Smart Growth for Dallas Decision Support Tool Launched!

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We are excited to announce the launch of the Smart Growth for Dallas Interactive Decision Support Tool, produced in partnership with the Trust for Public Land, and the Texas Trees Foundation.

The Decision Support Tool can help stakeholders working across various sectors identify the areas of our city where investments in green infrastructure can have the greatest possible impact.

The Decision Support Tool has been released in conjunction with a User Guide, descriptions of the data sources used in this analysis, and PDFs of the Smart Growth for Dallas priority maps (Absorb and Protect, Connect, Cool, Equity, and Health). The site also features a Story Map, through which you can learn more about the project and the analysis results.

Visit this link to explore the full site!

Harold Simmons Park Public Workshops

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[bc] is serving as a consultant to the Trinity Park Conservancy, bringing our skill set in public interest design to engage Dallas' communities around the future of Harold Simmons Park, 200 acres along the Trinity River. Engagement efforts will focus on discovering how Dallas residents currently use parks and public space while encouraging them to re-imagine what this area could be. This understanding will inform the design of the 200 acre Harold Simmons Park.

Join us as we support the Trinity Park Conservancy in envisioning the future of the Harold Simmons Park as a public space that connects Dallas residents to each other and nature. Starting September 15th, the Conservancy will host 10 public workshops across the city to reimagine our river. For more about Harold Simmons Park, click here. Click here to RSVP to the upcoming workshops.

2018 State of Dallas Housing Report

Read the full report here!

Learn more about bcANALYTICS  and check out the 2016 and 2017 State of Dallas Housing Reports!

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We are excited to release the third annual State of Dallas Housing report, the latest in our series of data-driven analytics reports that examine the issue of housing affordability within Dallas and present opportunities for equitable housing development.

The maps and graphics included in the report illustrate longitudinal trends in housing production and new residential construction, as well as growth in population, jobs, and income, across Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties. The report looks at median incomes by racial and ethnic group and by industry of employment in relation to average housing costs by Census tract.

The bcANALYTICS team interviewed 10 housing experts in Dallas to determine priority areas where additional research was needed. The need to better understand Dallas’s housing market within the context of the four-county region (Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant) emerged as a top priority. The report examines key data that demonstrates how Dallas’s housing market is not producing enough affordable housing to meet the needs of its socioeconomically diverse population. With costs of housing on the rise, the housing products on the Dallas market—and the regional market—are increasingly out of reach for many. Moving to surrounding communities does not, according to the study, provide a viable option for finding more affordable housing.

With the City of Dallas adopting a new Comprehensive Housing Policy, Dallas’s residents and stakeholders will need additional metrics and context to understand the issue of housing affordability at the city-wide scale. This new report aims to equip our city with the knowledge to be informed advocates for their communities’ interests.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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In 2017 North Texas continued to be one of the fastest growing regions in the United States, and one of the top housing markets in the United States. As the City of Dallas’ prepares to implement its recently passed housing policy, aimed at increasing the production of housing units across the city, it is important to understand housing production at a larger scale to pinpoint where new housing units or typologies may be needed at this critical juncture. The 2018 State of Dallas Housing Report explores current housing trends in the City of Dallas and socioeconomic trends across the four most populous counties of North Texas (Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant) to help contextualize housing production and identify potential challenges and opportunities for improving access to housing for residents of Dallas and North Texas. 

The region’s rise in population, new housing, employment, and income exemplifies the uneven nature of development and economic growth across North Texas. Growth in the region is concentrated in specific cities and neighborhoods, while other areas have experienced less measurable change in recent years. Housing production has followed this growth in parts of the region. However, housing production in the city of Dallas has been heavily concentrated in just a few of the Dallas’ nearly 400 neighborhoods despite more widespread growth across Dallas.

This report helps quantify these trends in Dallas’ housing production from 2011 to 2017, contrasting them with socioeconomic changes and housing production across North Texas. Is Dallas’ goal of increasing the production of housing feasible, inclusive, and able to address the needs of all Dallas residents? Central to this report is the focus of housing accessibility and affordability for different income and population groups in Dallas, based on the ratio of housing values to median income. Has new housing production across North Texas provided opportunities for Dallas’ median income households to access housing in surrounding communities? This report suggests the answer is no. 

