The ‘G Word’ Rears Its Ugly Head in Poorly Attended Dallas Housing Equity Workshops

Not a lot of people have been showing up to the City of Dallas’s Accountability for Housing Equity workshops, but those who do are armed with information and ideas to prevent taxing residents out of their homes. 

And the dreaded “G word” — gentrification — is on the lips of many. 

Christine Campbell, a consultant with Community Equity Strategies, was hired by the city to facilitate neighborhood input. CandysDirt.com has filed an open records request with the City of Dallas for the scope of work and dollar amount of the contract.

“The goal right now is to deliver affordable housing to mid-income residents,” Campbell said during a Sept. 29  meeting at Walnut Hill Recreation Center. “Do the programs already in place have the right goals attached to them? They might move differently if the goal was anti-displacement coupled with affordability. We tend to worry about anti-displacement after everyone’s displaced.”

Last week’s workshop was the sixth in a series on accountability for housing equity. It was supposed to be the final public gathering on the topic, but demand for more feedback prompted consultants to schedule additional meetings. 

In-person strategy sessions will be held on Oct. 14, Oct. 15, and Nov. 5 at a location to be determined.

“There’s been so much planning,” Campbell said. “Dallas has two approved plans just focused on equity. We’re looking at how we move all these plans into implementation.” 

Strategies And Implementation

The accountability program aims to operationalize 11 strategy recommendations from the equity audit of the 2018 Dallas Comprehensive Housing Policy. The audit also was conducted by Community Equity Strategies. 

Some highlights of the 11 strategies include:

• Strengthening linkages to leverage infrastructure improvements, economic revitalization, and mixed-use master planning to build a foundation for increasing generational wealth in historically Black and Brown communities.
• Creating a dedicated revenue stream scaled to the magnitude of Dallas’s affordable housing shortage.
• Strategically using low-income housing tax credit financing in distressed areas and those with low poverty rates.
• Adding a goal to remedy the infrastructure deficit that has persisted in South Dallas for generations.

The few residents who attended the Sept. 29 workshop included two people who said they’d moved from Dallas to DeSoto because new development in their neighborhoods increased home values so much they could no longer afford property taxes. 

A Shorecrest resident explained that her neighborhood is well-maintained with good streets and multimillion-dollar homes. But that’s not the case in a nearby single-family development, she said. 

“You go across the street to Elm Thicket, and it’s like nobody cares about these people,” she said. “It’s a different world. People are getting pushed out of Elm Thicket because they can’t pay their taxes.”

Another meeting attendee chimed in to say that gentrification is occurring in other areas of Dallas, too. 

“It’s not just Elm Thicket; it’s Fair Park,” she said. “The same thing happened to Deep Ellum and Uptown. Those areas have been taken over. Where are those people going to go? They’ve been there for generations.”

Complicated probate and title issues prevent people from keeping a home that’s been in their family for decades, residents said. Foreclosure occurs because people don’t have the money or technical knowledge to file paperwork to transfer ownership of a home that some would argue is rightfully theirs. 

Campbell suggested that while the city has almost a dozen programs for housing assistance, minor repairs, and major repairs, they’re spread thin and can only help a few people who have Internet access and the ability to file a lengthy qualifying application. 

“If your priority is feeding your kids, you’re not looking at how to maximize tax credits,” Campbell said. “It’s about balancing and right-sizing the programs we already have.” 

Making Progress

The community workshops have thus far revealed that Dallas residents don’t know what’s available to them and don’t know how to pursue it once they do become aware of it, consultants said. 

That kind of feedback could be a catalyst for printing out fliers and walking the low-income neighborhoods to spread the word the old-fashioned way, Campbell said. Some residents not only don’t have Internet access or smartphones; they also don’t have transportation to get to a public library or Dallas City Hall, where meeting notices and grant opportunities are posted. 

For a city that’s been “planned out the wazoo,” there’s simply not enough public buy-in, Campbell said. The workshops are designed so neighbors are actually co-creating implementation processes, forwarding ideas to decision-makers, and holding their public officials accountable, she added.

Reese Collins, an area redevelopment manager for the city’s Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Department, said the information gathered at public workshops is incredibly valuable to staff.

“I’m here to express what it means to the department and the city as a whole, getting the community’s voice to enact change and give them a sense of ownership from the beginning,” he said. “This means so much to us, so we can have community feedback on the front end.”

Campbell encouraged residents to tell their friends and neighbors about the opportunities to share concerns and ideas for improvement. 

“It’s time to start making progress around equity,” Campbell said. “Our contract will end, but the work needs to continue.”