Dallas County residents have named excessive business taxes, troublesome crime, and the proliferation of homeless and vagrancy as top reasons why people might be moving out of the city despite record growth regionally.
When asked, “Why do you think the Dallas metro area is facing such strong growth, but the City of Dallas itself is actually shrinking?” residents of Dallas County ranked “oppressive business taxes and regulations pushing businesses out” as the highest overall contributing factor, according to a poll conducted by The Dallas Express.
This is despite the fact that “Over 65,000 businesses call the City of Dallas home, including global leaders such as Texas Instruments, AT&T, Comerica and Southwest Airlines,” per Dallas’ Economic Development office.
That number reportedly includes some 59,000 small businesses.
Yet some suggest that the city of Dallas is losing out to the surrounding suburbs, which offer simpler regulatory structures and less bureaucracy.
Louis Darrouzet, the CEO of the Metroplex Civic & Business Association, suggested to The Dallas Express, “So as companies are relocating to DFW, they’re not moving into Dallas.”
“The suburbs are typically less regulated,” Darrouzet explained. “They have higher performing school districts and many other benefits, including permitting processes that are much quicker, zoning, building entitlement processes that are easier to get through, and it’s easier for companies to work with.”
In recent years, Texas and the DFW region have boomed with new residents and businesses.
But despite regional and state growth, Dallas has lagged. From 2020 to 2021, nearly 16,000 people moved out of the city, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The next top concern that Dallasites expressed was the belief that “excessive crime” was driving people away from the city. In total, nearly 41% of respondents listed crime among their top three concerns.
Some 4,765 assaults have already been reported as of April 27 this year, as well as 4,763 motor vehicle thefts, 3,858 thefts from motor vehicles, 3,076 instances of property damage, 3,003 drug violations, and 2,237 cases of aggravated assault, according to the Dallas crime analytics overview.
Throughout the city, 93 people have been murdered, for a rate of 7.13 killings per 100,000 people. Overall, roughly 282 crimes occur each day.
Homelessness and vagrancy also have affected the city’s livability, according to poll respondents, with 40% of people listing the issue among their top three.
In recent years, the number of “chronically homeless,” or vagrant, people has spiked, jumping from 327 in 2021 to 1,029 in 2022 — an increase of 214%.
Furthermore, certain initiatives by the City of Dallas to address the issue have floundered, with several facilities purchased by officials to house the homeless continuing to sit empty and unused for years, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Respondents also noted a bad perception of the Dallas Independent School District as another leading factor to people potentially leaving the area, with 38% ranking it a top three problem.
Parents of students who currently attend DISD echoed that sentiment, with a plurality suggesting that the district’s “terrible reputation” significantly affected population trends, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Additionally, 43% of respondents also said they somewhat or strongly disagreed with the claim that Dallas City Council is doing enough to keep taxes low.
This is compared to 20% of respondents who said they were unsure about the effectiveness of the City Council’s approach to keeping taxes in check and 37% who were satisfied with the efforts undertaken.
Notably, this comes after Dallas made the largest tax rate cut in modern history, slashing the rate by 2.75 cents per $100 valuation in the most recent budget, as reported by The Dallas Express. Yet such a rate reduction still cannot outstrip rising valuations, and most homeowners will still see tax increases.
Furthermore, “The total tax rate for the City of Dallas has declined annually since 2017,” per the City’s economic development website, dropping from $0.7825 per $100 in 2017 to $0.7458 per $100 in 2023. But when combined with the county, school district, college, and hospital taxes, the overall tax burden rate is $2.56 per $100 valuation.