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As more of Dallas’ housing production is focused on higher-valued homes, largely in the city’s northern sector, new housing built in North Texas from 2011 to 2016 was largely concentrated in areas that are the least affordable to Dallas’ median income households of color. As the City weighs a new housing policy to stimulate housing production in Dallas it is important to understand both the history of recent housing production in Dallas and the connection between housing production and Dallas’ existing residents. 

This report finds that despite large numbers of new housing units built across the region, many Dallas households are only able to easily afford housing in certain parts of North Texas, primarily in Census tracts that are heavily segregated with high poverty and further removed from much of the economic growth in North Texas. Additionally, some of the fastest growing industries in North Texas tend to pay lower wages that create an additional barrier to accessing affordable housing in proximity to jobs and other amenities based. The lack of production of affordable rental units only further enforces the challenge of Dallas’ minority and low income residents from accessing quality affordable housing at the expense of providing luxury housing for more affluent new residents moving to neighborhoods close to Downtown Dallas. 

Update: Healing Hands Ministries

Learn more about bcANALYTICS and check out additional reports in the bcANALYTICS Catalog.

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In 2014, bcANALYTICS worked with Healing Hands Ministries on a report to help advocate for a new DART bus stop at the intersection of Greenville Ave. and Royal Ln. in Lake Highlands. Over the past several years, Janna Gardner, the founder and CEO of Healing Hands, has worked tirelessly to bring that goal to fruition alongside District 10 Council Member Adam McGough, the AllinD10 Collection Impact initiative, DART, and other community groups. 

Thanks to all of that hard work, a new bus stop, which will help Healing Hand’s clients have better access to the clinic by public transportation, has opened on DART’s Route 84.

In our previous work, we found that Healing Hands was located further from public transportation than other low cost or affordable health care options, which proves a challenge for the thousands of low-income families and individuals who receive services from Healing Hands—the nearest stop was roughly ¾-mile away from Healing Hands clinic, while most organizations, as we found, have a stop less than ¼-mile away. 

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The data and information prepared by [bc], with support from Communities Foundation of Texas, was an important tool in Janna’s effort to provide better public transportation to the families who rely on Healing Hands for health care services. 

We celebrate this community victory with Healing Hands Ministries today and will continue to work to equip community leaders with the tools and data analytics services that they need to advocate for positive change. 

Read the full report here!
 

THIS WORK WAS SUPPORTED BY
As the largest community foundation in Texas and one of the largest in the nation, Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) works with families, companies and nonprofits to strengthen our community through a variety of charitable funds and strategic grantmaking initiatives. The foundation professionally manages more than 900 charitable funds and has awarded more than $1.3 billion in grants since its founding in 1953. Increasing financial stability of working families is one of the two key focus areas of CFT’s community impact funds. To support this area, CFT has launched the Data Driven Decision-Making (D3) Institute. The D3 Institute is designed to provide organizations that offer programs and services for low-income working families the power to accelerate their development of enduring solutions to the social and economic problems facing this population. www.cftexas.org/D3

Smart Growth for Dallas Technical Advisory Team

Learn more about our Smart Growth for Dallas related work!

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Smart Growth for Dallas is launching a Technical Advisory Team! As the next phase of a partnership with the Trust for Public Land and the Texas Trees Foundation, we're working to refine a data-driven decision support tool, which will help Dallas and its residents identify opportunities for parks, green infrastructure, and other green investments in areas where it will have significant impact. The information gathered through prior community engagement meetings has informed and will continue to drive the development of this tool. We'll be communicating with stakeholders across the city to get additional input.

As members of the Technical Advisory Team, stakeholders will provide insight as to how this tool can help achieve goals across various sectors, how their data can be incorporated, and specific use cases for the tool. The partnership will be convening a series of webinars through Summer 2018 in alignment with the five planning objectives: Connect, Cool, Health, Equity, and Absorb/Protect.

If you think the tool could be useful to you or your organization, please get in touch with us via email!

[bc], Trust for Public Land, and Dallas Park and Recreation Director Willis Winters were recently featured in an NBC DFW segment. Trust for Public Land North Texas Area Director Robert Kent stated, "Our objective in Smart Growth for Dallas is to provide a best in class data tool, to help the city understand specific areas where we can make investments in green assets, whether it's things like rain gardens or more trees or buying more land for parks, that will have a big impact on social, economic and environmental challenges." 

Stay tuned for further updates!

