Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn says the city pushed unsheltered people out of downtown ahead of FIFA World Cup events and left the rest of the city to absorb them without enforcing camping and public nuisance laws.
Mendelsohn, who chairs the Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, made the comments in a Facebook post late last week. She wrote that officials “hid our homeless from FIFA” and declared victory downtown while conditions elsewhere remain inhumane.
“If you are homeless in Dallas, and aren’t willing to go to any shelter or program, be reunited with your family, go to in-patient detox or mental health care, there has to be a forced removal and some kind of consequence,” she wrote. “People can’t take over public land and make our medians their toilet.”
We hid our homeless from FIFA. The city pushed the homeless out of downtown and declared victory.
— Cara Mendelsohn 🟦 (@caraathome) July 24, 2026
But the other 350+ square miles of Dallas absorbed the unsheltered homeless with no enforcement of Texas homeless laws or city ordinances.
This evening I found out about a bucket… pic.twitter.com/XZbKYQEJNh
Mendelsohn said she learned of a bucket of waste dumped at the intersection of Frankford Road and the Dallas North Tollway. A city contractor later told her the material was food waste, not human feces, but she stood by her broader criticism of enforcement.
In a follow-up interview with KERA, Mendelsohn said the city is not enforcing state laws or local ordinances against camping, obstructing roadways or public urination and defecation. She argued that ignoring people living unsheltered is itself inhumane, especially in extreme heat or cold.
City data shows more than 44,000 calls to Dallas 311 about homeless encampments between October 2020 and September 2025. Officials have reported sharp reductions in downtown street homelessness through the Street to Home initiative, but Mendelsohn and some colleagues have questioned whether the efforts simply shifted the problem.
Mendelsohn has previously criticized $10 million in city funding for Housing Forward as short-term “cleanup money” tied to FIFA preparations. Other council members have called for more transparency and results beyond downtown.
The council is scheduled to meet Thursday.
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