Community Corner
Tarrant County Homeless Coalition Recognizes Dr. Victoria Farrar-Myers With ‘Community Champion’ Award
The movie and accompanying art experience explore and display the signs homeless people hold up to request assistance.
December 11, 2020
Dr. Victoria Farrar-Myers, Arlington City Council District 7 at-large representation, was honored Friday with the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition’s Community Champion award.
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Dr. Farrar-Myers has served as chair of TCHC’s Continuum of Care Board of Directors the past two years, helping lead the way towards greater regional collaboration to address homelessness. Among the reasons TCHC recognized Dr. Farrar-Myers is her focus on creating a more data-driven approach to the issue to prioritize resources towards solutions that are proven to work and strategies that show the most promise.
Under her leadership, the Continuum of Care Strategic Plan was fully developed and deployed to service providers, elected officials, and the general public to create a shared vision of housing for all individuals and families. Dr. Farrar-Myers has encouraged leaders, service providers, and other interest parties at all levels to work together to achieve the goals in the plan so that safe housing becomes a reality for vulnerable populations.
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In addition to her work with the Continuum of Care, Dr. Farrar-Myers has served on the City of Arlington’s Community and Neighborhood Development Committee. There, she supported federal funding for a Navigator position to serve Arlington specifically, allowing service and housing providers greater efficiency in connecting with our community’s unsheltered homeless. She has also served on the Arlington Housing Finance Corporation board of directors, advocating for additional affordable housing in Arlington so that our most vulnerable populations can find a place to call home.
One of the strengths of Dr. Farrar-Myers’s approach is her ability to work collaboratively to convene elected officials, members of the business community, faith-based organizations, and service providers to focus on the issue of homelessness. Examples of her commitment to the issue include hosting of a community-wide event called “We Are All Homeless”, spearheading the first-ever Arlington Child Care Summit, and creating a regular and well-organized group in Arlington to be laser-focused on the unique issues of homelessness in Arlington.
The “We Are All Homeless” event offered a free screening of the movie “Signs of Humanity” which was directed by a colleague of hers from Southern Methodist University, Willie Baronet. The movie and accompanying art experience explore and display the signs homeless people hold up to request assistance. The event drew attention to the issue of homelessness and brought the community together to see first-hand the impact of homelessness on individual lives. Dr. Farrar-Myers also insisted that there be an action step involved in the event, so hundreds of “care package” bags were assembled with necessities for someone living on the street. These bags were distributed to those who attended the movie to allow them to distribute the bags to a homeless person.
The Arlington Child Care Summit was funded by the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation and grew from an idea that Dr. Farrar-Myers had to support childcare providers and help working, particularly low-income, parents navigate access to this important resource. She knew that the cost and availability of quality childcare was often a significant challenge to a parent’s ability to earn enough to pay rent and avoid homelessness. By approaching this issue from multiple angles, Dr. Farrar-Myers’s vision turned into a one-day event that taught volunteers to help low-income parents sign up for available resources, including childcare vouchers, and educated childcare providers about the Texas Rising Star program, a State education and certification program for childcare providers. One year later, despite the pandemic, this program had increased the number of TRS facilities in Arlington by 37% and added 100 early childhood professionals registered in Arlington. In addition, the deliverable generated from this event, a searchable database of childcare providers, served as a model for a statewide initiative during the pandemic.
Seeing the value of bringing together a team of like-minded service providers as she did with the Arlington Child Care Summit planning team, Dr. Farrar-Myers acted as a convener with Arlington service providers who work with our homeless population. The Arlington Homeless Service Providers group now meets monthly with Arlington City staff convening it and has been normalized into the system to ensure it continues for years to come. This monthly chance to connect, share updates, and discuss needs has brought greater collaboration among homeless service providers and has been essential in assisting Arlington’s homeless residents during the pandemic.
This press release was produced by the City of Arlington. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