Dallas Cultural Plan Public Engagement

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As a partner in the team with Lord Cultural Resources, HR&A Advisors, and Idyllic Interactive, [bc] is working to engage Dallas's residents for the Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs' Dallas Cultural Plan 2018. Through a year-long process, the Office of Cultural Affairs (OCA) seeks to gather community input on how residents experience culture in their daily lives and how the city can continue to stay arts-friendly. 

The public engagement process for the Dallas Cultural Plan kicked off with a series of four events this September. At the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Children's Theatre, Walnut Hill Recreation Center, and Southwest Center Mall, attendees participated in a series of activities which included realtime digital mapping, drawing stories of cultural experiences, and building ideal cultural communities. 

Through October and November, Community Conversations at South Dallas Cultural Center, Oak Cliff Cultural Center, Fretz Park Recreation Center, Bath House Cultural Center, Pleasant Grove Branch Library, West Dallas Multipurpose Center, and Moody Performance Hall provided forums for residents to share their visions for arts in their neighborhoods.

The Community Conversations will engage residents of all 14 districts within the City of Dallas. The series resumed for the new year at the Grauwyler Park Branch Library on January 11, 2018. In January/February 2018, we'll continue engaging residents through Community Conversations at:

This phase of outreach also includes a series of discussions focused on specific art mediums, cultural institutions, and practicing artists. Upcoming opportunities include:

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Don't miss your chance to share your thoughts, hopes, and dreams for Dallas's cultural future through this once-in-a-decade opportunity. Be on the lookout for future events on the Dallas Cultural Plan event calendar. 

Even if you can't make it to an event, there are other ways that you can get involved! Take the Dallas Cultural Plan Survey to help us understand the diversity of arts and cultural activity occurring across Dallas and in your neighborhood.

You can also contribute to Dallas’ Arts & Culture Ecosystem Map by entering locations where you go to to create, experience, or learn about arts and culture in Dallas here—please enter only one location at a time, but you can submit as many responses as you'd like.

The Neighborhood Toolkit can be used to facilitate a conversation with friends, neighbors or co-workers on your own time. Email engage@dallasculturalplan.com to tell us about the date, time and location of your meeting!

Check out photos from Dallas Cultural Plan activities that have taken place thus far in the gallery below!

Activating Vacancy Downtown Dallas Recap

For the Activating Vacancy Downtown Dallas, a National Endowment for the Arts-supported project in partnership with Downtown Dallas, Inc., two artist teams worked with community members to create works of public art to activate spaces in Downtown Dallas. Through a call for proposals, artists were tasked with devising a project in response to public space priorities, identified through our Community Audited Public Space (CAPS) process and a Community Advisory Committee. Two series of works were created through a community-engaged process: the WonderPhones and MAY I // a blessing project. Project teams engaged with community members through a variety of workshops and community gathering events, which included project tours and a culmintaing public interview with the artists. 

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WonderPhone

The WonderPhone is an interactive payphone that connect the people in downtown Dallas to the city and each other. The team combined old and new technology to allow people to listen to content and play and record their stories. Five WonderPhones were created, placed in colorful enclosures in various locations downtown and popping up at events.

The WonderPhone team (Rickey Crum, Gray Garmon, Katie Krummeck, Edward Li, and Justin Childress) worked with local high school students, architects, historians, designers, urban planners, musicians and essayists to create and record engaging Dallas- or phone-related content for participants to enjoy. Audio content ranged from personal stories of memories downtown to future imaginings of new possibilities for Downtown, as well both curated and newly created pieces that focus on the history and architecture of downtown Dallas. Interactive prompts ask participants to share reactions to specific questions (and hear responses live) as well as follow instructions to participate in immersive experiences exploring downtown.

The artists said, "We hope that the WonderPhone will inspire participants to listen and think deeply about the lived experiences of the citizens of Downtown Dallas as well as engage participants in activities to help them observe Dallas in a new light and reflect on their own participation in the city."

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MAY I // a blessing project

MAY I // a blessing project is a walkable installation of blessings written by local young women for the Dallas community, manifested large-scale. The artists Ruben Carrazana and Janielle Kastner worked with a group of young women (ages 12-18) who wrote specific declarations of hope for themselves (MAY I), for their community (MAY WE), and for their spaces (MAY THIS SPACE).

