After some heated debate, the Dallas City Council approved a housing policy Wednesday aimed at addressing longtime racial disparities that have persisted after decades of discriminatory practices.
Twelve council members voted in favor of the housing policy. Adam McGough and Cara Mendelsohn, who represent areas of northern Dallas, voted against it. Mayor Eric Johnson was absent.
The policy follows an audit called for by Councilman Casey Thomas that revealed the city’s 2018 comprehensive housing policy lacked ways to measure progress and create actual plans on how to decrease disparities in city housing.
The new policy directs the city to identify disparities in housing opportunities and reduce them, as well as increase housing production and preservation to improve affordability for mixed-income communities in all areas of the city.
The policy will also guide the city in prioritizing investments in infrastructure in specific areas through an ongoing community engagement process.
Under the new policy, the housing department will develop a six- to 12-month implementation plan, establish an advisory housing task force, and report on progress to the city’s housing and homelessness solutions committee every six months.
Housing staff has been working with TDA Consulting on an implementation plan, said David Noguera, Dallas’ director of housing and neighborhood revitalization. The City Council will see a contract next month that outlines activities that need to be carried out over the next year, he said.
Those activities include setting up the “inclusive housing task force,” selecting specific areas of the city to target for certain kinds of development and getting agreements about how to proceed across city departments and with external stakeholders.
Thomas, who championed the city’s racial equity plan, says another recommendation would be to include a dashboard that would provide transparency to the public on progress.
“I think this process has really re-established a lot of trust with communities that had developed a lack of trust” following decades of communities of color feeling neglected and harmed by their government, Thomas said. “To build upon that trust, we definitely need to include a dashboard that will be available for the community.”
The task force’s work on identifying target areas could involve locating the places that need various levels of investment toward production, preservation, infrastructure, Noguera said.
“There may be established communities that need affordable housing. In other target areas, there may be green space that needs new development that wasn’t there before,” Noguera said. “It won’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. It will be customized to what the residents, the stakeholders, the council are telling us is needed in those areas.”
Heated debate
While received well by most of the council, there was considerable debate over whether the policy is an appropriate response to the affordable housing needs of a diverse city.
“This is one of the most important projects and policies that we can take as leaders, because it’s addressing an issue that we’ve been talking about for a long time. … This gives us a very clear North Star and a direction to move in,” council member Jaynie Schultz said.
Schultz asked Noguera how the policy’s goal of expanding mixed-income housing across the city will be implemented without imposing mandates on communities.
Noguera said there are no mandates and city staff will continue to work with residents and developers when trying to meet goals.
“What this policy will do will help us channel those efforts to targeted areas so that, when you look at revitalization, you can actually see that we didn’t just do a project in an area, we did lots of different activities,” Noguera said.
Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn spoke out against the policy, citing a lack of community engagement and the policy’s focus on racial disparities instead of the symptoms of poverty.
“The focus has not been at this council on addressing poverty issues,” Mendelsohn said. “It’s solely on exacerbating racial issues, in my opinion.”
Mendelsohn said the policy places too much emphasis on multifamily development and not enough on homeownership.
When asked by Mendelsohn how city staff will take into consideration any neighborhood opposition to a development, Noguera said residents’ feedback is one piece of the decision-making process.
Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax then interjected that the new policy attempts to balance out some historical policies that prohibited or discouraged certain kinds of housing in certain areas.
“Heavy doses of multifamily have been put in the southern part of Dallas,” he said. “There has been an overload of single-family and wealth-building opportunities in the northern parts of our cities.”
Broadnax said that exclusionary zoning practices have prevented multifamily developments in specific areas. Mendelsohn objected to the characterization that Far North Dallas lacks enough affordable housing.
“There’s plenty of multifamily,” she said. “Other colleagues around here in Far North Dallas or North Dallas also have very significant amounts of multifamily. So when we tell you we’re not looking to have more, there’s a reason.”
Councilman Omar Narvaez, who represents areas of West Dallas, said the new policy gives people hope that housing affordability can be a reality in their community.
“We have been working very hard to have a YIMBY attitude when it comes to putting in place these affordable units because we care more about our fellow human beings than we care about dollars,” Narvaez said. “It’s about people over dollars.”
