After single-family homeowners voraciously opposed a Dallas land use plan that they claim could have brought more multi-family housing units to their neighborhoods, Dallas City Council members are now poised to vote on something very different.
The council is slated to vote on the Forward Dallas 2.0 land plan during Wednesday’s meeting, a plan that has taken many forms over the past year and generated a lot of controversy.
Fears that protections for single-family neighborhoods across the city could be lost if the plan passed have featured predominately in the debate. And some residents also claimed that could bring more crime to their neighborhoods.
“Single-family zoning is a huge promise to homeowners that is on the chopping block with this latest Dallas Forward 2.0 plan,” Ed Zahra, a district 14 resident, said during an early-September Economic Development Committee meeting. “They expected the city to persevere single-family zoning and is the main reason people buy homes and pay more for them in those districts.”
In early September, in an act of compromise, elected officials voted to send an amended version of the land use plan to the entire council for a final decision.
Dallas city officials have said all along the plan “does not, and legally cannot, eliminate single-family zoning.” But some versions of the plan did allow for more multi-family housing in mostly single-famly neighborhoods.
Now, supporters of the plan — which has been edited, updated and morphed several times over the last few months — say it can be a meaningful resource that touches more aspects of the city than just housing.
“The way we use our land determines how we live, how we get to work, how we interact with our neighborhoods,” Nate Hemby, a data engineer and District 4 resident, told KERA. “One of the positives of defining the way we use the land is it’s going to define how people get to and from your land.”
Hemby said he supports the plan because he wants to see more housing variety in his neighborhood — and when he went to buy a home, he said he couldn’t find what he wanted in his preferred location.
A threat to neighborhoods?
The compromise version came after months of debate between single-family homeowner advocates and those looking for more housing options — even in established areas of the city.
Homeowners showed up to public hearings, community and city meetings to voice their concerns over what could happen to what they call “established” neighborhoods, without stricter guidance in Forward Dallas.
“I’m struggling to understand why the needs of projected statistical residents would be given priority over existing homeowners — “many who have lived here for ten, twenty, thirty years, pay taxes and work to create Dallas’ wonderful neighborhoods,” Matt Bach, a Dallas resident, said during a late-July City Plan Commission public hearing.
Bach said at the time the plan has some useful functions but lacked concrete protections for single-family homeowners.
District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn has said in the past that single-family neighborhoods are the city’s most stable areas.
“Are you aware of what the highest crime rate areas are in our city?” Mendelsohn asked at a late-August Special Called Economic Development Committee meeting. “It’s multi-family housing, and it’s not just number one, its number one by far.”
Mendelsohn said at the time that people deserve to have an option of single-family housing only. And other residents voiced similar concerns.
Both sides of the issue agree that there are legitimate fears associated with the plan. They just disagree on what those are.
“I think the fear that say someone is going to come into your neighborhood and raze all the homes overnight and put in a five over one, is definitely overblown,” Hemby said. “But I do get…there is a fear of displacement.”
Hemby added that regardless of what happens with Forward Dallas, “those neighborhoods are going to change as is.”
Peter Cioe, the founder and owner of Community Focused Ventures and CFV Construction, is a partial owner in the building he rents and lives in.
He rents in a mostly single-family neighborhood in southern Dallas. He said his neighbors “look out for each other, there is no animosity towards people for being a renter versus a homeowner.”
But Cioe told KERA some of the conversation related to renters and Forward Dallas has been “disturbing.”
“It’s not just the citizens and the single-family homeowners, it’s also by city council members,” Cioe said. “It’s…dehumanizing.”
That includes how renters have been referred to — and what amenities are associated with renters versus single-family homeowners.
Cioe said rentals should be in areas with amenities on par with single-family neighborhoods, “…and not stuck up off the highway or anywhere they want to cluster apartment complexes.
“[Renters] should have the opportunity to be close to good schools, and not have to commute and drive,” he said.
A compromise
Council members say they decided to compromise, citing residents’ fears that too many multi-family units would end up in their single-family neighborhoods.
Members of the Economic Development Committee voted in early September to approve Forward Dallas 2.0 and to move the plan to the final stage of the process — a full city council vote.
After District 14 Council Member Paul Ridley offered up a slew of amendments during the meeting, the proposed Forward Dallas 2.0 land plan was amended to include more rules around what happens in the city’s single-family zoned areas.
“Consistently our resident’s pleas for more housing options and also for protection of their existing neighborhoods and single-family neighborhoods,” Ridley said during the meeting. “It has become clear to me that those objects are not incompatible in the context of Forward Dallas 2.0.”
But Ridley said the plan at time put “burden of adding density” on the city’s single-family areas.
He proposed what he calls a “compromise document” to address what he viewed as issues with the plan. Most council members agreed with the plan’s edits.
Ridley added a section to mandate that “incompatible multiplex, townhome, duplex, triplex and apartment development should be located outside of existing single-family neighborhoods.”
Another proposed edit said “density in the form of multiplexes should be prioritized along arterials, not neighborhood streets.”
So, where do new housing options go?
“Properties near transit stations and along commercial corridors, transition areas between non-residential and existing residential areas, former civic institutional properties, and underutilized shopping centers should be considered for adding these alternative housing types,” Ridley said during the meeting.
Ridley’s compromise also stipulated that developers should provide “visual buffers between single family uses and other more intense adjoining uses.”
Not a difficult concept?
Committee members agreed with the proposal – but some said these proposals shouldn’t have been needed in the first place.
“I believe that the conversation around single-family zoning and neighborhoods should have never been a difficult concept to understand and fight for,” District 4 Council Member Carolyn King Arnold said in early September. “It has taken us so long to grasp the importance of single-family zoning and the need to protect it.”
Arnold said city officials sometimes embrace trends” or “fads,” — this should not be one of them.
“Right now, single-family [neighborhoods] in a major city is one of those things that we should not experiment with, as if this were a science fair project,” Arnold said.
District 1 Council Member Chad West said the plan could do more to address the city’s housing need but “in the spirit of compromise” he would support Ridley’s document. West also said the edits address some of his constituents’ biggest fears.
“That is, the fear of new housing stock coming in and being not compatible,” West said. “And the other piece which cannot be stressed enough is the…justifiable fear of displacement of residents and demolition of homes.”
West shared examples of houses being sold in his district with descriptions encouraging potential buyers to tear down the existing home and put up something new. He said the price of the home, plus demolition and a rebuild would likely result in a multi-million-dollar house, “in an area where you currently have affordable housing stock,” according to West.
Ultimately, the plan is just that — a plan. City staff hopes to use the document to guide new development, but it’s just the first step in a larger process.
“It doesn’t change anything on the ground today, it lays out a vision so when the city looks at zoning down the road, they can look at it through the lens of this plan,” Cioe told KERA. “I think it would have a positive impact on the city of Dallas.”
City staff says implementing the plan will take some time if it’s approved.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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