The team issued an exhortation to the city: "We believe these young women don’t need us to 'empower' them, they need us to acknowledge they already have the power to speak life into their community. We call these declarations blessings as they begin with the word 'may' - a word that summons into existence that which isn’t here yet. Our work as artists has been taking their words and manifesting them in unexpected places downtown in a bold, surprising, even defiant manner. In a world that asks them to shrink, MAY I radically insists young women take up extraordinary amounts of space. We encourage you to join these young women and manifest your own blessing in your spaces, tagging #mayiblessdallas."

Our partner DDI will continue to use the artworks to activate spaces in downtown Dallas. Check out photos of the artworks and the AVDD events below!

This project was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). To find out more about the National Endowment for the Arts visit www.arts.gov.  

To find out more about our project partner Downtown Dallas Inc., visit www.downtowndallas.com.

Dallas Afterschool Access Map

Learn more about bcANALYTICS  and read the full Dallas Afterschool Access Report! 

There are 570,000 children aged 14 and under in Dallas County. All of these children qualify for afterschool programs. Funding, physical spaces, operations, staffing, materials and curriculum development are all needed to keep afterschool programs alive. More than 1,000 afterschool programs operate in Dallas County, each finding their own method for covering these costs and serving their students.

Dallas Afterschool has established the After the Bell Alliance to improve access to seats in afterschool programs for children across Dallas County. This partnership of community members, funders, afterschool providers, and advocates envisions that all students will have access to enriching and educational activities after they leave school each day. 

Two barriers to achieving this vision exist: costs associated with attending afterschool programs and students' physical access to program sites. Dallas Afterschool aims to increase access to free and low-cost programs for an additional 16,000 students in Dallas County. 

This report uses a multi-criteria model to analyze data within five areas: Existing Afterschool Environment, Current Neighborhood Conditions, Local School Environment, Accessibility + Proximity, and Change in Neighborhood Conditions.  10 clusters of Census tracts are identified for the After the Bell Alliance to expand afterschool programs. This approach provides an opportunity to enhance access for low-income students in some of Dallas County's least affluent neighborhoods. 

 

 

 

Growing Dallas’ Housing Options through Accessory Dwelling Units

What’s an accessory dwelling unit? How does it grow housing options in Dallas? Learn about Dallas’ affordable housing challenges, and how accessory dwelling units can be a great first step in addressing them.

In [bc]’s State of Dallas Housing Report - 2017, we recommended amending current regulations on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) as a strategy for expanding access to housing. “Promoting Housing Choice and Affordability: Exploring Accessory Dwelling Units” offers an overview of ADUs, and why they are a great tool in addressing Dallas’ housing affordability challenges.

After you read this, make sure you check out Opportunity Dallas’ third installment of their “To the Point” series: How "Granny Flats" Can Help Solve Dallas' Housing Affordability Woes.

 

ACD40 Conference Report

Learn more about the Association for Community Design and #ACD40!

Thank you to everyone who attended the Association for Community Design annual conference in June. ACD40’s theme, CommUNITY, sought to ignite conversations about the different models of practice that the field of community-engaged design uses to operate successfully. We envisioned a conference that would connect people from across the country who are working in and around public interest practices.

You can read our ACD40 Conference Report here. It contains a recap of the schedule, speakers, and sessions. It also includes results to the ACD40 Post-Conference Survey, the ACD 2017 Questionnaire, the Fellowship Survey, the Gender Equity Survey, and the Community Design Survey.

A big thank you to all of our funders, partners and supporters that made this conference possible: 

Funders - Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. & Surdna Foundation

Supporters - UT Arlington, College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs, Mallory Baches, Jessica Blanch, Thor Erickson, Gilad Meron, Nikia Hill, Theresa Hwang, Mark Matel, Kevin Singh, Edward Orlowski, Stephen Goldsmith, & Alex Salazar

Venues - AIA Dallas / Dallas Center for Architecture, CallisonRTKL, Dallas Public Library, HKS, & Thanksgiving Square

Promotional Partners - AIA Austin, AIA Dallas / Dallas Center for Architecture, APA North Texas Chapter, LRGV AIA, SMU Design Council, & USGBC Texas

Volunteers - Bi’Anncha Andrews, Farida Rafique, Hannah Plate, Shani Dixon, Victoria Brown, [bc] Staff & Fellows, & Neighborhood Design Center

Artists Selected for Activating Vacancy Downtown Dallas!

