New businesses have moved in, and Nathan Small, the city councilor who represents the area, said that maintaining good relationships with them would be critical to the success of the program. “The biggest challenges are ahead of us,” he said.

The problems that brought residents here have not disappeared. One resident tends to sneak away in the afternoon and stumble back drunk. Others have been expelled for smoking marijuana, and hypodermic needles have been found on tent platforms. Tammy Nettnay — who described herself as a recovering drug addict, a prostitute and a felon several times over — confessed at a weekly meeting of residents that she had gotten drunk twice at the camp. But, she said proudly, when someone gave her a parcel of methamphetamine, once her drug of choice, she threw it away.

“It’s not that I want to be here, I need to be here,” said Ms. Nettnay, 48, who came from El Paso in November. (Mr. Sykes, an old friend, told her to come.) “I don’t have any hopes and dreams now. It’s just day by day. I need God to show me what to do.”

At meetings held every Tuesday morning, a host of issues comes up: Friction between those who collect money from the government each month and those who do not. Gossip. Ms. Nettnay complained about the portable toilets, which could use a scrub.

After being homeless for 27 of his 70 years, Mr. Sykes has a place of his own, as well as a job harvesting pecans. The change, however, has brought a problem he did not expect. “The worst enemy, I found out, was dealing with the isolation,” he said. “Your mind gets wandering to old things.”

To keep that from happening, he visits Camp Hope often, helping friends and ferrying them to doctor appointments or to pick up cigarettes. When Mr. Sykes arrived here a few years ago, he carried only a backpack. During a recent visit, he pointed to a gleaming cream-colored sedan in the parking lot. “Now, I’m riding in a Buick!” he said, bursting into a cackle, as if he could not quite believe how things had turned out.