A woman sits atop an up-turned bucket because she has no place else to sit. Roaches skitter around the floor amid a pervasive smell of urine. Feces rests on the floor below food cupboards and refrigerators locked to prevent residents from taking food. A diabetic man eats pasta three times a day because that is all he is given.

Up to 12 people can be crammed into a three-bedroom house, with single beds in kitchens and stuffed side by side in bedrooms with little room for maneuvering. Some people only have a mattress on the floor while others are forced to sleep directly on the floor. The people who live there pay more than $900 per month from their Social Security and Disability benefits.

This is the condition of some of the boarding homes for the elderly and people with disabilities in Fort Worth.

Regular group homes for such vulnerable segments of the population are inspected and regulated by the state.

But boarding homes do not face such scrutiny. A boarding home is for elderly people or those with disabilities who are high functioning, and most are owned by private homeowners. They are not regulated because they are not considered assisted living.

That is about to change.

On Tuesday, the City Council is set to vote on rules to regulate these businesses. They are modeled after similar ordinances in San Antonio and Houston. The law would take effect immediately and give the businesses a few months to comply.

The new regulations would require such businesses to apply for a permit, get background checks for their employees and undergo annual inspections.

Members of the police department’s Crisis Intervention Team discovered the poor living conditions earlier this year, when they responded to calls for service.

Lt. Chris Gorrie of the Crisis Intervention Team said the department was not aware these homes existed before the recent checks because the homes are not required to register with the city. He estimates there are 75 to 150 such homes throughout the city.

Olivia Van Ness, a licensed professional counselor who serves as the law enforcement liaison with MHMR Tarrant County, joined the crisis team on the visits.

At some of the homes, Van Ness said, workers could hear people inside saying, “Don’t open the door.”

At the time they didn’t have the authority to enter the homes.

“Right now, they only provide people with shelter and some meals,” Van Ness said. ”Residents think four walls and a house is better than living in a tent and being homeless.”

She added that for many of these people, they don’t have family to look after them or even check on them to see if they’re doing well.” she said. “They don’t have a lot of other options. Boarding homes don’t have any standards and no health and safety standards.”

In many cases, the people who own the home are not on site, and they appoint the most cognitively capable tenant to be a house manager, Gorrie said.

Gorrie added that not all boarding homes force residents to live in such squalor. But the ones that do will have to change.

“The goal is to improve the quality of living conditions, decrease potential for our vulnerable population to be victimized, identify locations in the event of a natural disaster and make first-responders aware of the additional need of residents at a particular location,” he said.

Council member Elizabeth Beck said these new rules are going to greatly help such vulnerable people in the city.

“I can’t imagine how unsafe they feel in this situation.,” she said.”I think this is a huge step to help prevent this part of the vulnerable population from the predatory practices of such places,” she said.

This story was originally published January 9, 2023 2:31 PM.