[bc] is excited to announce the selection of two artist teams for Activating Vacancy Downtown Dallas, the duo Janielle Kastner and Ruben Carranzana, and a collective formed by Rickey Crum, Gray Garmon, Katie Krummeck, Edward Li, and Justin Childress. We're excited to spend the next few months working with them and the stakeholders of downtown Dallas to create exciting and fun works of art that challenge current notions of "public space" downtown. Please join us on Saturday, August 19th, 3 pm - 6 pm at 416 S Ervay, for a mini-block party to meet the artists and talk to them about their proposals. If you can't make it this week, we'll be having a presentation and feedback session the following Saturday, August 26th, 1 pm - 3 pm at 416 S Ervay. Read on for more information about the selected artists and their project proposals!

Ophelia Underwater. Features Zoe Kerr, photograph by Carson McCain Gray

Ophelia Underwater. Features Zoe Kerr, photograph by Carson McCain Gray

Janielle Kastner and Ruben Carranzana: Janielle Kastner is a writer, actor and performance deviser, whose social engagement work centers around the role young women play in shaping their communities, and vice versa. She was recently named Best New Playwright 2016 (Dallas Observer), and her plays include OPHELIA UNDERWATER (The Tribe, L.I.P. Service), FEED ME (Stella Adler Theatre/Playworks) and HEAVEN’S GATES, HELL’S FLAMES. Her social engagement work includes: PROJECT: BLESSING, one-on-one performance art, and PROJECT: GIRL, a trans-media installation based on interviews with young women from disparate communities. Additionally, she co-runs Dallas cult classic Shakespeare in the Bar. She holds BAs in Theatre & English from Southern Methodist University.

Shots Fired. Image courtesy of Cry Havoc Theatre

Shots Fired. Image courtesy of Cry Havoc Theatre

Ruben Carrazana is a local actor, director, and teaching artist. He co-directed SHOTS FIRED, a show exploring the Dallas police shootings with local youths. Ruben directs and assistant directs for JESTERS, theatre and film created and performed by adults with special needs. He has performed locally with Second Thought Theatre, Danielle Georgiou Dance Group, Dallas Theater Center, Undermain Theatre, Stage West, and Cara Mia Theatre. His play STACY HAS A THING FOR BLACK GUYS was recommended for the American Theatre Critics Association/Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Award, and his play SHE was awarded an Honorable Mention from the Southwest Playwriting Festival. He holds a BFA in Theatre from Southern Methodist University.

Together, Janielle and Ruben are two of the co-founders of performing arts incubator The Tribe, for which they were named 2016 Dallas Masterminds (Dallas Observer).

Project Proposal:
Together, Janielle and Ruben will transform an outdoor space in downtown Dallas, repurposing it with giant, individual, original blessings written by young women in the Dallas community (ages 12-18). First, they will draw upon their devising experience and lead young women through the creative process of writing a “blessing” for their city (a short, powerful, irreligious but specific declaration of hope). Then, they will work with community partners to determine an appropriate outdoor route. Finally, the project will culminate as a walkable installation of 8-10 aesthetically unified pieces, starting and ending with blessings projected onto buildings a few blocks from each other, with transformed “blessed” objects to be found along the way (ie. large text painted on a bench, length of sidewalk, dumpster, etc). Since young women are often taught to take up less space, projecting their words large-scale onto community spaces is a radical, inherently subversive act. Rather than seeking to “empower” young women, these pieces assert that young women already possess the requisite power to speak life into their community. As a result, the installation both realizes local young women’s visions for their city’s future, and designates a walkable space in an otherwise unwalkable city.

Mod Pod

Mod Pod

Rickey Crum, Gray Garmon, Katie Krummeck, Edward Li, and Justin Childress: The artist team is a collective of designers from a variety of backgrounds (architecture, human-centered design, graphic design, engineering, and education) with experience working all over the world on projects of various scales. The diverse backgrounds of the team members allow them to bring an interdisciplinary perspective to design challenges, and the nature of their work has given them the platform to use creative expression and human-centered design methodologies for social impact. The whole team (Rickey Crum, Gray Garmon, Katie Krummeck, Edward Li, and Justin Childress) are all affiliated with the Design and Innovation programs (like this and this) at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.

Project Proposal:
We propose to create an installation of “redesigned” payphones at various public spaces in downtown Dallas. The payphone, although antiquated, can be digitally altered with new technology and pivot to be a vessel for connecting people with their city. We will work with the downtown community to understand their needs, interests, and stories to help design the payphone interactions. As a passive listener or an active contributor, people will have the ability to choose the way that they want to engage with the installation. Ultimately, this installation aims to inform people about their city, suggest ways to experience their city, inspire deeper connections between people, and encourage them to participate in the future of their city by sharing their voice.

