12 August 22 - 28, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents taxes. In a community made up of lower-in- come, Spanish-speaking residents, Serrano believes an uptick in taxes would be a death blow to some homeowners. “Do I really want my mom to have to spend her Social Security checks paying extra taxes because someone decided ‘There’s empty land, like, let’s throw something there?’” Serrano said. “I keep hearing ‘affordable housing’ but I mean honestly what is affordable now? It’s not made for us. I honestly feel like what they’re trying to do is just drive us all out.” That fear is the refrain of Oak Cliff, with good reason. In the last 20 years, the neigh- borhood has been a gold rush for developers, many of whom built over historically Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. As an Oak Cliff resident for 24 years, Chernock said he un- derstands the distrust. He’s seen what it’s like when a developer promises one thing and de- livers another. Chernock expects the development to be a mix of owner-occupied and rental units. Be- cause he plans to build in phases, it could be up to 10 years before units are on the market, and pricing is difficult to estimate. He “likes the idea” of socioeconomic diversity in the community and hopes to encourage it by de- signing a mix of units ranging from micro- studios to luxury lofts. He also defends his record of building high-quality, architecturally interesting properties in the neighborhood. And, with 5 acres in one of the fastest growing pockets in Dallas, he says it simply isn’t a matter of “if” the land gets developed, but when and by whom. “If I can’t have the zoning entitlements for this project that allow me to do a great project, that’s OK, I’ll live. I’ll sell the land, and somebody else will develop it and most likely, given [the land’s] size, it’s going to be a large player. Most likely from out of the area and most likely we will get generic architecture, generic materials and generic designs,” Chernock said. “So if the neighborhood is successful in helping kill my project, it may seem like a win on the surface. But in a larger perspective, have they won?” ▼ HEALTH GOING OFF SCRIPT HE TESTED POSITIVE FOR SYPHILIS, THEN THE COUNTY TOLD HIS MOM. BY EMMA RUBY I t all started with a rash. It didn’t itch. It didn’t burn. But the red splotches that appeared this past May on the hands and feet of Steve, a lifelong Dallas resident, were enough to cause concern. He’d had eczema before and knew this rash was different, so he scheduled an appointment at the Nelson- Tebedo sexual health clinic on Cedar Springs Road. The clinic identifies itself as a “stigma free” healthcare space, and Steve, who is a proud gay man who’d hoped to handle his rash with discretion, felt comfortable there. He felt comfortable a few days after his initial appointment when he was told that, yes, he had tested positive for the sexually transmitted infection syphilis. And he felt comfortable with the doctor’s plan to treat the stage-two infection with several rounds of antibiotics. “I had gotten my first round of antibiotics, and the director and nurse from Nelson-Tebedo said, ‘OK, so protocol is that you may or may not receive correspondence from the Dallas County Health Department,’” Steve, who requested his last name be omitted from this story, told the Observer. “He said that they work with each other and they just needed to tell [the county] that, yes, [I was] being treated at the facility. And so he goes, ‘So don’t worry about answering any of the correspondence that may come to you via mail, text or phone calls.’” A few days later, Steve did get a letter from the county in the mail. He says that at his next appointment, he was once again advised to ignore it. Then, on July 11, Steve received a phone call and a text message at the same time. It was the middle of the workday and his phone was off, so the messages instead went to an iPad belonging to his elderly mother, which was linked to Steve’s phone number. While the voicemail that was left stated a nearly identical mes- sage to the letter he’d received — a quick re- quest to call the county back to discuss a health matter — the text message was different. “Hello, I am with the Dallas County Health Department,” a message shared with the Observer reads. “We are reaching out regarding a health matter. This is a deadly disease with irreversible damages, so it is important that you get treated.” Steve’s mother saw the message as it came in on her iPad. “Ten minutes [after the text message] my mom calls me. She’s frantic. She was already crying. I thought that she had just completely lost it,” Steve said. “She goes, ‘I just received a text from the Dallas County Health Department stating that you have an irreversible disease.’ And right there it clicked.” Just a few weeks earlier, Steve’s mother had undergone triple heart bypass surgery. The knowledge that her son had been diagnosed with a “deadly disease” skyrocketed her blood pressure into stroke territory, and Steve had to take her back to the hospital to be treated. While at the hospital, she accused him of infecting her with a disease, and he was forced to divulge his diagnosis with her and with her doctors. Since then, other family members have learned about his condition and confronted him about it. And for several weeks, his mother avoided speaking to him. Steve describes the experience as humiliating and a position he should have never been put in. After reaching out to the Dallas County Health Department, he says he was told they agreed. He also says he was told the employee who texted him went off script in an attempt to get a response. “We are aware of the situation and have taken some of the appropriate remedial steps regarding it, and are in the process of addressing this incident with the patient,” Philip Huang, director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department, told the Observer. Steve initially chose to get tested and treated at Nelson-Tebedo in order to keep his diagnosis private. According to a state- ment provided to the Observer by Paul Miller, director of prevention services at the clinic, syphilis tests performed by Nelson-Tebedo are tested by the Dallas County lab, and the clinic is required by law to report positive cases of certain diseases including HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and hepatitis C. Once a positive result is reported to the county, the clinic also includes information about whether the patient has been treated already. In Steve’s case, his ongoing treat- ment and guidance from doctors led him to believe he did not need to respond to the county’s correspondence. “You’ve probably heard of contact tracing; it became very popular during COVID. It’s something that we at public health do all the time with various conditions like STIs, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases,” Huang said. “So, [messaging a patient] is part of that process. This is [an illness where] we try to reach out to people and identify contacts, things like that.” Huang added that the communication process is supposed to be gradual, starting with letters and moving on to staggered phone calls and text messages. According to federal laws outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), patients have a right to their medical information being kept private. Guidance on the Texas Health and Human Services website advises that medical professionals must “protect the privacy of private health information and limit the use and disclosure of that information” during in-person and electronic communications. “My rights were violated. I know that for a fact,” Steve said. “I think [the employees of the Dallas County Health Department] think that they are on a silver pedestal, where they have the right to tell anybody anything be- cause they are in a department that handles important information such as this.” While Huang was not able to say what steps have been taken to deal with Steve’s case, he did say that employees are trained on what is, and isn’t, appropriate to say when communicating with a patient. More than anything, Steve wants an apology. He can’t talk about the ordeal, or the impact it had on his mother’s health, without getting emotional. And he wants to ensure no one else has to go through what he did. “It was so incredibly traumatizing,” he says. ▼ STATE FAIR OF TEXAS FAIR ARMS? POLITICIANS FREAK OUT OVER STATE FAIR GUN BAN. BY KELLY DEARMORE T he State Fair of Texas safety and se- curity press conference on Aug. 8 at the Cotton Bowl had all the makings of a straightforward info download. A handful of fair officials and some key police and fire department leaders, many sporting cowboy hats and starting their remarks with “howdy folks,” stood before a few reporters and several television cameras to go over details that in just about any other year would be routine. But this year there was a vital detail offered that differed greatly from years past. “The Fair announced an updated weapons policy, moving forward,” said Jeff Cotner, the fair’s director of security. “The State Fair of Texas, as a private, not-for- profit organization, prohibits fairgoers from carrying all firearms.” There’s a simple reason for this new gun policy. Last year, three people were wounded when a man fired his gun in the Tower Building food court on a crowded Saturday night. No one was killed, but a park-wide hunt for the shooter resulted in the fair being closed early that night as video circulating on social media painted a chaotic picture of frantic throngs scurrying when shots were fired. Until now, the fair’s policy has been to al- low licensed gun holders, as well as law en- forcement officials, to take firearms into the fair. But not this year. Only peace officers will be permitted to take weapons into the park and into Cotton Bowl Stadium. Unfair Park from p10 >> p14 A too-frank text from Dallas County led to a man’s mother being hospitalized. Getty Images
