8 November 9 - 15, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents bersecurity and IT incidents that have rocked both the city of Dallas and Dallas County. In August 2021, a city of Dallas IT em- ployee accidentally deleted 22 terabytes of police data. Months later, 600 hours of law enforcement surveillance footage, mostly recorded by the Dallas Police Department, was leaked to the online activist group Dis- tributed Denial of Secrets. In December 2021, a ransomware group attacked the Ul- timate Kronos Group, a human resources company that provides timekeeping ser- vices, affecting over 2,400 city of Dallas employees. Then, in November 2022, the website, servers and email for the Dallas Central Ap- praisal District, or DCAD, were all inaccessi- ble for a period of time after another ransomware attack. This attack was pulled off by a hacker group called Royal. The group initially demanded $1 million for the DCAD data, but was paid only about $170,000 in crypto currency, according to WFAA. The same group, which is believed to be based in Russia, pulled off a devastat- ing attack against the city of Dallas in May of this year, crippling multiple city services. The city is still recovering from that attack. Meanwhile, the county has been dealing with its own IT flubs that have nothing to do with hackers. Beginning in the middle of May of this year, Dallas County employees were receiv- ing incomplete paychecks or sometimes no paychecks at all. The issue was blamed on the rollout of an updated payroll system that affected sheriff’s deputies, correctional offi- cers, expert witnesses and other positions in the county. A month after the problems started, the U.S. Department of Labor launched an investigation into the issue. The former head of Dallas County’s IT department, Melissa Kraft, told The Dallas Morning News that she wanted to delay the payroll software rollout, citing potential risks with its implementation. Kraft warned county officials, including auditor Darryl Thomas, of the potential risks, but they pushed forward with the rollout. Both Kraft and Thomas would later resign. The county is also still dealing with prob- lems related to the rollout of a new court management software. A couple of weeks after the new soft- ware, called Odyssey, was implemented, prosecutors, public defenders and the county probation office all reported having limited access to county criminal case files. The problem, which was bringing the county’s criminal justice system to a near standstill, stemmed from the migration of files from the old system to the new one. The issue led to people languishing in the county jail for longer than they should have, a problem that persists today. As a result, the jail is seeing a higher number of inmates than usual and the cost to run the jail has increased, according to The Dallas Morning News. The jail has reached about 94% capacity and costs $1 million more a month to run compared with last year, according to the News. We reached out to Lewis Jenkins’s office for an update on the county problems with paychecks as well as the Odyssey software, but we did not receive an official update on either issue be- fore publication. As for the latest hack, Lewis Jenkins said in a statement that the investigation is ongo- ing. “... We do not want to make premature assumptions about the extent of impact or other details, which may evolve as the foren- sic investigation advances,” Lewis Jenkins said. “We value the trust and credibility we have established with our residents and partners and strive to maintain accuracy in the information we share. The county will provide updates as soon as more informa- tion becomes available.” ▼ HOUSING ‘NOT COVERING RENT’ DALLAS PRICES MAKE IT HARD TO GET BY ON A FIXED INCOME. BY JACOB VAUGHN W ith seemingly no other options to consider, Hector Hernandez and Alecia Sanchez decided last year to room together in a small duplex in Dallas. The two live on fixed incomes and couldn’t find a place they could afford on their own in the city, so they teamed up in November 2022. They each have one side of the duplex. With twin beds on either side, it was cramped but it worked for a while. That was until the person they were renting from couldn’t af- ford to own the place any more. Over the last couple of months, they’ve been forced to find a new home. Not accustomed to rooming with other people, they decided that this time they would try to find housing they could each afford on their own. They did (kind of), but now their finances are tighter than ever. The two were featured in an Observer story last May about trying to get by on a fixed income during a housing crisis. And we are in a crisis. According to Child Poverty Action Lab, Dallas lacks more than 33,000 affordable rental units for people making at or below 50% of the area median income – people like Hernandez and Sanchez. Ac- cording to rentcafe.com, the average rent for an apartment in Dallas is about $1,592. Hernandez and Sanchez had their own places at the Oakridge Apartments in Oak Cliff. Hernandez had lived there since 2020. Sanchez had been staying there since 2006. In the summer of 2022 the complex was sold to new owners who said they’d be raising the rent, effectively