(Candy’s Dirt) – Dallas department directors have been unveiling their draft budget proposals at City Council committee meetings over the past month, and Housing took its turn at the horseshoe in late June.
Interim Assistant Housing Director John Smalls said the department is reducing its budget by 38 percent “due to a combination of reductions in each service line.”
The Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Department has about 60 employees and will operate the next fiscal year on a $23.9 million budget, the majority of which comes from federal grants.
District 1 Councilman Chad West asked if the budget reflected anything significant that residents would notice.
Housing Director Cynthia Rogers-Ellickson said the department’s ability to serve clients would move a lot faster by having fewer programs that don’t compete with each other.
“It is very streamlined, very straightforward, and our ability to actually serve and get money to the clients that need it as well as get our performance measures up and moving [will work] a lot better,” she said.
View the Housing Department’s presentation or watch the June 25 Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee meeting.
Mixed-Income Housing Development Bonus
District 12 Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn questioned the Mixed-Income Housing Development Bonus, which trades additional development rights — such as height, floor area ratio, density, and reduced parking minimums — in multifamily and mixed-use developments for onsite affordable housing units or a fee in lieu of onsite provision.
“If we’re OK with higher density but we’re just going to charge people more, why don’t we just let them have higher density?” Mendelsohn said. “I don’t understand why, if we’re saying the restriction is seven stories but we’ll let you go to 10 if you pay this extra money, then we’re actually OK with 10.”
Rogers-Ellickson said the revenue is used for other housing activities.
“We would have lost affordability altogether,” she said.
Mendelsohn pushed back.
“We wouldn’t have lost,” she said. “We would have had higher density in the place that we actually were OK with it instead of trying to put it in places where we’re not OK with it.”
The council member also suggested that an audit of the Public Facility Corporation should fall under the citywide review rather than being autonomous. A presentation on the PFC financing structure is scheduled for Aug. 26.
The June 25 presentation was a preview that all city departments are doing as the Dallas City Council prepares to adopt the budget in September. The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.