Dallas evicts residents of highway underpass - Austin AmericanStatesman (TX) - June 15, 1994 - page B2
June 15, 1994   Austin American-Statesman (TX)   Pauline Arrillaga   Page B2

DALLAS - T o the people living there, it was a home. T o city officials, it was an eyesore, health risk
and violation of the law.
Dallas police on T uesday cleared out the shantytown where about 50 indigent people had lived
underneath Interstate 45 near downtown.
Sgt. Jim Chandler said about 25 people were still living under the highway when police began
ordering the residents to leave about 7:30 a.m. Within three hours, all of the homeless people had
left, he said.
"Virtually no one is here now," Chandler said.
Health and human services workers took some residents to shelters. Others found temporary
housing in apartments provided by the city, were given bus tickets out of town or simply returned
to the streets.
Sanitation workers moved in later in the day to clear away the wood, cardboard and plastic shacks
that they had called home.
Most left without resistance, Chandler said, though one man was arrested on a misdemeanor
charge of refusing to identify himself to police officers.
But even as they prepared to leave, residents criticized the city's eviction order.
"In America, it can't be a crime to be poor," said resident Ronald Smith. "Why can't we sleep under a
bridge in our own country?"
For months, city officials had been trying to clear out the shantytown, just east of downtown.
Earlier this month, police began planning to evict or arrest those who remained beneath the bridge,
but the American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the campaign.
A federal judge ruled the city could move the homeless people under a criminal trespassing law as
long as the statute was applied to all people who trespass on municipal land.
"If we are alerted to other problems, we'll move to do the same thing," said Mark Flake, a
spokesman for the city. "It's not like we're just singling out this one place."
T he Dallas Department of Human Services estimates there are about 4,000 homeless people
either on the streets or in shelters each night in the city.

 Chandler said officers would remain at the shantytown throughout the day T uesday to continue
enforcing the evictions. In the future, he said the trespassing law would be enforced by officers as
they encounter people living under the highway.
"No longer will they be able to camp out here as in the past," he said.
T he community under I-45 was the only real shantytown in the city, Chandler said.
"Occasionally we will get people passing through camping out, but generally it is short term," he
said.
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