want to abide by the shelter\u2019s rules, which bar weapons, drugs and alcohol, and limits what belongings they can keep. These individuals still tend to stay close to the corridor to use resources.<\/p>\n Haymon-Williams said she would rather camp outside because the shelter is \u201ctoo much hustle and bustle.\u201d In the shelter, she has to pack up her things and leave every morning, whereas her campsite felt more permanent.<\/p>\n The focus on East Lancaster comes as City Hall holds broader discussions about how to address the city\u2019s rising homeless population.<\/p>\n As of December, an estimated 2,702 homeless people resided in Fort Worth<\/a>, Homeless Strategies manager Tara Perez said during a Feb. 3 presentation to City Council\u2019s Public Safety Committee<\/a>. Of those, 799 were labeled as \u201cchronically homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n The city devoted about $6.3 million to Perez\u2019s unit<\/a> this fiscal year. About $2.2 million of that goes to its newly launched High ImpACT program<\/a>, which offers temporary, transitional housing and mental health services to those with severe mental illness.<\/p>\n Between May 2024 and September 2025, the program served 80 homeless individuals, and it has since been expanded to serve 110, Perez said.<\/p>\n Another $1.56 million went to the city\u2019s Targeted Outreach. That program employs six street outreach workers to meet with those who are homeless to connect them with resources and shelters.<\/p>\n Targeted Outreach employees focus on several areas across the city where homeless people congregate, including East Lancaster and Fort Worth\u2019s Northside neighborhood, which borders the opposite side of downtown.<\/p>\n Council member Carlos Flores, who represents the Northside, emphasized that the police\u2019s focus on East Lancaster does not mean that homelessness in the rest of Fort Worth is being ignored.<\/p>\n He posted about the HOPE team\u2019s East Lancaster efforts on Facebook on Feb. 3<\/a> to address concerns that other areas of the city, including his, were being ignored by law enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe homeless population, by definition, is very transient; they\u2019ll move,\u201d Flores said. \u201cIt\u2019s to everybody\u2019s benefit that we take care of homelessness where these issues are, especially in the case of the East Lancaster corridor, because we have the concentration of our homeless resources there.\u201d<\/p>\n The police presence is temporary, Owen said, but he hopes the relief it\u2019s brought to the area isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just a one-time enforcement; it has to be ongoing,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re working with now with the police department: How do we create an ongoing system that stays on top of this? I know we\u2019re going to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n Haymon-Williams, who is pregnant, said she\u2019s trying to get out of her situation.<\/p>\n She\u2019s so far struggled to get a case manager<\/a> for housing assistance, she said. But she\u2019s confident that if she\u2019s proactive with seeking services, she can start making progress.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been very difficult trying to get my grip on this situation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org<\/a>or @shawlings601<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Krystall Haymon-Williams has found shelter in Fort Worth\u2019s East Lancaster corridor for about three months \u2014 long enough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-156997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","10":"tag-fort-worth-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}