Violent Crime, Homelessness, And Slums: What’s Dallas Going to Do?

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Reed Manor, 2625 and 2627 Meyers St.

There’s a housing development in Dallas that some people think ought to be bulldozed. Violent crime occurs regularly, residents can’t depend on running water or air conditioning, and children are tossing a half-empty water bottle in front of the complex because they don’t have a ball or any toys. Residents are facing illegal evictions, forcing them to live in their vehicles in the parking lot of a discount store. 

And that’s just one scenario. 

As Dallas continues to face challenges of slumlords pursuing illegal evictions resulting in homelessness, a lack of affordable housing, and high-crime areas where no one can buy or sell a home, a team of city officials and other interested parties have joined forces and are creating strategies to reduce crime in local neighborhoods and improve quality of life for the poor and neglected. 

HomeByFour.com identified seven high-crime neighborhoods in Dallas and we’ve recently heard from the Dallas Police Department on violent crime reduction strategies and their ongoing efforts to increase visibility and community policing in those areas. 

Local attorney Mark Melton and his wife Lauren, CEO of the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, have created a “saturation theory” that is working so well that other metro cities want to emulate it. The Meltons are cooperating with senior city staff, DPD, and the local apartment association to discuss code enforcement and remediation, public safety, crime prevention, and rehousing efforts at apartments across the city. The group, convened by Director of Government Affairs Carrie Rogers, also began a discussion about amending chapter 27 of the Dallas City Code, which covers minimum property standards. 

“This is solvable with a willing spirit, the right resources, and good communication,” Rogers said.

Dallas Director of Government Affairs Carrie Rogers, second from left, and Mark Melton, second from right, met July 8 to discuss housing challenges.

“The state of many of our communities is simply unacceptable, and I’m glad to say that everyone is on board for developing some outside-of-the-box ideas for addressing these issues directly and effectively,” Melton wrote in a social media post after the group’s first meeting. 

The “working group” plans to hold its second meeting July 21. 

“There are properties that have a long way to go to meet minimum property standards,” said Jennifer Brown, Dallas’s manager of public information, communications, outreach, and marketing in an email to CandysDirt.com. “The City has increased staffing to its multi-family property code enforcement team to address property standards, in addition to partnering with DPD and the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions (OIPSS). We are also beginning the work, with our business and community partners, to amend Chapter 27 of Dallas City Code – Minimum Property Standards. The city’s intention is to efficiently utilize our staff and resources to focus on properties which have egregious violations present as well as bad business practices.” 

The Problem

South Boulevard/Park Row is listed as the most dangerous place to live in Dallas. It’s in a historic district, built by the Jewish community in the early 1900s near Fair Park. 

One of the few current listings in the South Boulevard/Park Row area is a 10-unit structure at 2426 Meyers Street, priced at $489,000 by James Glynn with JG Real Estate. It’s been on the market for a little over two months. 

The housing complexes at 2625 Meyers St. and 2627 Meyers St. — referred to as Reed Manor — are in this area and are “almost uninhabitable,” Melton said. 

“You should not go there,” he said in an interview with a CandysDirt.com reporter. “Like, do not go there by yourself.” 

Not only is the eight-unit apartment complex, built in 1965, uninhabitable, but it’s also dangerous. The units rent for about $800 a month but it’s hard to tell who actually lives there and who is there dealing drugs and engaging in gang activity. 

“I’m not an engineer, but it probably does need to be bulldozed,” Melton said. 

The city recently appointed a “receiver” who took over the operation of the project, which could mean tearing it down or fixing it.

“The city filed a lawsuit against the property owner to address the outstanding code violations and ongoing criminal activity at the apartments at 2625 and 2627 Meyers Street,” Brown said. “The city obtained a court order requiring the property owner to repair all outstanding violations and implement crime prevention measures. Following the owner’s failure to do so, the court appointed a receiver to take possession and control of the property. The receiver is now responsible for abating both the outstanding code violations and ongoing criminal activity.”   

