Dallas continues to struggle with an abundance of trash and litter on its streets, with the City of Dallas logging almost 900 instances of refuse on vacant properties and certain commercial spaces.
According to the City of Dallas code compliance performance dashboard, there have been 884 “litter on vacant lots commercial properties SEC. 18-12(b)” offenses clocked this year; however, it is unclear to what degree such violations are being tracked through which day or week, as the dashboard gives no such indication outside of month and year.
The City clocked tens of thousands of code compliance violations related to litter and junk in 2023, with tens of thousands of violations categorized as “litter on private property, alley or parkway.”
As reported by The Dallas Express, polling shows that residents are generally upset with “the amount of trash, litter, or junk” in their communities and “elsewhere in the City of Dallas.”
Private citizens and civic groups have tried to rectify the situation. For instance, the Metroplex Civic & Business Association (MCBA) launched an adopt-a-block-type program in which affiliated organizations take it upon themselves to clean up parts of Dallas.
“As we looked around this last year, it seemed clear that in the city of Dallas … there [are] parts of the city where people are coming in from out of town, and frankly, they’ve just been really dirty,” MCBA CEO Louis Darrouzet said in a previous interview with The Dallas Express.
“If the City is not taking charge of this [and] keeping our roads and streets and sidewalks clean … it’s our community, it’s our responsibility at the end of the day,” Darrouzet added.
The most common violation logged this year by the City was “litter on private property, alley or parkway,” with 3,121 offenses reported.
