8 July 10 - 16, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents when a community comes together to save lives,” the shelter wrote in a social media post. But the shelter is still grappling with an ongoing capacity issue. As of June 30, 458 dogs shared 307 ken- nels, resulting in a capacity of 149%. The cat kennel is just slightly less occupied, at 139% capacity, or 132 cats spread across 95 kennels. To deal with the continued capacity chal- lenges, the shelter waived adoption fees, in- cluding for sterilization surgeries, microchipping and vaccinations, in March 2020 and has not reinstated them since. Pets at the shelter’s affiliate locations, like Petco, are also free to adopt. Increased surrenders following the pan- demic have been a point of concern for the shelter, which is looking for a way to explain the continued demand even while adoption rates increase. “Our adoptions are up, our foster rescues are up, our transports are up. All of our out- comes are up,” Ramon told the City Council’s Public Safety Committee in May. “It’s just that the number of animals that are coming in from the community has increased. So year over year, that’s been an impact.” To combat the issue, the shelter has tem- porarily stopped accepting surrendered ani- mals. And now, the shelter will launch adoption initiatives to encourage Dallasites to take advantage of free adoption. DAS has announced its newest adoption summer program, “Mission Pawsible,” with the goal of getting 1,200 pets into homes. “Dallas Animal Services is stepping up in a big way to save lives this summer,” said So- phia Proler, South Central Director for Best Friends Animal Society, in a press release. “At a time when shelters across Texas are overcrowded, this campaign is exactly the kind of creative, community-driven action that makes a real difference—and it’s why DAS led the state in adoptions in 2024.” ▼ POLITICS DON’T SQUAT AROUND HERE NO MORE BILL CRACKS DOWN ON TEXAS SQUATTERS AFTER FIRST TAKING SWING AT RENTERS. BY EMMA RUBY T he testimony of North Texans before a Texas Senate committee last sum- mer sounded the alarm on the issue of squatting. One year later, the passage of a new bill could help landlords looking to oust squatters, but it nearly took a chunk out of tenants’ rights with it. Squatting occurs when uninvited guests occupy a property without the owner’s con- sent or knowledge. The practice has histori- cally been tricky to maneuver legally because it wasn’t explicitly defined in state law, and it’s difficult to truly know just how pervasive the problem is. As of last June, David Howard, executive director of the National Rental Home Coun- cil, believed there could be as many as 500 ongoing squatting cases throughout Dallas- Fort Worth alone. Still, that number is hard to verify because police departments tend not to classify cases using the “squatting” terminology. Charges of criminal trespass or burglary could be used in instances of a per- son living illegally in a home, a spokesperson for the Dallas Police Department told the Observer at the time. It was the testimony of Texans like Mes- quite resident Terri Boyette, whose home was turned into a “drug den” when a man moved in while she was out of town, that left state senators feeling like the handling of the issue to this point has been “a bunch of crap.” “I invited the public from all over the state to tell their horror squatter stories and proposed solutions. This should not be hap- pening in Texas,” said state Sen. Paul Bet- tencourt, who chaired the hearing. “We are going to make it easy for homeowners and business owners to ‘Come and Take it Back’ from squatters.” Advocates say Senate Bill 38, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law on June 20, will make it easier for landlords to evict illegal occupants in bona fide squatting cases by al- lowing for summary disposition — a legal procedure in which a judge can rule on a case on an expedited timeline in which a full trial is not required because the facts of the case are not in dispute. But as the legislative session wound to a close, SB 38 had the potential to completely rewrite the eviction process, affecting mil- lions of Texans by effectively lumping anyone who pays a monthly rent to a landlord into the same legislative category as squatters oc- cupying a property illegally. Brennan Griffin, a housing legislation advocate and senior deputy director for Texas Appleseed, told the Observer that the bill was nearly a “poison pill” for renters and renter advocacy efforts. It was a surprising, last-minute coalition of bipartisan lobbyists and legislators that kept those sweeping changes to tenants’ rights at bay. “We knew something like this was com- ing, but we didn’t know how bad it was go- ing to be,” Griffin said. “Senator Bettencourt, who is a Senate author of SB 38, said, ‘We just don’t have a way to sort of confine this to squatting.’ But that’s what we ended up doing.” The Threat Posed to Renters Early language in the squatting bill would have shortened the eviction process for de- linquent residents from 21 days to less than a week through the summary disposition pro- cess. If a tenant missed a rent payment, a landlord would have been able to petition for eviction before a judge, giving the tenant only four days to provide their evidence in the matter. That law would have been espe- cially harmful for Dallas renters, who are some of the most at-risk tenants for eviction anywhere in the United States, a recent study by Mortgage Calculator found. A series of amendments ended up shield- ing legal tenants from that shortened evic- tion process, and in some places, housing advocates even recorded meager gains in renters’ rights. For instance, the bill introduces a “right to cure” for tenants who have missed a month of rent, but had not previously been delinquent. In those instances, a landlord will be required to give a three-day notice that an eviction will be filed, and within those three days, the tenant will have the right to pay the rent to remedy the situation. “It’s going to be of limited utility, but there are some tenants that that’s definitely going to help,” Griffin said. “In a lot of this kind of [advocacy work], where there’s this very entrenched and powerful opposition, being able to get anywhere feels pretty good. But I think overall we still would call this bill slightly worse for tenants, because of some of the other stuff that was in it.” SB 38 does loosen the requirements for how a landlord is required to serve an evic- tion notice, a hit, he said, to tenants’ repre- sentation groups that have typically relied on landlords improperly serving notices as an avenue to defend renters. Griffin also has his eye on a measure that will change the way the courts handle ap- peals in eviction cases. With the passage of SB 38, if a tenant wants to appeal an eviction judgment against them, the onus will be on the tenant to prove the retrial is appropriate. The justice of the peace, the court that han- dles eviction cases at first instance, will be required to supply documents related to the eviction case to the county court. The problem here is that justice of the peace courts are not courts of record, mean- ing there are no hearing transcripts. Until now, the county court has completely re- tried appealed eviction cases without con- sidering the justice of the peace’s findings. Griffin said it’s “a bit fuzzy” how that will be worked out and implemented by the courts, but for tenants, “it’s not great.” And, while constables have typically served judgments brought against tenants, the bill will now allow for plain clothes officers to serve them if a constable does not do so in a timely manner. That’s an amendment that ad- vocates have become “extremely concerned” about in recent months as immigration raids have swept through the country, Griffin said. “It was becoming clear during the session that ICE is working with plainclothes, masks, no badge numbers, nothing like that, height- ening the fear. And now you will potentially have plainclothes officers, off-duty officers going and trying to serve evictions at a very vulnerable time, and people being pretty de- fensive,” Griffin said. “We just think it’s a vol- atile situation already. … There’s definitely going to be a lot more room for these situa- tions to escalate unnecessarily.” ▼ TEXAS FLOOD DEALEY, KESSLER AND THE TRINITY DALLAS FLOODED OVER 100 YEARS AGO. HERE’S WHY THAT’S NOT LIKELY TO HAPPEN AGAIN. BY ALYSSA FIELDS H eadlines across the globe continue to proliferate as more bodies are dis- covered in a large-scale search and rescue effort following a massive flood in Central Texas over the Fourth of July week- end. In one of the worst floods in American history, the death toll has surpassed triple digits, with many people still missing. Several North Texans are included in the death toll, including young campers from Camp Mystic, an all-girls faith-based sleep- away camp located on the banks of the Gua- dalupe River. Unexpected rainfall, causing the river to rise 26 feet in 45 minutes, has wreaked havoc on Kerr County and the sur- rounding areas and called into question the current administration’s cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Weather Service. On the 4th, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a di- saster declaration for 15 counties across Central Texas. Secretary of Homeland Secu- rity Kristi Noem joined the governor in Kerr County to visit the remains of the Camp Mystic grounds. “This is a time when we, as a state, need God more than ever,” said Abbott at a press conference. “The one thing I hear the most are the prayers that are being sent for those who are in harm’s way. There is an extraordinary collaboration to make sure that we address ev- erybody’s concern as quickly as possible.” More than 20 state and federal agencies are conducting emergency services on site, and additional resources have poured in from every corner. Dallas Fire-Rescue de- ployed a “water squad” to join search efforts this weekend, and other North Texas first responders have trekked to help the Hill Country community. Delayed flood warnings and late evacua- tion orders have attracted criticism, espe- cially as discussion of unnecessary vacancies caused by federal employee buyouts within FEMA emerges. When government layoffs were initially rolled out, experts in Texas warned against cuts to departments that serve crucial roles in monitoring and re- sponding to natural disasters, which M-SUR/Adobe Stock A bill intended to combat squatting could also make it tougher for renters to fight evictions. Unfair Park from p6 >> p10
