Unfair Park from p6 suit in December 2019. There’s still ongoing litigation concerning claims for default in- terest and attorney fees, totaling about $900,000, according to Kingston. I n 2020, the Observer wrote about a set of annual reports detailing expendi- tures on new developments in each TIF district. When those reports came out, West, former chair of the Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, asked for a breakdown of how many of those de- velopments included affordable units. As the Observer wrote at the time, “The an- swer, in some districts, is not many.” The Vickery Meadow TIF district had re- cently seen developers build 325 new hous- ing units with city subsidies. None of those units were affordable. Other districts also didn’t meet the 20% affordability require- ment. Developers used city money to create 500 units in the Design District, but only 11% of those were considered affordable. This didn’t surprise housing advocates like Rollins, who told the Observer at the time: “There’s really no strings attached. It’s basi- cally city subsidies for market rate and luxury units that should be satisfied by a bank loan.” The city’s rules offered developers seeking TIF funding an alternative. In lieu of building affordable apartments, developers could pay the city fee or agree to build affordable hous- ing at other sites. For example, developers in the Design District and Vickery Meadow paid a combined $1.5 million to the city in lieu of creating affordable units in their projects. The $1 million the Vickery Meadow de- velopers paid was meant “to support the de- velopment of affordable housing within the District,” according to the TIF’s annual re- port. Nearly half of that money went into a development that didn’t move forward and the rest was put into a city-controlled trust fund “to be used to make loans” to build housing throughout Dallas. About $33 million in city subsidies helped pay for The Shops at Park Lane, a $323 million complex with 585 apartments and more than a million square feet of retail and office space. The only thing missing was the affordability, since the developers paid the city $1 million in lieu of affordable units. The city eventually stopped taking these kinds of payments from developers, but a fee-in-lieu policy is once again making its way back into city policy. The city is considering an expansion of its Mixed Income Development Bonus program that is meant to increase affordable housing development in Dallas. To make that happen, developers need more incentives, according to city staff. One of those incentives could be a “fee in lieu” option, which would allow devel- opers to pay into an affordable housing fund rather than setting aside affordable units in their projects or having to accept voucher holders in 10% of their units. How is this supposed to provide more housing and affordability in Dallas? Take the 10% voucher requirement for city sub- sidized residential developments, for ex- ample. When the developers don’t fill those units with voucher holders, they remain vacant and limit housing options even more. Having developers pay a fee instead Shutterstock could fund more affordable housing and free up those units previously reserved for voucher holders. In other words, developers who were given a tax incentive in exchange for build- ing dubiously affordable housing can pay a fee to duck that requirement. That fee would then be used to offer incentives to build the affordable housing that the first in- centives failed to deliver. Presumably, those incentives would lead someone to actually hanging wall board somewhere. If that sounds like the city is creating some sort of incentive ouroboros, a snake forever devouring its own tail, take heart. The city has a plan. For developers who don’t pay a fee in lieu or build off-site afford- able housing, the policy includes stronger language the city hopes would make it more likely that voucher holders get into the units set aside for them. Now, any housing development that re- ceives a subsidy or financial reward from the city must “make best efforts” to lease up to 10% of the units to voucher holders for 15 years. Here’s what best efforts look like: The de- veloper has to register as a vendor with local providers of housing vouchers and submit “evidence of compliance” to the director of the department administering the financial reward. The city also approved another policy re- cently which reduced parking requirements for apartment developers. The thinking be- hind this is that some apartment complexes have more parking lots than they need be- cause they were meeting requirements set by the city. Now, apartment developers can build more density with fewer parking spots, lowering their costs. Developers who get this privilege either have to build on or off-site affordable units or pay into a city fund to build more affordable housing. But it all concerns Rollins. Before the pandemic, Texas Tenants’ Union was look- ing into affordable units provided in TIF districts. She said they found many wouldn’t take vouchers, so it’s concerning to her that developers will be able to just pay a fee to get out of building affordability. In Dallas, Rollins said, housing policy is a developer-driven