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The city responded by adopting many of the task force’s recommendations. The goal is to build 20,000 new affordable homes and encourage home ownership, protection against gentrification and redevelopment throughout the city. In theory, the new policies could help neighbors in areas such as Mount Auburn. They would be able to purchase their homes and stay put.

‘The future is mixed income’ Jack Matthews, whose firm Matthews Southwest built the Omni Dallas Hotel, is one of the developers promoting mixedincome housing in Dallas. He is working on a 16-story residential tower near the old Dallas High School downtown. Nearly half of the units are for residents earning between 30 and 60 percent of the area’s median income. The Dallas Morning News reports that the plan is financed with low-income housing tax credits, tax increment finance district funds and debt.

The city’s new policies are pushing for this sort of development, providing tax credits, a city housing trust fund and other incentives to developers.

City Councilman Philip Kingston sees East Dallas as a place where these sorts of developments could have an impact. He points out the Lakewood Shopping Center and Columbia Avenue areas as potential locations for intentional mixed-income developments.

“The future is mixed income,”

A Step In A New Direction

The goals of Dallas’ new housing policy, according to a city memo, are to:

• Create and maintain available and affordable housing throughout Dallas

• Promote greater fair housing choices

• Overcome patterns of segregation and concentrations of poverty through incentives and requirements he says, “but it requires diligence and not losing political will. No set of rules is so good that it will keep people from doing bad things that they are determined to do.”

Solis is hopeful that the housing policy will have an impact in a variety of areas, including schools. He has seen the desire for many parents who are choosing Dallas ISD to put their children at schools that are ensured to be diverse, such as SOLAR Preparatory School for Girls in East Dallas. But he knows that a comprehensive housing policy’s impact on segregation will be greater than relying on parents to choose diversity for their children.

“Housing is a lynchpin for a thriving city,” he says. “You cannot have a thriving city without quality housing for every citizen. We can’t deal with concentrated poverty without figuring out ways to disperse poverty, and you can’t desegregate a community if you have nowhere else for them to live.”

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