Tammie Smith first experienced homelessness as a new mother in 2012. Now a 33-year-old mom of five, she said it took extreme resilience to overcome the many challenges she faced in raising her children, navigating unstable relationships and seeking supportive housing.
Eventually, Smith found SafeHaven of Tarrant County, a nonprofit that connects victims of domestic violence and their children with needed resources. Through SafeHaven, she learned of Casa de los Sueños, a new affordable housing project in west Fort Worth’s Las Vegas Trail neighborhood.
Today, Smith and her children are among the first families to live at Casa de los Sueños in a fully furnished three-bedroom apartment. Alongside city and county officials, Smith gave an emotional speech of gratitude for the opportunity during a grand opening event Dec. 11.
“The fact that we are blessed with the opportunity for a program like this, for families that do struggle, that are in the struggle currently, words can’t explain how grateful we feel,” Smith said. “I wanted to tell my full truth and let people know that it’s real. We are real. We face these very difficulties every day, and we are truly blessed to be in position to receive these blessings.”
Mayor Mattie Parker, left, and Timmie Smith, a resident of Casa de los Sueños, view the property during a grand opening event Dec. 11, 2024. (Cecilia Lenzen | Fort Worth Report) Casa de los Sueños is the first housing project of its kind in Fort Worth. Located at the former site of an Express Inn motel at 8401 West Freeway, the property has been transformed into an apartment complex providing permanent supportive housing for families with children experiencing homelessness.
The complex features 55 fully furnished one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, as well as a basketball court, pickleball court, dog park and playground. Staff offer professional, educational and health-related services to the property’s residents.
“They support us in making sure that we can take the next step or find what goals to establish so that we can meet those goals and just establish stability, whether it’s here or somewhere else because we don’t want to be here forever,” Smith said. “We want to be able to get the opportunity to be great so that we can pass it along to the next family that may need the help that we did.”
The creation of Casa de los Sueños, a nearly $15 million project, dates back to early 2023. Tarrant County was originally the sole funder of the project before county officials withdrew some of the COVID-19 relief funds that had been earmarked for the project.
Eventually, Fort Worth and Tarrant reached a consensus to collaborate on funding, with the city providing more than $2.5 million and the county contributing $8 million. The remaining dollars were provided by private funding and donations.
During her remarks at the grand opening, Mayor Mattie Parker alluded to the stumbling blocks Casa de los Sueños faced in securing funding.
“There was an interesting dialogue between Tarrant County and Fort Worth to say we’re going to do this differently,” Parker said. “We know that housing is a crisis across our area.”
She thanked County Commissioner Manny Ramirez for his attention to the project, noting that he didn’t hesitate to take on the project despite being new to the Commissioners Court at the time.
Ramirez said it was a no-brainer to him that the county would participate in the project. During his remarks at the grand opening event, he recalled driving through the parking lot at the former hotel years ago as a police officer and seeing “crime-ridden behavior.” Ramirez, a former Fort Worth Police Officers Association president who served as an officer for more than 15 years, said the crime he witnessed was a result of a lack of resources and investment for decades.
Now, he’s proud to have played a part in reinvesting in Las Vegas Trail. The public and private sectors put their heads together to figure out how to lift up the entire community, he said.
“Because, truly, that’s what something like this does. It doesn’t just lift up the folks that live here. It doesn’t just lift up the people that are beneficiaries of the services,” Ramirez said. “It lifts up an entire community, and it lifts up an entire city. It sets the mold and says, ‘Listen, (in) Fort Worth, and in Tarrant County, we’re not leaving anybody behind.”
In the future, Parker hopes Casa de los Sueños can serve as an example of innovative ways to approach affordable housing as well as collaboration between government agencies and private funders.
“Fort Worth Housing Solutions, Tarrant County, the city, all of us really worked together,” Parker told the Report. “I hope this is a model you continue to see us push over the finish line. And so I’d say, if you have a rundown motel in the city of Fort Worth, we’d love to talk.”
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org or @bycecilialenzen.
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