The Dallas City Council approved several items Wednesday relating to housing in Dallas, including spending millions of taxpayer dollars on rental assistance and housing assistance for people with AIDS.
The council approved a resolution to spend $4.3 million on “Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) programs.”
These programs include roughly $620,000 spent on tenant-based rental assistance and approximately $1.7 million spent on housing assistance for people with AIDS through the organization AIDS Services of Dallas.
HOPWA is a federal program from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that is specifically dedicated to spending taxpayer dollars on, as the title indicates, housing assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS.
In addition, the council approved spending over $1.4 million on emergency rental assistance from the American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
This federal program is meant to assist lower-income households in paying rent or utilities if they are unable to make a payment.
These rental assistance programs are intended to function as homelessness prevention as the City of Dallas continues to wrestle with critical levels of homelessness and vagrancy.
The council also approved updates to the City’s homebuyer assistance program to provide a loan of up to $50,000 per household to Dallas residents who have lived in the city for at least 10 years. To qualify, the homebuyer must have a household income of 50-120% of the area’s median income.
The City also amended the Dallas Homebuyer Assistance Program (DHAP) and the DHAP Targeted Homebuyer Incentive Program by increasing the front-end ratio for the loans to 35%.
According to the resolution, money for these loans will be taken from the City’s “Equity Fund,” which Councilmember Jaynie Schultz asked to quantify.
“I want to know how much money is in the Equity Fund, not just this program,” she said. “[Is it] 20 million? 100 million?”
Despite the resolution specifically saying the financing will come from the “Equity Fund,” City staff indicated that such a fund does not exist, strictly speaking.
“There’s no such thing as an ‘Equity Fund,'” City Manager T.C. Broadnax explained, but “there’s 20 million that was allocated, separated from the budget” to be used on equity projects.
During the same council meeting, the City also passed an ordinance amending the Dallas City Code and requiring a license for each boarding home facility.
The ordinance also altered the license application requirements, adding that boarding home facilities must be more than 2,000 feet away from another group dwelling facility.
The version of the ordinance presented to the council had a distance requirement of 1,000 feet, but the number was increased after recommendations from council members.
Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn initially raised the issue of the distance requirement, and her concern was echoed by Councilmember Omar Narvaez.
“I also agree that there should be a higher distance in between,” Narvaez said. “I’d like to make an amendment in order to increase that distance at this time so we don’t have to come back and amend it … doubling it to 2,000 feet.”
Following an inquiry from Councilmember Paul Ridley, the City’s director of code compliance, Chris Christian, clarified that existing boarding homes would be unaffected. He said that they would not be denied license renewals.
“This would only apply to new license applications,” Christian said.