If the tenant does reply to the notice of possible eviction, they get 60 days to figure out a way to pay what’s owed. Their options are to set up a payment plan, apply for rental assistance or find another way to come up with the money. Anything to settle the un- paid rent will help a tenant avoid eviction. If they don’t come up with a plan, rental assistance falls through or they can’t keep up with payments, the landlord can start the eviction process. The tenant would then get a notice to vacate, with three more days to “cure delinquency” or face eviction. Under the changes that the Dallas Evic- tion Advocacy Center and Apartment Associ- ation of Greater Dallas have discussed, tenants would instead get 10 days to respond to an eviction notice and present evidence they’ve applied for rental assistance. As long as they do that, they get a full 60 days to fig- ure out how to pay what they owe. Addition- ally, the proposed change “untethers the ordinance from having a direct COVID-re- lated excuse,” Melton said. Dallas is also working on an ordinance that would provide similar protections out- side the pandemic. This ordinance would re- quire landlords to give tenants notice of possible eviction and time to respond and settle lease violations. For certain lease viola- tions, a landlord would be able to carry on with the normal eviction process. The issue now, Melton said, is making sure rental assis- tance doesn’t run out (leading to the end of the temporary ordinance) before the perma- nent ordinance is ready to be implemented. To Melton, tenants should always have had these kinds of protections, and there’s certainly no reason to end them today. “In my view, there needs to be additional tenant protections on a permanent basis as soon as possible,” Melton said. “The system right now is a stacked deck against them and they need all the help they can get.” The number of evictions in Dallas has held relatively steady. From Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, there were 19,645 evictions filed in the city of Dallas, according to the Child Pov- erty Action Lab. The average amount owed upon an eviction filing was about $2,454, and totaled some $49.6 million. About 13% of all Dallas evictions came out of one ZIP code, 75243. Evictions in Au- gust were at a pandemic high of 2,548. The all-time high was in January 2020 with 2,997 evictions filed. Dallas ISD is also seeing a high rate of el- ementary students moving in the middle of the school year, mostly coming from neigh- borhoods with high eviction filing rates. Some 5,229 K–5 DISD students, 8.5%, moved in the middle of the 2021–2022 school year. Twenty elementary schools ac- counted for 30% of the district’s K–5 mid- dle-of-school-year moves. In September, council districts 12, 10, 8, 7, and 2 saw the most eviction filings. However, overall, Tennell Atkins’ District 8 has seen the most evictions. In his district, there were 131 eviction filings for every 1,000 renters. The city’s emergency rental assistance program is federally funded and can provide up to 18 months of assistance for eligible ten- ants. But, nearly all those funds have been spent on providing rental assistance to more than 10,700 households, according to the city. Melton said there are efforts to add more funds to the available rental assistance so it will last longer than it’s expected to now. “The problem’s not going away,” Melton said. “It’s getting worse.” ▼ CITY HALL NIXING NUISANCES T DALLAS WANTS MORE WAYS TO DEAL WITH WHAT IT CALLS NUISANCE PROPERTIES. BY JACOB VAUGHN he city of Dallas is once again recon- sidering how to handle what it con- siders nuisance properties. Earlier this month, the Public Safety Committee approved changes that will al- low the city to dub certain properties “ele- vated risk areas” for not meeting certain minimum requirements. The city code defines minimum prop- erty maintenance and management stan- dards in Dallas. The standards for maintaining multi-tenant properties, for example, include exterior lighting and se- curity tools such as cameras. The standards for managing these properties include crime prevention addendums and atten- dance at crime watch safety meetings, among other conditions. At the Oct. 11 Public Safety Committee meeting, Kevin Oden, interim director for the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions, explained how Dallas has generally dealt with nuisance properties over the years. A location is designated a habitual criminal property after five instances of certain criminal offenses take place there. These can include criminal mischief, mar- ijuana or controlled substance possession, assault with a deadly weapon and deadly conduct. At that point, the city and Dallas Police Department will ask the property owner to implement crime prevention measures. These measures revolve around some- thing called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (or CPTED) stan- dards. The city says these measures “are proven to overwhelmingly reduce criminal activity.” The measures could include, but aren’t limited to, surveillance and access control like gates. Owners who don’t comply could see their property designated a habitual crimi- nal property designation and face fines. But state law restricts how much the city can levy in fines, so property owners may see the fines as a cost of doing business. The problem with going after these property owners with lawsuits is that these cases have a pretty high litigation threshold re- quiring that a location present “substantial danger” or be a “place where persons go to commit abatable criminal activity.” Even if the city has a good case, getting a court order and getting the property owner in compli- ance can take a long time. If approved by the City Council, a public safety nuisance would be defined as any property that doesn’t abide by certain mini- mum property standards or is designated a habitual criminal or habitual nuisance prop- erty; and is in an area identified by the city’s office of integrated solutions as being at an elevated public safety risk. The city says about 5% of Dallas is consid- ered to be at an elevated public safety risk. 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