The Human Impact focuses on the group of people experiencing homelessness often described as the chronically homeless. While they represent only 20% of Dallas’ homeless population, they consume 80% of homeless care resources—both philanthropic and government.
But we believe the label chronically homeless tells only part of the story. Words like lonely, disconnected, and traumatized often provide a better understanding of who our friends are as human beings—and why their needs are so complex.
For many, years of trauma, isolation, broken relationships, medical challenges, and life on the streets have created barriers that cannot be addressed by housing or services alone. Shelters, healthcare, housing programs, and other resources provide an essential economic safety net. But for those who have experienced long-term homelessness, there is often another critical piece missing: a relational safety net.
Someone who knows their name. Someone they trust. Someone who will keep showing up and walk alongside them through the long, complicated journey toward stability, housing, and healing.
The Human Impact exists to befriend the homeless, bridge relational gaps, and build long-term community.
Our work begins by consistently stepping into the margins and building trust with people living on the streets. Since 2013, we have shown up in some of the loneliest spaces in Dallas—again and again—with our presence, an open heart, and a willingness to form genuine friendship.
Over time, those relationships allow us to walk alongside our friends as they navigate medical, emotional, legal, housing, and other needs. We connect them to necessary resources, advocate with and for them, and remain present through the setbacks and successes that are part of the journey toward healing.
We also bridge the relational gap by creating opportunities for housed and unhoused neighbors to meet face-to-face, hear one another’s stories, challenge assumptions, and form bonds of mutual care and support. As volunteers and friends continue showing up for one another, those connections can grow into the kind of long-term community in which people are known, supported, and able to belong.
This is the unique role The Human Impact plays within the homeless care system: we help provide the relational safety net that makes it possible for our chronically homeless friends to more successfully access and navigate the broader safety net around them.
The Human Impact exists to befriend the homeless, bridge relational gaps, and build long-term community.
The Human Impact is fully immersed within the homeless community. Our work happens on the sidewalks of South Dallas. As a result, we have the unique ability to maintain consistent relationships among an often difficult to reach population.
Our work fills in the gap for the deeper, unaddressed needs that cause our friends to remain in homelessness or return so easily to it. We would be so grateful for your support to help us continue the restorative work of community among the most marginalized and under-resourced in the city of Dallas.
CURRENT NEEDS:
1) Capacity building - There are over 1,000 friends in Dallas who are experiencing long-term and chronic homelessness, and this number continues to grow. - We have 6 staff members on our Advocacy team dedicated to spending 160+ hours per week on the street with hundreds of people who are currently unhoused. - Bringing in more capacity and training allows us to quickly connect our friends to the resources and opportunities available to them.
2) Support Network - Our friends have doctors appointments, attorney meetings, social security obligations and a simple desire to be connected that could be matched by the ability to travel more conveniently - We want to ensure we can meet our friends transportation and emergency needs that come up regularly.
3) Relocation and Stability - As rents rise, our friends' lose their once regained ability to live in a home and stabilize - Moving fees like rent, utilities, and other household items quickly add to our friends financial burdens - We continue to provide weekly care and a support network to our friends beyond the streets.
4) Join us and volunteer - We host regular events to engage with our friends and share a meal or do something else fun. This is a great opportunity for individuals or groups. We also have regular streets time opportunities to visit our friends experiencing homelessness each week.
The Human Impact is committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in all aspects of our organization. We actively pursue DEI within our staff, board, and volunteers.
We believe that diversity, or lack thereof, has an impact on our work.
THI lives out its mission more faithfully when we have diversity of talent, experience, points of view, and spheres of influence—and less faithfully when we lack them.
We are intentional about building and maintaining diversity and guarding a culture of diversity.
We recruit and retain people with the calling and capacity for our mission, drawing from our diverse community so that our organization reflects our community’s demographics.
We regularly and earnestly evaluate ourselves and our biases, acknowledging the systems of inequity and exclusion, repenting of inequity and exclusion, and submitting to the restorative work of the Holy Spirit.
We celebrate differences, sustain safe spaces for expression, pursue relationships with those who are different from us, and expect to learn from them.
Organization name
The Human Impact
Tax id (EIN)
47-3506016
Causes
Housing, Shelter & Homelessness
Operating Budget
$1,000,000 - $2,999,999
Counties Served
Dallas
BIPOC Serving
Black or African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latinx, Native American, Other
Address
1808 S. Good LatimerExpressway