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DALLAS - Family Gateway’s President & CEO, Ellen Magnis, and Dallas City Council District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn will co-present at Texas Homeless Network’s 2022 Conference on Ending Homelessness in Austin, TX on Thursday, Sept. 29. Their presentation “Getting to YIMBY for a new family shelter: A city council member’s and non-profit service provider’s road to YES!” will share the important role of a political leader in engaging a community to participate in solutions for homelessness.
When two family shelters ceased to operate during COVID-19 and the City of Dallas received unprecedented funding to address homelessness during the pandemic, Council Member Mendelsohn worked to educate her constituents in District 12 about family homelessness and to engage them in solutions-oriented thinking about what they could do to help end homelessness for families. Magnis supported the Council Member’s efforts and provided tools and resources to further educate the community. When Family Gateway won the opportunity to operate a new family shelter in Mendelsohn’s District, the neighborhood was ready and eager to engage with the agency thanks to the foundation laid by Council Member Mendelsohn and Magnis.
“The growth we have undergone at Family Gateway over the past several years would not have been possible without Council Member Mendelsohn,” said Magnis. “She is a powerful advocate in our community and having her in our corner has enabled us to expand our services so that we can serve more children and families than ever before.”
This year especially, Family Gateway has seen an extraordinary surge of need from families experiencing homelessness. The loss of pandemic protections, rising costs, and the current scarcity of affordable housing are simply too much for many families to bear. Currently, the nonprofit is seeing almost twice the number of families sleeping in their vehicles and more than four times the number of families pending an eviction.
Council Member Mendelsohn said, “The need in our community is at an all-time high. I am honored to present with Ellen at Texas Homeless Network’s Conference on a topic I am so passionate about, and I hope that the lessons we have learned will be beneficial for other communities in their work to help end homelessness.”
Together, they will discuss lessons learned from a zero-opposition family shelter that took over a former suite hotel, the importance of policy-level decisions to drive change, and the critical role of leadership in helping bring community together towards a common vision. To learn more about the conference, visit https://www.thn.org/thn-conference/.
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