Sunny Chaparala screamed when she saw the sidewalks in southern Dallas lined with homeless people.

“It’s a shock,” said Chaparala, a Republican running for Texas’ 24th Congressional District, a cluster of northern suburbs including Irving, Southlake and Carrollton more than a dozen miles away from this stretch of poverty.

Chaparala wanted to learn more about the area’s homelessness, something she said she did not know existed in the Dallas Fort-Worth area. So this week, the political novice spent more than an hour with leaders of CitySquare, a nonprofit that advocates and supports North Texas’ working poor and homeless.

Among the startling figures Chaparala learned: an estimated 300 homeless individuals sleep each night at DFW International Airport, which is in the heart of the congressional district she wants to represent.

“I’m so overwhelmed,” she said. ”I have a lot to think about.”

Chaparala is one of five candidates running in the GOP primary for the open seat that includes Dallas, Tarrant and Denton counties.

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Homelessness has not been a fundamental campaign issue, even with the presumptive front-runner in the race being Beth Van Duyne, the former mayor of Irving who spent two years at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

However, part of Chaparala’s candidacy is her biography: an Indian immigrant who came to America and started working at a telemarketing firm for just $9 an hour. She is now a small business owner in real estate and self-funding her campaign with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The 90-minute meeting coupled with a short drive through a homeless camp both tested and reinforced Chaparala’s worldview and conservative values. It also illustrated the complexities of policymaking, which often clash with cheeky soundbites and talking points. What’s more, it drives home the stark economic divide between southern and northern Dallas, where Chaparala spends all of her time.

“We don’t see it,” Chaparala said.

CitySquare leaders acknowledged they don’t see too many candidates -- especially suburban Republicans -- who actually want to learn how to solve homelessness.

“Most folks like you don’t come down here and ask these questions,” Edd Eason, CitySquare’s vice president of health and housing told Chaparala. “You know, most folks like you don’t get to know the challenges of addressing poverty and homelessness.”

Republican candidate Sunny Chaparala poses for a portrait in her family’s home in Dallas on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020. (Lynda M. Gonzalez/The Dallas Morning News) (Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

According to CitySquare president John Siburt, about 46% of Dallas-Fort Worth residents live paycheck to paycheck, which is lower than one national estimate. Stagnant wages and rising housing costs are squeezing the most vulnerable even more.

“One of the fastest demographics of homelessness in Dallas County are families because they’re being priced out as rents go up,” he said. “We’re seeing that all over town.”

CitySquare estimates that about 200 new people become homeless in Dallas each month, usually due to an eviction. Only about half will find stable housing within a year. Another 600 will still be homeless after 12 months.

And there is a “multitude” of barriers that keeps people poor, said Krystal Lotspeich, CitySquare’s director of neighbor supportive services. Housing is just the start.

Good jobs are usually far away from affordable housing. Public transportation can’t easily get you from Pleasant Grove to Plano. Child care is hard to find. Health insurance and other costs are astronomical — if a family living in southern Dallas can even find a doctor. And there is just one grocery store with fresh food in a 16-mile radius of South Dallas.

This is not the America that Chaparala knows. Her eyes widened as each member of the CitySquare team explained a different portion of the problem and possible solutions.

Eason didn’t mince words: Texas can solve homelessness, maybe quicker than any other state. That’s because the number of people experiencing homelessness is smaller compared with other large states, such as California. It just hasn’t been a priority in Austin, he said.

The solutions will demand an influx in cash and a cultural shift in stereotypes around the poor, a complex undertaking, he said.

“It’s us, we’re the problem,” he said. “We're so stressed we don't know how to work together. We're so violently opposed to one another we don't have common ground. That's really it. It's our will and our inability to work together to solve it.”

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Eason said two policy changes could radically reduce homelessness: ending rental assistance discrimination and increasing the inventory of affordable housing in suburban communities where there is a concentration of good jobs, schools, medical care and groceries.

Regulation is a dirty word for Republicans, Chaparala said. She wondered out loud why any landlord would refuse to rent to someone whose rent is guaranteed by a third party such as CitySquare with decades of on-time payments.

Landlords, Eason said, take one look at the background checks of applicants and see misdemeanors or evictions and say to themselves: “You know, why deal with this person? I got five people sitting in my waiting room who don't have this kind of background.”

The free market tells city, state and federal lawmakers to let them make the right decision out of the goodness of their hearts. But no one is listening to their hearts, Eason said.

“Lots for me to think about,” Chaparala said. “All I can do is give you $200, right now.”

Eason protested: Keep your money. Get elected.

She cut the check anyway.

Chaparala, on the campaign trail, has pledged never to sponsor new legislation. However, after the meeting, she said she would be open to amending laws to make federal money more targeted.

Still, she is skeptical the federal government either has a role in solving the problem or is agile enough to do anything meaningful.

She wants more details about how Dallas City Hall and other local governments and agencies are using the millions of federal dollars they receive each year to reverse homelessness. And in true Texas conservative fashion: What are they doing with all the property tax increases, she asks.

“I don’t believe the Constitution was ever intended to take care of people,” she said, adding that she could use the congressional bully pulpit to raise awareness at the local level. “So, I would want it to be addressed at the local level. I would want to talk to all the state and all the local people and hopefully mobilize.”