What immediately happened, however, is the occupants were given 24-hour notices that they were being evicted, even though all were current on rent payments.

Melton stepped in and determined that even though the action wasn’t taken maliciously, no effort was being made to help the residents move. 

“These are poor people without a lot of resources,” he said. “None of these people have leases. They’re handing over a money order once a month.” 

Melton and other attorneys from Dallas Eviction and Advocacy Center stepped in, and an agreement was entered to handle the evictions lawfully. 

“We need to be thoughtful about rehousing people, not just unhousing them,” Melton said. “We have this problem across the city — there are apartments full of mold. [An Oak Cliff apartment complex] didn’t have hot water for three weeks. We want to compassionately take care of people in these apartments and talk about how we can improve their quality of life.” 

Brown acknowledged that multi-family properties contribute to a large percentage of violent crime and abatable offenses in Dallas and are a significant driver of 311 service requests, nuisance abatement, and community prosecution cases. 

OIPSS and the Code Compliance Department launched the Action Team Model to proactively address issues at multi-family properties and support DPD Nuisance Abatement Unit and Community Prosecution, she said.

“The most effective tool to date has been to establish relationships with those properties,” Brown said. “Most – not all – but most property owners are good actors or may be new owners desiring to reform a property. But make no mistake, we have bad actors doing the wrong thing. The performance of the property is what we care about – the safety of our residents. Our office is not in the business of selecting which residents we help – if they are worthy or not worthy. All residents deserve the right to a safe and habitable home. To this end, the city has increased staffing to its multi-family property code enforcement team to address property standards. This team operates by inspecting alleged violations called in to the city’s 311 Department as well as providing comprehensive and graded inspections of all multi-family properties. Properties which fail to meet compliance within a reasonable amount of time may be subject to fines, citations, and possible escalation to the City Attorney’s Office.”

The Solution 

The Volara in Oak Cliff is assigned two full-time Dallas police officers who have taken a tremendous interest in the residents, Melton said. Code compliance officers also are assigned to the area. The Park and Recreation Department is looking into programming options for kids. A nearby boxing gym could be reopened, pending a code inspection. 

“Community policing is happening, which is really good,” Melton said. “We’ve got people there interacting with them. There’s an officer raising money for kids to go to summer camp at a rec center, the exact thing you should be doing in a community policing environment.”

On Mother’s Day weekend, volunteers brought pizzas, art supplies, toys, and an ice cream truck to the area. 

“There are things we can do to make people’s lives easier and stable,” Melton said. “Every week I drive into some part of town that is stressed in every sense of the word. At some point, I am driving past a full patio of people drinking mimosas on a Sunday afternoon. There is a kind of a tale of two cities. There are people struggling with how to feed their kids for dinner. Historically they haven’t had much of a voice. There are advocates trying to bring it to light.”

The working group convened by Rogers is coming up with ideas to address code issues with landlords who are not compliant, and they’ll be looking at the section of city code that deals with minimum standards for rental properties. Changes would ultimately have to be approved by the city council. 

“I think everyone agrees there is a problem here,” Melton explained. “We didn’t get to a point where we said, ‘Here’s a plan.’ The idea here is to actually do it right. We’re looking at other cities to see if there are any best practices.”

In the meantime, other metro cities actually are looking at the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center to model their saturation theory. He was invited in April to present the theory before the Equal Access to Justice Commission. 

Saturation Theory

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Texas in 2020, people were unable to work and therefore unable to pay rent. Melton gave himself a crash course on eviction law to help people who were facing immediate and unlawful eviction. About 40 or 50 people immediately volunteered, and in less than a year, the group had helped 6,500 tenants. 

In early 2021, businesses were reopening, Melton and others were doing “real legal work,” and the volunteers were dwindling.

Melton and his wife enlisted some full-time lawyers and began saturating the Justice of the Peace courts, posting an attorney in each of the city’s 10 JP courtrooms, ready and available to help people who were being removed from their homes. 

