Will Dallas’ Racial Equity Plan Actually Work to Create Affordable Housing?

In an effort to put policy behind its goals of creating affordable housing and fixing problems in neglected and poor neighborhoods, the Dallas City Council recently adopted a Racial Equity Plan. 

One council member, however, is skeptical about the document’s ability to bring positive change to the whole city. 

The 75-page Racial Equity Plan was adopted during an Aug. 24 city council meeting.

There’s still work to be done in engaging the community and identifying specific deliverables and funding options, city leaders acknowledged.

Assistant City Manager Liz Cedillo-Pereira said the plan will be posted in five languages and an “equity dashboard” has been established to show the public how staff members are meeting accountability measures. 

District 12 Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn cast the lone vote against the measure, noting that she has a long history of working for marginalized people and communities but thought the plan should have gone in a different direction. 

“We have one of the highest poverty rates in the country for a major city, and this should be our urgent priority for the entire council and our city,” she said. “This racial equity plan is not the right plan for us in my opinion. What I think we really need is a master plan for southern Dallas. What we’re doing is continuing to keep our city segregated. If we had a master plan for southern Dallas, it would also address environmental justice.”

It’s time to develop the land in southern Dallas, she added.

“If we were serious about what we were doing in southern Dallas, we would all commit to subsidizing only development in southern Dallas,” Mendelsohn said. “Do you think that wouldn’t grab the attention of every developer if they had certainty about what their zoning would be — if they had certainty of how we would develop it?”

What it Means For Housing

District 1 Councilman Chad West pointed out that the plan addresses rental housing access, homeownership gaps, and anti-displacement measures. 

A report from the Child Poverty Action Lab shows that market-rate rent in Dallas rose 12.3 percent in the past year, and income went up just 4.1 percent. 

“That’s going to trickle down to the affordable rates,” West said. “The average rent in the city is $1,524 per month. To spend 30 percent or less of your income, you’ve got to make $60,000 or more per year to make that work. Your average minimum wage worker is going to make under $20,000 per year, so they can’t even afford average rent in the city. That is very concerning.”

The “big, audacious goal” of housing is to close the homeownership gap and secure housing stability in Dallas, Cedillo-Pereira said.

But there wasn’t a clear answer on how the plan itself, referred to as the REP, would actually help people access affordable housing in the short term. 

Page 40 of the plan suggests the following key department actions: 

• Invest in the development and preservation of housing in Dallas 
• Provide homebuyer assistance to qualified households 
• Develop policy to improve availability, quality, and equity of housing in Dallas

“We really just need to make sure that we’re not just consolidating lower incomes in one part of the city, that we’re spreading everyone out because all ships rise together,” West said. 

David Noguera, director of housing and neighborhood revitalization, said city staff is in the beginning stages of developing an anti-displacement toolkit. They are moving away from the “go-it-alone” approach of using city resources to carry out housing preservation and access to homeownership, and instead partnering with the private sector, he said.

“You’re going to see this message being portrayed as we move forward with the 2024 bond and in the coming months with the anti-displacement toolkit,” Noguera said. “We realize that city resources can’t do everything that’s in front of us. Through partnerships with banks, understanding what their community reinvestment goals are, what their obligations are, we’re going to be looking to leverage. If all we have is $1 million for a project or a program, how do we take that $1 million and turn it into $10 million? We’re just getting started, but the big piece of it is the leverage factor.”

One such partnership is already underway. Bank of America announced earlier this week it would offer zero-down mortgages in Black and Latino neighborhoods in Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Miami.

Noguera said his office wouldn’t necessarily be targeting people of color and guiding them to banks to get them into home ownership, but rather targeting specific communities and ZIP codes. 

“We want to make sure that those who have historic ties to communities are given the first opportunity to access these resources,” he said. 

Noguera added that his staff is committed to prioritizing mixed-income housing. 

“We’re looking to drive market-rate housing to areas, of high poverty,” he said. “We’re looking to drive lower-income households to high-opportunity areas to achieve mixed-income communities.” 

West repeatedly emphasized the question of how these things are going to happen. 

“As we continue to reach out to non-traditional developers for affordable housing stock, how are we going to reach out to them? How do we get that group identified and built up?” he asked. 

Noguera said that would come from several different angles. 

“It’s going to come from looking at our faith-based community, our housing advocacy groups, and those who work in the social service space, education, healthcare, those who have tangential relationships to housing, to see how we might encourage them to deploy their resources to support these efforts,” he said. 

Cedillo-Pereira added that the plan outlines “action targets” that lead to the big, audacious goals. It’s a process, she explained, rather than a quick fix. Forty-two city departments have developed progress measures, based on feedback from residents and city council members, related to the goals outlined in the plan. 

“They’re looked at as three- to five-year goals,” she said. “It allows us to go back and work with departments and the community to modify them and hone in on what needs to be addressed moving forward. We’ll report annually on them.”

Public Feedback 

District 4 resident Angela Willis, a Realtor with Keller Williams, said she believes the plan will create more opportunities for women of color. 

