The DRC is a pioneer and provider of critical safety net and housing services—programs essential to ending homelessness in Tarrant County.

THE SOLUTION TO HOMELESSNESS IS A HOME.
Regardless of the past. Regardless of the present.
And that’s why everything the DRC does is organized around the philosophy of Housing First.
BECAUSE HOUSING FIRST MAKES HOUSING LAST.

MISSION
The mission of the DRC is to provide respectful, responsible, and effective community-based solutions to help individuals and families emerge from homelessness as productive, healthy people.
VISION
The DRC envisions an end to homelessness achieved through investments that make permanent shelter a reality for all who need it.
PHILOSOPHY
The DRC believes that Housing First makes housing last.

OUR HISTORY
The DRC story began on a spring day in 1997, when bestselling author and former newspaper reporter Jeff Guinn stepped from a downtown bus station to spend a week living on the streets of Fort Worth. His harrowing, first-hand account of street life was published on June 8, 1997 and revealed heartbreaking gaps in help for the homeless. Guinn’s story opened eyes to the human cost of homelessness, and civic leaders responded, opening the DRC as Day Resource Center for the Homeless in 1999.

In 2015, the agency rebranded as the DRC to underscore its leadership in housing strategies for ending homelessness and its new mission: to provide respectful, responsible, and effective community-based solutions to help individuals and families emerge from homelessness as productive, healthy people. It exited shelter services in December 2016 to focus on housing solutions and, in 2017, the agency’s board of directors approved a resolution adding supportive housing development to the DRC portfolio.

Moving Forward: 2021 Program Focus Areas
The DRC regularly evaluates the needs of our community and evolves to meet gaps in local services for the people in our community experiencing homelessness.
During 2020, we made an in-depth assessment of where our efforts can best serve the chronically homeless and have adjusted our programs accordingly. In addition to critical document replacement, housing placement, and case management, our efforts in 2021 will focus on three areas:

OUTREACH: Service access for unsheltered individuals and families
People who are living unsheltered are often found to be outside of the system which assigns individuals and families into housing programs. Without participating in this system, these people are highly unlikely to ever enter into housing.
To help alleviate this gap, the DRC pivoted our Housing Navigators program into our Mobile Assessors program. This team locates individuals and families experiencing unsheltered homelessness, completes assessments for housing, helps them gather documentation required for housing program eligibility, and connects them with individual-appropriate housing interventions.

PERMANENT SUPPORTIVE HOUSING: Availability, placement, and case management
The success of the DRC’s permanent supportive housing (PSH) partnership with The Paulos Foundation at The Palm Tree Apartments has led to further opportunities to work with other groups interested in developing similar projects.
In 2019, we began working with New Leaf Community Services on their 48 unit 4444 Quail Trail property in west Fort Worth.
The DRC is actively seeking partners interested in developing additional permanent supportive housing opportunities to expand the number of available PSH units in Tarrant County.

SAFETY NET: Services and emergency overflow shelter
In whatever type of emergency that may arise, the DRC is consistently called upon by local leaders to provide overflow emergency shelter when traditional night shelters are either at capacity or must reduce available bed numbers.
The DRC will continue to serve as “The Safety Net’s Safety Net,” managing overflow shelter as necessary to ensure the safety of all those in our community who seek temporary shelter during times of crisis.