“We’ve got a situation out there where we’ve got a huge percentage of these eviction cases where everybody’s doing it wrong,” Melton said. “If you can show, or even say, a tenant is behind on rent, a judge will grant you an eviction. Landlords gamble, and what’s the point in taking the time to do it right when the judge is just going to grant it anyway? The way that we operate is we stand up there and ask people if they need a lawyer. All I’ve got to do is ask the landlord if they gave notice and did it properly. Is there any evidence that they owe you rent? Almost always the answer is no. These things take three minutes. If we could represent all of these people, the 70 percent of evictions that happen unlawfully would evaporate. The whole model is to stay in one city until you reach complete saturation.” 

When people are evicted with just 24 hours’ notice, they don’t have time or disposable income to find a place to live.  

“You can literally drive to any Walmart in Dallas and there will be multiple families living in their cars in the parking lot,” Melton said. 

The eviction center, where Melton serves as board president, has received donations and funding from Margot Perot, The Meadows Foundation, and United Way, among others. 

“The real cost to do this at scale and solve the whole problem is between $3 [million] and $4 million. According to [Housing and Urban Development, the cost of one homeless person — with mental health services, the food pantry, and jails — is about $40,000 per person. So for $4 million, you can help 100 homeless people or you can stop thousands of people from being homeless in the first place. We flat-out refuse to take government money because it comes with too much red tape. There’s a whole body of law on what they can and can’t do. My funders know exactly what I’m doing. I don’t care how much money you make or if you’re undocumented.”

It’s a big challenge, but it’s not insurmountable, Melton says. 

“The saturation theory is the only way to do it,” he said. “The checkpoint here is the JP courts because that’s where everybody has to go to get their evictions. That’s what changes the whole system, when the landlord figures out that they have to start doing it right. We’ve changed the balance of power. Everyone is going to benefit.”

Brown said Melton has demonstrated “extraordinary commitment to the most vulnerable in our community.” 

“We are grateful for what he is doing, and for helping to elevate the issue among city leadership and our community partners,” she said.

Dangerous Neighborhoods

In addition to the South Boulevard/Park Row neighborhood, others identified by HomeByFour.com as dangerous Dallas communities include Cedar Crest, South Dallas, Convention Center District, Cockrell Hill, Northwest Dallas, and Wolf Creek. Conversely, the safest neighborhoods identified in the same study were Preston Highlands, Campbell Green, Prestonwood, Greenland Hills, Lakeview Heights, Wilshire Heights, and Highlands of McKamy.

Police Chief Eddie Garcia recently briefed the city council on crime reduction strategies. 

Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia

“In order for any plan to work, you need support from one city and community and you need incredible and professional proactive men and women. We are fortunate to have both,” Garcia said during the three-hour June 15 briefing. 

Police administrators at the June meeting touted “hotspot policing,” which focuses on visibility and awareness of repeat offenders. 

Business owners also have expressed an interest in doing their part to keep Dallas’s entertainment districts appealing to visitors. The Deep Ellum Foundation recently released its own community safety plan

Sarah Bradley, injury prevention and outreach coordinator of the trauma services department at Methodist Dallas Medical Center in Oak Cliff, said the hospital has partnered with 24 Hour Dallas, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and responsibility.org on their initiatives “to reduce harm and make the nightlife economy safer through a preventative approach.”

Gunshot wounds and alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents are common, Bradley added. 

“Statistics are just showing us we’re in need of an approach to prevent violence and harm reduction by partnering with these multiple agencies,” she said. “These initiatives are extremely important to the population we’re serving every day to reduce the amount of injuries, deaths, and suffering that we see in the hospital every day.”

April Towery covers Dallas City Hall and is an assistant editor for CandysDirt.com. She studied journalism at Texas A&M University and has been an award-winning reporter and editor for more than 25 years.

1 Comment

  1. David Ivy on July 22, 2022 at 8:48 pm

    I am a homeless man who is in need of a home I need help do you guys offer any help for the homelessness

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