New money from eviction services could cover homelessness efforts not earmarked in the budget, Dallas County Commissioner Andy Sommerman has suggested.
Under a stressful deadline this week, commissioners updated fees for sheriff and constable services.
Those service fees — like for writs and warrants for evictions and mental health services — range from $150 to $400 each.
Collecting those fees, like from eviction and mental health writs and warrants could increase revenue for the 2026 budget.
Sommerman suggested that money collected from evictions could be diverted later to fund homelessness initiatives.
"Everything that deals with evictions of human beings, I recommend that we take a look at them, putting them towards issues associated with homelessness," Sommerman said. "There's a direct correlation.”
Commissioners John Wiley Price and Elba Garcia immediately objected.
"Excuse me?" Price said. "Nah Nah you don’t go down that [road].”
Garcia also was surprised by the recommendation to divert money from constable and sheriff fees to homelessness programs.
"Wait, wait, wait. Commissioner, can you repeat what you said?" Garcia said.
"Thank you, Commissioner Sommerman, for caring about this, but in my opinion, at this point, it goes into the general fund," she said. "I mean, we're thinking how we're going to drink the milk when we don't even have the cow yet."
Sommerman quipped back.
“Well I’m thirsty and I’m thinking about it,” he said.
Price tried to redirect the issue to establishing the service fees by the midnight Oct. 1 deadline.
“Why the hell y’all trying to spend money," he said. "I’m worried more about these fees and whether or not they basically exceed what our cost is.”
Sommerman, District 2 commissioner, said he is exploring ways to fund homelessness solutions because millions of dollars that he says had been promised were not specifically allocated in the final 2026 budget.
In some cases, the county had not collected fees in 11 to 30 years that potentially could have brought in a significant amount of money.
Precinct 1 Constable Tracey Gulley advised commissioners that her precinct alone worked more than 30,000 writs last year.
"And that's just writs alone. We're not talking about writ of attachments, we're talking about evictions — forcefuls," Gulley said. "We're not talking about anything through CPS, we are not talking about anything that we get from the DA's office, we're not talking about small claims, and we're definitely not talking mental illness warrants — we've done those for free — free. We've been doing those for free since I've been there since 97."
Hospitals also were not always charged as a courtesy to help control their costs.
County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said the county learned that hospitals are eligible for reimbursement.
Fee collection could bring in up to $4 million.
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