The internal systems of the payphone will be altered with new digital technologies to allow for the keypad to provide a series of audio interactions. When a person interacts with the payphone by picking up the receiver, they will be greeted with a message that prompts the user to engage in different activities. For instance, the user might be prompted to hear the history about a nearby building, or a historical event. An informational option could provide recommendations on local dining or entertainment offerings. They can press a number that asks the user a question about their opinion on a current civic topic and records their response.  There could be an option to leave recorded stories that others can listen to and share then personal experiences.

These projects are part of [bc]'s Activating Vacancy initiative. Activating Vacancy is an art and public interest design initiative where residents work alongside artists and designers to investigate, strengthen, and share a community’s unique history; engage in the development of a physical and social framework for cultural activities; and plan for the renewal and growth of the neighborhood. Collaborations included art installations, performances and other artistic actions that explore the cultural, social, political and economic life of a neighborhood. 

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.

Additional support is provided by Downtown Dallas, Inc.

Announcing Activating Vacancy Downtown Dallas Call for Proposals

buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, with Downtown Dallas Inc, is excited to announce Activating Vacancy Downtown Dallas’s call for artist proposals.  Artists are invited to submit applications for this project that asks artists to create create work that directly addresses issues identified by downtown stakeholders through a previous process called Community Audited Public Space (CAPS), as well as by a Community Advisory Committee.  

Read More

Smart Growth for Dallas at Earth Day Texas

Learn more about Smart Growth for Dallas!

Join us for one of six “Neighborhood Priorities for Parks: Smart Growth for Dallas Focus Groups” at Earth Day Texas.

Find us at booths 1910 and 2005 in the Automobile Building, where we will discuss the physical, social, environmental, and economic factors that influence the ease and barriers to access and experience of Dallas’ parks and open space. The outcomes of these focus groups will directly influence the development of the Smart Growth for Dallas “decision support” tool that will help Dallas prioritize its investments in parks based on their economic, social, and ecological benefits. Results of the program will be available to city staff, non-profit partners, and the public through an interactive website.

For more information visit smartgrowthfordallas.com

2017 State of Dallas Housing Report

Learn more about AIM for Dallas and bcANALYTICS, and read the full 2017 State of Dallas Housing Report here. 

If you missed the April 25th event, you can watch the presentation and panel discussion here.

Like many cities across America, Dallas struggles with how to provide adequate housing for low, moderate, and middle income households. The city’s history of segregation between the north and south is evident in many ways, as discussed in 2016 State of Dallas Housing. In regards to housing, a 2015 Supreme Court ruling on Fair Housing and the City’s Voluntary Compliance Agreement with The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have put the City under pressure to address historic segregation through their policies and funding allocations. Are opportunities for housing available to all residents, in the north and south?  A holistic analysis of the city’s housing landscape is needed to help better understand current conditions and help shape housing policy to address the needs of Dallas.

The 2017 State of Dallas Housing is just that assessment of Dallas’ housing landscape - its current housing stock, the people that live in the city, activity to construct and sell new homes, and the policies that guide civic and market investments in housing.

Join [bc] for a presentation of the 2017 State of Dallas Housing report followed by a panel discussion on housing affordability in Dallas on Tuesday, April 25th, at 6:30 pm at the Dallas Black Dance Theatre.  Panelist include - 

Roy Lopez - Community Development Office, U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Bernadette Mitchell - Director of Housing, City of Dallas
Demetria McCain - President, Inclusive Communities Project
Scott Galbraith - Vice President, Matthews Affordable Income Development

Please RSVP here.  Light refreshments will be provided.

Executive Summary

The 2017 State of Dallas Housing documents the characteristics of Dallas’ housing landscape - the people who live in the city, the houses they live in, and activity to build or sell homes - and identifies major barriers to accessing adequate housing for many of the city’s 1.3 million residents. In a city that has seen sustained increases in housing costs following the 2008 Recession, it appears that many low- and middle-income Dallasites struggle to find housing that meets their needs, regardless of whether they are looking to rent or own. Dallas’ surprisingly low homeownership rate (43%) continues to sit well below peers across the country, but this varies greatly between northern and southern Dallas as well as between the city’s white and minority households.

