Sam: we aren't always successful

We received the following message from Martin Cramer, Vice President Public Safety with Downtown Dallas, Inc.(DDI), the Central Business District (CBD) trade organization with which CitySquare has a contract to provide outreach via our Homeless Outreach Team (HOT Team).  

This sad news is indicative of the fact that our work is hard, the outcomes imperfect and the pain and frustration predictable.  

The news is even more devastating and harder to accept because of the fact that Sam was on the track to a better life before tragedy struck. 

Please remember his family and all of us who knew him.  

I am very sorry to report that one of our former CBD chronic inebriates - Sam passed away.

The DDI Homeless Outreach Team had been working with Sam (27) for several years - he was recently placed into housing and treatment.

Sam died from complications of being stabbed last Wed.  He died on Friday at Baylor, we just found out today. Christina Rosales with Dallas Morning News wrote an article about his death.  Suspect in custody has been charged with murder.

  

Central Dallas CDC News: Dallas Observer report on Downtown affordable housing

The following most interesting column by Dallas Observer writer, Jim Schutze reveals the something of the growing importance of the work of the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation.  Worth your time if you care about affordable housing in Downtown Dallas. 

Dallas City Hall gets whopped upside the head for its low-income housing policy

By Jim Schutze Thursday, Feb 17 2011

Tell me first. To be a cool place to live, what does downtown Dallas need? Action. Tons and tons of people, not all super-rich, not all homeless, either.

But that's the problem with downtown. Rich people in the towers. Desperadoes in the alleys. Long empty sidewalks between.

For that to change, downtown needs to become affordable to jobsians. Not rich. Not poor. Not white, black or brown. Just people with jobs.

Guess what. I think maybe that door just cracked.

In a small room in the bowels of City Hall at 8:30 in the morning on one of those hard weather days last week, an obscure body voted to change direction on the renovation of a handful of old office towers—known as the Atmos Project.

It was the first hint of a whole new thing, and it only happened because some guys whopped the city upside the head with a two-by-four. I will come back to that, of course, because I know you love head-whoppings.

The important thing is this: The city board, whose name is too long for me to mention yet, voted to put way more subsidized low-rent apartments into the Atmos re-development deal than originally planned.

For decades, Dallas has taken federal funds designed to foster low-income housing downtown and used the money instead to make downtown hotsy-totsy. The result is what you see now—notsy.

Click here to read the entire essay and get to the part about the Central Dallas CDC. . .

Poor folks Downtown, continued

As promised a couple of days ago, here's an essay by Dallas Observer columnist, Jim Schutze worthy of your consideration.  I'd love to hear from anyone who is better informed on this than I.  Anyone with a differnt understanding would be welcome to argue with the essay.   

City Hall's Desire For A Fancy Downtown (Without Too Many Poor People) Costs Developers $30 Million
By Jim Schutze Thursday, May 6 2010

Don Hill, the Dallas City Council member recently sent to federal prison for 18 years for bribery and corruption, didn't use a baseball bat on people.

He was a lawyer. He used parliamentary procedure.

The table, I call it. Hill knew developers always have a clock ticking—money sifting away like sand in an hourglass—so he tabled their issues at council, and re-tabled, and re-tabled until he got his way.

Hill got sent away. The table is still with us.

Take the curious case of Curtis Lockey, Craig MacKenzie and the LTV Tower 1600 Pacific Avenue building. Lockey and MacKenzie, who have long, serious résumés as commercial developers, tried to do a redevelopment deal that would conform to federal law.

But the people running downtown Dallas don't want developers to comply with federal law. Federal law requires a lot of low-income housing. Dallas wants fancier things downtown.

So Lockey and Mackenzie got tabled. They tell me the table cost them $30 million. Cash. Dead presidents.

To keep reading click here.