pricing Hernandez and San- chez out of their homes. At that point, the only place they could find that they could both afford was a boarding home in the city called El Shaddai for about $650 a month each. While at the boarding home, the two got to talking and decided they would try rooming together at a nearby duplex, but that lasted only a handful of months. Now, Sanchez, 70, is at a place called The Oaks. It’s a Dallas Housing Authority prop- erty for people 62 and older. She pays about $1,050 for rent there. Meanwhile, Hernan- dez, a 49-year-old blind man, is staying at a place called Forest Dale in North Dallas. It costs about $1,100 a month. They each re- ceive about $1,200 a month in Social Secu- rity Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The two are now spending between 80% and 91% of their fixed income on rent. When they lived together at the duplex, they split the rent of about $1,500 a month. Helping them navigate the situation is Lisa Marshall, a local housing advocate who started a group called Fighting Homelessness. She’s supplementing Hernandez and Sanchez’s rent with $400 each, but they still have barely enough for their other expenses ev- ery month. Marshall is hoping to help Her- nandez find a job so he can have a little more wiggle room, but it’s been difficult. “We’re supplementing with donor money so that they can eat,” Marshall said. “There’s just nothing left.” She said she’s looking for any other source of income that may help the two out. “Once donor money is gone, I’m not sure what we’ll do,” she said. Of Hernandez and Sanchez, Marshall said, “This is the face of people entering into homelessness. … These are not people that were in an encampment somewhere, for God’s sake. They were living independently on their own on very very fixed incomes – SSDI – and it’s not covering rent anymore.” Although they live in different areas now, Hernandez and Sanchez still talk on the phone just about every day to check in on one another. Sanchez said she likes her new place but that it’s a little too quiet for her. Hernandez is a little less optimistic about his new living situation. He said the water heater doesn’t seem to work all the time, and his AC has been out recently. “So, it’s hotter in here than it is out there,” he said. “I’m not comfortable here no more.” He wishes he could be back at the duplex with Sanchez even though they had their ups and downs sharing living quarters. “We didn’t have our space so we would get on each other’s nerves and stuff,” Hernandez said. “We used to get into heated arguments, but I still worry about her and I still care about her,” he said. Hernandez is already looking forward to the expiration of the lease at his current apartment, and he’s hoping to convince San- chez to find a new place with him to split the rent. He’s not sure if she’ll go for that, how- ever “Being on my own, there’s nothing af- fordable with my income,” he said. “I’m frustrated,” he said. “Even if I’ve got to live with the rats, with the junkies and prostitutes, as long as it’s something I can af- ford because this is just too much.” With his rent supplemented by Marshall and Fighting Homelessness, Hernandez said he’s now paying close to what he paid when he previously lived on his own. “Ev- erything is twice what it used to be so I’m hardly left with any money,” he said. According to the October National Rent Report by Apartment List, rents in Dallas have increased by 21% since March 2020. Hernandez said he’s optimistic about the future, but it can sometimes feel like it’s all out of his control. “I have mixed feelings and mixed emotions about all this that’s going on,” he said. “I feel like we’re ping pong balls because we’re going back and forth, back and forth, this way and that way, and, man, I’m tired.” ▼ CITY HALL GIFT CARDS, NOT GUNS DALLAS HOSTED A GUN BUYBACK EVENT. WILL IT WORK? BY JACOB VAUGHN I n mid-October, a 15-year-old accidentally shot and killed a 13-year-old in Dallas. This and other incidents of gun violence in the city prompted City Council member Jesse Moreno to organize a gun buyback event in collaboration with local law en- forcement. The event took place on Oct. 21, when people turned in 128 guns in exchange for $100 gift cards. “We started thinking about what can we do at the local level to help take some guns off our streets from those folks that no lon- ger want those firearms in their homes,” Moreno said. “Maybe they were passed on from generations or spouses that no longer needed those weapons. So it really spurred from that as something we could do at the local level since we are not really seeing any results from the federal or the state level.” He said he doesn’t think Dallas has hosted a gun buyback program before, at least not re- cently. “This is, from my understanding, the first in a long time,” Moreno said. The Dallas event was modeled after similar efforts that have taken place in Fort Worth. He said he wasn’t sure what to expect, but the event at- tracted a good turnout. “We had folks lining Jacob Vaughn Alecia Sanchez, 70, and Hector Hernandez, 49, became unlikely roommates during an affordable housing crisis in Dallas. Now, they’re living on their own and finding it hard to get by. Unfair Park from p6