Dallas’ North-South divide permeates the report. Differences between households, housing, and market activity represent serious issues facing the city’s population. The city’s minority population is highly concentrated in southern Dallas and live in housing that is older and more affordable, although of varying quality, and those that live in northern Dallas are overwhelmingly renters. Opportunities to find affordable housing are limited in the north, often by economic constraints facing more than a third of the city’s households. Despite this, the local housing market operates at the high end of the income bracket, where homes are built and sold that far exceed the financial realities of most households in the city.

The findings in this report highlight the need for adjustments in public policy and reveal inefficiencies in the current marketplace. The recommendations of this report speak to those adjustments and inefficiencies, providing a pathway to building a more equitable city:

Key Findings

  • 68,000 households in Dallas need housing that costs less than $400 per month;
  • Homeownership for Dallas’ minority households falls behind rates of white households: 56% of white households are owner-occupied, compared to 31% for black households, 43% for Hispanic households, and 38% for Asian households;
  • The median sale price of recently constructed homes rose from $145,00 in 2011 to $522,000 in 2016;
  • 32% of homes in southern Dallas are valued less than $50,000, which represents just 6% of northern Dallas houses.

Recommendations

  • The City of Dallas should undertake a thorough review of its Land Bank program;
  • Innovative programs that promote housing affordability should be adopted by the City;
  • Public/Private partnerships to expand market-rate affordable housing for middle-income homebuyers are needed across the City;
  • Local homebuilders should explore opportunities for infill development of housing products that address the needs of low- and middle-income households identified in the report;
  • The City should seek to further Fair Housing through all funding allocations, including HUD funding for single family ownership.

Healing Hands Ministries

We are publishing a collection of reports and documents prepared by bcANALYTICS to help nonprofit and community-based organizations serve their clients and communities through data-driven research and analysis. Check out more bcANALYTICS reports here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Four of the primary challenges that negatively impact the health of Americans are:
(1) The high cost of healthcare
(2) The high rate of uninsured
(3) The high rate of poverty
(4) Poor transportation access to care

By providing affordable healthcare to thousands of uninsured patients earning at or below 200% of the poverty level, Healing Hands Ministries effectively and compassionately remediates three of these challenges for people in the Lake Highlands and greater Dallas area.

Currently, however, Healing Hands Ministries is underserved by public transportation, and patients seeking to use their facilities must walk more than one-half mile from the nearest bus stops along inhospitable and fast-moving arterial roads. To more effectively serve a greater population in need, Healing Hands Ministries must be better connected to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system.

This report will argue for enhanced transportation access for Healing Hands Ministries by drawing attention to the heightened significance of their service provision due to the severe need for quality, affordable healthcare in Dallas; demonstrating the breadth of scope and quality of care Healing Hands provides patients; revealing the inadequacy of transportation connectivity surrounding the intersection of Greenville Avenue and Royal Lane; and recommending several paths forward for pursuing improved integration into the Dallas Area Rapid Transit transportation system.

Below is an excerpt from the Healing Hands report. Read the full report here!

THIS WORK IS SUPPORTED BY
As the largest community foundation in Texas and one of the largest in the nation, Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) works with families, companies and nonprofits to strengthen our community through a variety of charitable funds and strategic grantmaking initiatives. The foundation professionally manages more than 900 charitable funds and has awarded more than $1.3 billion in grants since its founding in 1953. Increasing financial stability of working families is one of the two key focus areas of CFT’s community impact funds. To support this area, CFT has launched the Data Driven Decision-Making (D3) Institute. The D3 Institute is designed to provide organizations that offer programs and services for low-income working families the power to accelerate their development of enduring solutions to the social and economic problems facing this population. www.cftexas.org/D3

YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas

We are publishing a collection of reports and documents prepared by bcANALYTICS to help nonprofit and community-based organizations serve their clients and communities through data-driven research and analysis. Check out more bcANALYTICS reports here.

INTRODUCTION

The YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas (YW) is moving from operating as a virtual organization with dispersed services to opening the YW Women’s Center Ebby’s Place located at 2603 Inwood Road in Dallas, increasing its public presence and ability to offer wrap-around services. As YW prepares for this shift, the organization is considering how to sustain its current clients, how existing and new clients access the Center, and opportunities for outreach and programming to neighborhoods and organizations nearby.

