It’s been two years since we all but begged the Dallas City Council not to make the mistake of interfering in the renewal of a neighborhood of small homes near Love Field known as Elm Thicket.
The council didn’t listen to us, but that’s not particularly uncommon. A council majority instead decided that the right way to ensure affordable housing in Dallas is to scare away developers who might want to build here.
Despite opposition from a huge majority of property owners, Elm Thicket was downzoned. Rights that landowners enjoyed when they bought their properties were stripped away. New homes needed to be smaller and thus less valuable, the council decided.
Longtime homeowners lost the opportunity to maximize the investment of their lives. Families who otherwise might have made Elm Thicket home decided to live elsewhere. Victory was declared.
To us this was bad — a lost opportunity and a signal of how Dallas too often trips over its own feet. We had no idea that City Hall would figure out how to turn a mistake into a mess.
The latest news is this: after the downzoning, City Hall went ahead and issued permits to build homes that didn’t fit the new constraints that our representatives decided were appropriate.
There are now 14 homes in various stages of construction that “do not comply with current zoning.” Another five permits were issued for homes not yet under construction and city staff “is working with those developers to bring those plans into compliance.”
What a humiliation for the city. The Elm Thicket rezoning was hugely controversial. It was covered in every major media outlet. Dozens of people showed up to speak out at City Hall. But somehow the folks in the planning department didn’t get the memo.
The city cannot now require homeowners who have invested in construction to bear the costs of these errors.
Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert has sounded the right level of frustration. “We are committed to uncovering what led to these errors and to resolving them as quickly and fairly as possible to ensure compliance with zoning regulations while minimizing the disruptive impact on residents and builders,” she said.
She’s promised that she will identify and address the systemic problem that led to this failure.
It’s no secret Dallas’ permitting department has not performed well in recent years. If Tolbert can get some accountability even in an interim role that will be a step forward.
But we need to be asking a deeper question, Dallas. Why are we telling people who want to invest in our city that their investment isn’t welcome? It’s the City Council’s social engineering at the root of this mess. The rest of us are paying for it.
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