The first night of a punishing cold front in January 2018, two people living on the streets of South Dallas died. Others camping underneath the same highway overpass as Jesse Johnson Jr., 69, remembered him as a nice guy who mostly kept to himself. Less than a mile away, a man found Donna Bannister, 58, near her wheelchair on the floor of a bus stop shelter; he told WFAA it appeared she had “frozen to death.”
Rachel Baughman, senior pastor at Oak Lawn United Methodist Church in Dallas, recalled the news as “one of those situations that hits you in the face.” Bannister and Johnson both died within a block of a church.
For the past three years, Baughman has opened her church’s doors on nights when temperatures could be fatally cold—and she’s tried to team up with other faith leaders to build a broader “pop-up” network. But she’s faced a persistent roadblock: In Dallas, it’s against the law. Chapter 51A of the Dallas Development Code bans overnight shelters within 1,000 feet of a church, school, park, or other entity, preventing places of worship and virtually anyone else from offering aid.
