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Housing Committee Talks ‘Equity,’ Spending

housing committee
Dallas City Council | Image by Jonathan Richie / The Dallas Express

The Dallas City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee met at City Hall on Tuesday to hear and discuss briefings on Dallas’ homelessness and vagrancy crisis.

The committee consists of Council Members Casey Thomas (Chair, District 3), Jesse Moreno (Vice Chair, District 2), Paula Blackmon (District 9), Carolyn King Arnold (District 4), Cara Mendelsohn (District 12), Paul Ridley (District 14), and Jaynie Schultz (District 11). Council Member Chad West (District 1) is not a part of the committee but was allowed to sit in and participate in committee discussions.

Thomas and Blackmon did not attend in person, choosing to video conference instead. Arnold was absent for the first hour before joining her colleagues online.

The first briefing item discussed was the Dallas Housing Resource Catalog being developed by the Department of Housing & Neighborhood Revitalization. The catalog would be the organizing structure that undergirds the “Seven Pillars of Housing Equity” adopted in December 2022.

“It’s still unclear to me why we’re doing this,” Ridley told David Noguera and Thor Erickson, the department’s director and assistant director, respectively. Ridley suggested that the catalog was already largely included in the existing City housing policy.

Noguera explained that the Dallas Housing Resource Catalog would bifurcate the housing programs and supporting policies in order to provide more flexibility for staff to adapt and improve administrative functions.

Mendelsohn expressed concern, however, that the City Council was not being adequately consulted about the department’s various programs, specifically about how community engagement is being conducted.

“I want you to be asking us as it’s being developed. This is exactly the problem,” said Mendelsohn, noting that the council members are elected to represent the community.

Deputy City Manager Kimberly Tolbert asserted that staff would work more closely with the council in the future during the developmental stages of City initiatives.

The next briefing covered the uses of the “Mixed Income Housing Development Bonus (MIHDB) Fee in lieu funding.” The MIHDB “incentivizes mixed income multifamily and mixed-use development through various zoning bonuses” and fees assessed to developers. It is also meant to encourage the construction of “affordable housing.”

City staff noted that the Housing Department had collected around $4.4 million in fees since the program began and that it has conducted research to determine what programs should receive the funds.

The study suggested that residents and stakeholders viewed the lack of “affordable” homeownership opportunities, residential displacement from high property taxes, poor infrastructure, and the city’s homelessness and vagrancy crisis as issues worth spending the funds on.

The committee also heard an update from the Office of Homeless Solutions on the Homeless Action Response Team (HART), established in December and reported on by The Dallas Express.

Many memos were also submitted to the committee by City staff, outlining future agenda items for the committee, such as proposals for the sale of land for affordable housing units and loan agreements.

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