“Race is just one dimension of diversity, but I believe this plan will create access, advancement, and opportunities for all the dimensions that fall under diversity,” she said. “I would like to see more money or tax incentives put behind nonprofit organizations, property management companies, and developers that are working together to offer vocational training and after-school programs to low-to-moderate-income teens, particularly in District 4 and District 8. In my opinion, this would help reduce crime and deter juvenile delinquency.”

Evelyn Mayo, an advocate for fair housing and environmental justice, and chairwoman of Downwinders at Risk, said she was in favor of the city’s racial equity goals, but expressed some concerns about how the plan would accomplish that. 

“There’s no funding to ensure implementation of the plan,” she said. 

Mayo also said Downwinders’ Coalition for Neighborhood Self-Determination is concerned about the “ad hoc way that outreach and engagement was conducted for the plan to be created” and the lack of detail around how many of the recommendations will be implemented. 

Kathryn Bazan suggested that during the next phase of engagement, the plan should be more accessible to Spanish speakers, adding that the Spanish version of the plan was posted for public review just two days prior to the council meeting at which it was adopted. 

“If community members don’t believe that this plan will bring them any tangible equity — its core purpose — it’s useless,” she said. 

More Council Comments

District 3 Councilman Casey Thomas II said all the performance measures have been posted on the We Are One Dallas website for weeks. 

“We have an opportunity to take the first step to re-establish trust with communities of color that we have committed to implementing a policy that will begin to level the playing field in the City of Dallas,” Thomas said. “We have the chance to be the council of courage, and when I kicked this can down the road, there was extensive community engagement throughout the entire city.”

District 13 Councilwoman Gay Donnell Willis made the motion to approve the plan. 

“It’s time to acknowledge that we all have different experiences and some of us have been disgustingly discriminated against,” she said. “By design, it makes us weak, and Dallas should be strong. This council has already taken the steps to get at this issue. I support this plan and I look forward to the fine-tuning of it with the program measures and equity atlas so we can be true to the resolution that was passed by this council in March 2021.”

Councilman Adam Bazaldua referenced Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. 

“We want the same dream and now we’re going to implement policy to allow for the next generation of Dallasites to accomplish that,” he said. “This is a dream that’s addressing systemic issues, historically disadvantaged people, people who are not on the level playing field, to right some wrongs of the past. I think we are headed in the right direction. We’re going to have to hold feet to the fire to get funding to see these things accomplished. We talk often about the disparities in all our districts. We all have needs, and I don’t think this is going to ignore any of them. This is putting our actions behind our words, and we’re going to put money behind our actions. That’s what it’s going to take to make any change in this city.” 

Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn King Arnold mentioned that District 8 is a “whole community on septic tanks.” 

“It is painful that we are still talking today about treating people humanely,” she said. “Let’s stop making it difficult to feed people, to house people, to protect people. We have to stop worrying about who’s not going to vote for us in the next election and who’s not going to give to the campaign.”

Missing The Mark?

Mayor Eric Johnson, at one point in the discussion, cautioned council members to not speak directly to each other, as some elected officials appeared to take issue with Mendelsohn’s criticism of the plan. 

Mendelsohn repeatedly explained that her problem isn’t with racial equity; it’s with a plan that doesn’t identify or “call out” what she sees as the biggest problem in Dallas, the racial and financial segregation of the city. 

“It’s missing the mark of addressing that overarching problem,” she said. ”The items in the plan, many of which have already been approved by council, they’re not new news. They’ve already been funded. Some have already been implemented. This is about a political speech.”

“We really just need to make sure that we’re not just consolidating lower incomes in one part of the city, that we’re spreading everyone out because all ships rise together.”  

District 1 dallas city councilmember Chad West

She asked that other council members stop fighting over dollars that are needed in every district. 

“To try to weaponize something called a racial equity plan is ugly and unbecoming of people on this council, and I don’t appreciate it,” she said. “Most of the items that are talked about in this plan are actually basic city functions that we should be already providing. That we have these deficiencies is a deficiency of City Hall. We haven’t done what’s necessary. It’s not that another plan is needed. It’s that we need to do better. Resources shouldn’t be put into this plan. They should be put into the departments to do the actual work.”

Bazaldua said change comes when policymakers have honest and difficult conversations. 

“I think it’s absolutely beyond out of touch to take our own personal ideology and say that it is about politics when we have the ability to make a change in this city,” he said. “If we continue to ignore and continue to deflect, we are going to continue to be part of the problem when we are trying to be part of the solution.” 

District 8 Councilman Tennell Atkins often uses the term “tale of two cities” when describing what he refers to as the imbalance between the “old city” north of Interstate 30 and the Trinity River, and the “young city” south of 30. 

“We’re talking about equity. We’re not talking about districts,” he said. “If we’re going to be one Dallas, we’ve got to share the wealth. Let’s do it right for Dallas, not one-fourteenth of Dallas.”