This study provides contextual data on low-income women and families and the difficulty of making ends meet, local data on YW’s target clientele, visualization of YW’s current service delivery, and information on the neighborhoods, resources, and transit access near the new YW Women’s Center. The goal of this report is to aid YW in informed decision-making on their outreach and service delivery as they work to guide women toward self sufficiency.

Below is an excerpt from the YWCA report. Read the full report here!

THIS WORK IS SUPPORTED BY
As the largest community foundation in Texas and one of the largest in the nation, Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) works with families, companies and nonprofits to strengthen our community through a variety of charitable funds and strategic grantmaking initiatives. The foundation professionally manages more than 900 charitable funds and has awarded more than $1.3 billion in grants since its founding in 1953. Increasing financial stability of working families is one of the two key focus areas of CFT’s community impact funds. To support this area, CFT has launched the Data Driven Decision-Making (D3) Institute. The D3 Institute is designed to provide organizations that offer programs and services for low-income working families the power to accelerate their development of enduring solutions to the social and economic problems facing this population. www.cftexas.org/D3

Literacy Instruction for Texas

We are publishing a collection of reports and documents prepared by bcANALYTICS to help nonprofit and community-based organizations serve their clients and communities through data-driven research and analysis. Check out more bcANALYTICS reports here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Through research and analysis, [bc] has mapped and profiled Literacy Instruction for Texas’ (LIFT) current service delivery and identified key demographic factors commonly associated with low literacy populations. This report offers recommendations to guide LIFT’s potential expansion in Dallas County. 

Currently, LIFT, has 14 outreach locations around the Dallas/Fort Worth area that serve approximately 3,313 individuals, ages 18 to 90, through its various programs. LIFT has served the region for over 50 years.

While much research has been done on childhood literacy, low literacy among adults is largely unstudied. Indicators commonly associated with low literacy rates among adults include poverty, English proficiency, race, ethnicity, immigration, and unemployment. In this study, estimate data from the American Community Survey were used to identify geographies with a prevalence of adult literacy indicators and risk factors. In Dallas County, these include neighborhoods in South Oak Cliff, near Fair Park, and Pleasant Grove. It is recommended that explorations for service expansion start in these neighborhoods. 

Social service and ESL adult education providers in and near identified neighborhoods are located and listed. Examples of these include primary and secondary schools with higher prevalence of ESL students, workforce centers, churches, and libraries. It is also recommended that literacy outreach efforts begin at community centers already integrated and engaged within the community. Partnerships and alignment with other organizations should maximize impact in areas with the highest need. 

Below is an excerpt from the LIFT report. Read the full report here!

THIS WORK IS SUPPORTED BY
As the largest community foundation in Texas and one of the largest in the nation, Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) works with families, companies and nonprofits to strengthen our community through a variety of charitable funds and strategic grantmaking initiatives. The foundation professionally manages more than 900 charitable funds and has awarded more than $1.3 billion in grants since its founding in 1953. Increasing financial stability of working families is one of the two key focus areas of CFT’s community impact funds. To support this area, CFT has launched the Data Driven Decision-Making (D3) Institute. The D3 Institute is designed to provide organizations that offer programs and services for low-income working families the power to accelerate their development of enduring solutions to the social and economic problems facing this population. www.cftexas.org/D3

Smart Growth for Dallas Community Engagement Kick-off

Learn more about Smart Growth for Dallas.

Join us on Thursday, November 10th, at Dallas Heritage Village to kick off the community engagement events for Phase II of Smart Growth for Dallas, a new initiative to help Dallas protect its most important natural places and create a city of great public spaces. Sign-in begins at 5:30pm, presentation and activities will be 6:00-7:30pm.

During this event we will present work done to date, provide an opportunity to ask questions about the project and data gathered, provide details on the 7 community engagement meetings that will be held over the next two months, and record stories about Dallasites’ favorite parks. We hope you’ll join us for this exciting event on November 10th.

RSVP for the event here

For more information about the project, read our web-post about Smart Growth for Dallas.

Smart Growth for Dallas is a partnership with The Trust for Public Land, buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, The Dallas Park and Recreation Department, and The Texas Trees Foundation. Combining Geographic Information System computer modeling and on-the-ground engagement with residents and park users, Smart Growth for Dallas will create an interactive “decision support tool” to help Dallas prioritize its investments in parks based on their economic, social, and ecological benefits. Results of the program will be available to city staff, non-profit partners and the public through an interactive website.