The annual Downtown Dallas Inc. State of Downtown event is typically a pep rally for the momentum around the city’s business district, but this year’s gathering was a chance to hear from local leaders on a topic at the forefront of everyone’s minds these days: affordable housing.
City Manager T.C. Broadnax, Housing Forward chairman Peter Brodsky, and Billingsley Company partner Lucy Burns fielded questions Thursday at Moody Performance Hall from Dallas Morning News publisher Grant Moise on homelessness, housing, and the upcoming 2024 bond election.
Housing And Homelessness
Federal COVID-19 relief funds funneled some much-needed dollars toward the city’s Rapid Rehousing program, but those funds are expiring, Brodsky explained.
“Rapid rehousing is a concept that basically says it’s very stressful living in a congregant shelter,” he said. “People who have experienced homelessness, particularly for long periods of time, have a lot of mental health issues, often substance issues, and it’s very hard to deal with those while you’re living in a highly stressful situation. The idea is to get people into housing as quickly as possible so they have a home base and they’ve got some sense of normalcy, security, and safety, and the wraparound the services they need.”
The city and county each offered $25 million to Housing Forward and additional funds were raised privately to implement a massive surge of rehousing 6,000 people by 2025, Brodsky explained.
“I think the biggest win here is just the muscle memory we’ve developed for how to house people more quickly, how to collaborate with the city, and how to bring in really important non-city agencies like DDI to work together rowing in the same direction,” Brodsky said.
One year after being rehoused, about 90 percent of the recipients remain sheltered, he added, noting that the federal government awards money to cities based on performance.
Downtown Real Estate And Economic Development
Burns said as people return to post-pandemic full-time office work, there are a few challenges with downtown real estate.
“Downtown has two obvious challenges,” she said. “One is that a lot of office [space] that exists there today is old and becoming more and more irrelevant. The other is commute times for businesses. If I’m a business and I’m looking to locate my operations center, the first thing I ask myself is where my employees live.”
Downtown needs new office space to continue to attract companies relocating from other parts of the country, Burns said.
Moise pointed out that the city’s Economic Development Corporation recently began advertising a position for its first-ever CEO.
Broadnax said he’s hopeful that once that position is filled, the EDC will build partnerships and focus on long-term sustainability.
“I’m excited about it,” he said. “I think it’s long overdue. We’ve got to do our best as a city to support them but also let them get their own sea legs and get out there and do the things their peers are doing to fight the good fight for the city of Dallas.”
Brodsky agreed that it’s important to have an “entity outside of the city government that’s going to have a City of Dallas jersey on, not just a regional jersey.”
“The region can’t thrive if the core isn’t thriving,” he said. “Dallas is the core of the region, and downtown is the core of the city.”
City Budget And Bond
In the wake of criticism about Dallas’ recently approved $4.63 billion budget and meager property tax rate decrease, Broadnax said the city is in good financial shape.
“Our budget uniquely is not divided up among districts, whether that’s the central business district or even any of the 14 council districts,” he said. “It’s really a citywide budget … It’s really around service delivery and where our needs are.”
The budget has grown by about $600 million over the last five or six years, Broadnax said. About 90 percent of those dollars have gone toward council priorities such as public safety, parks, libraries, and homeless solutions.
“We’ve been asked to increase or enhance services, not reduce them,” he said. “As much conversation as there has been about fiscal cliffs, whether that’s associated with federal funding or just the general nature of our budget, there is no fiscal cliff. We do a two-year balanced budget, so next year is actually already baked in and cured … The city is in good hands. Our future is much brighter than our past.”
If approved by voters next year, the 2024 capital bond program will offer $1 billion for streets, parks, city facilities, and drainage improvements. Community town hall meetings are underway to solicit feedback from residents as a Community Bond Task Force prepares recommendations to take to the Dallas City Council by the end of the year.
About $16 billion in deferred maintenance must be addressed, Broadnax said.
“I believe there’s more interest this year around housing to help our residents with affordability and preservation,” he said. “The next big wave of investment and redevelopment, in my mind and everybody’s eyes, is South Dallas. We’ve got to find ways to enhance and deal with our infrastructure issues there as well as preserve housing and rehabilitation efforts to make sure people who live in the southern part of the city are not moved out just because progress is finally coming.”
Brodsky said he supports a “significant portion” of the bond going toward affordable housing.
“We can’t have a city where people can’t afford to live,” he said. “With the housing inflation that’s happened in the region over the last couple of years, we’re going to begin to lose the people who teach our children, protect our streets, put out our fires, and provide nursing care if we can’t provide housing that’s affordable for them. That’s a major investment that’s going to allow us to grow in a healthy way.”
Downtown Dallas Inc.
Downtown Dallas Inc. president and CEO Jennifer Scripps highlighted the passage of Proposition A, which will fund, through a 2 percent increase in hotel occupancy taxes, renovations at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas and Fair Park.
“When voters said yes to Prop A, they said yes to more than just improving a convention center,” Scripps said. “They said yes … to the way we can truly transform the southwestern quadrant of downtown Dallas into a vibrant, connected mixed-use district.”