policy, not one that looks at and addresses needs of tenants. “What happens to the people happens to the peo- ple,” she said. Drug overdoses have continued to grow in recent years. Maybe the new policies will lead to the creation of more affordable housing in Dal- las and ensure voucher holders have an eas- ier time getting into the units set aside for them in city-subsidized projects. But, there’s still the other 10% of units in TIF develop- ments that are aimed toward families like Mary’s – those making 80% AMFI. “For the rest of us, it’s definitely not af- fordable,” she said. ▼ DRUGS DRUG DEATHS SPIKE T IN TEXAS, THE NUMBER OF DRUG OVERDOSE DEATHS ROSE BY AT LEAST 15.9% LAST YEAR. BY PATRICK STRICKLAND he number of drug overdose deaths in Texas surged in 2021, according to preliminary data published last Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Con- trol and Prevention (CDC). At least 4,813 people died of drug over- doses last year in Texas, a 15.9% increase when compared with 2020. (In 2020, the number of drug deaths had surged by some 30% when compared with 2019.) The CDC expects the number, in fact, to grow due to a delay in reporting and other classification issues: In Texas, the total pre- dicted number of drug overdose deaths for 2021 is expected to hit 5,033, a 19.8% in- crease when compared with the prior year. Around the United States, the total num- ber of lethal drug overdoses nearly topped 107,000, marking a 14.9% spike and breaking previous records. The number of people around the coun- try who died due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl swelled from around 58,000 to 71,000, and the number of those who died from using stimulants like methamphet- amine grew from 25,000 to 33,000, as re- ported by The New York Times. In recent years, fentanyl has turned into the deadliest drug on the streets, become the No. 1 cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45 years old. Last year, Gov. Greg Ab- bott signed a law that increases penalties for manufacturing or distributing fentanyl, the Texas Tribune reported. Last month, President Joe Biden’s ad- ministration sent its first National Drug Control Strategy to Congress. “It is unacceptable that we are losing a life to overdose every five minutes around the clock,” Rahul Gupta, director of the Of- fice of National Drug Control Policy, said earlier this month. Earlier last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced the first Fen- tanyl Awareness Day. In Dallas, DEA Special Agent in Charge Eduardo A. Chávez de- scribed fentanyl as “the deadliest drug our country has ever seen.” “Nobody has experienced that devasta- tion more than the citizens of North Texas and Oklahoma,” he said. “Many of those lives lost were people who never knew that a drug trafficker mixed fentanyl into co- caine, heroin or methamphetamine.” ▼ COURTS A SECOND LOOK L CRYSTAL MASON’S CASE HAS GAINED THE SUPPORT OF CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS AND VOTING ADVOCACY OUTFITS AMID A CRACKDOWN ON VOTING RIGHTS IN TEXAS AND BEYOND. BY PATRICK STRICKLAND ast Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dealt Crystal Ma- son, who was controversially con- victed of illegal voting for submitting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election, what looked like a small win. Mason, a Black woman who had previously been convicted of federal tax fraud, could wind up in prison for five years although her provisional ballot was never counted. Now, she will have her conviction further evaluated by the state’s Second Court of Ap- peals, the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas said in a press release. The Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court in, said the state would have to prove that Mason knew she was voting illegally. Mason insists she didn’t know casting the vote was against the law. “My life has been upended for what was, at worst, an innocent misunderstanding of cast- ing a provisional ballot that was never even counted,” Mason said in the press release. “I have been called to this fight for voting rights and will continue to serve my community.” A spokesperson for the Tarrant County DA’s office declined to comment. Along with Mason’s attorney, rights groups including the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project had requested that the Court of Criminal Appeals reevalu- ate Mason’s conviction. “We believe that ultimately what is right will prevail and will continue to support Ms. Mason as she battles this miscarriage of justice,” Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, said in the release. Kim T. Cole, Mason’s attorney, said she should have “never been convicted,” adding: “I trust that the court will accurately inter- pret and apply the law and overturn Crys- tal’s conviction.” Mason’s case gained notoriety amid Texas’ clampdown on voting rights. Last year, as Gov. Greg Abbott backed so-called “election integrity” legislation, Texas was criticized by rights groups and voting >> p10 9 9 dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com | CONTENTS | UNFAIR PARK | SCHUTZE | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | MOVIES | DISH | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 MAY 19–25, 2022
