Dallas Mayor and Cheap Housing Opponents Play Catholic Charities for Fool
Nothing could be more plain. The blame for the city’s dearth of low-income housing — expressed politically, in policy, in voting and in what people say on the record — lies squarely with City Hall. Every major action with bearing on this issue taken by the current mayor, the City Council and top city staff has been to thwart efforts to provide low-income housing.
But City Hall, often with help from people who should just know better, constantly works to put the blame for the lack of it on the few people who actually do provide low-income housing — private sector landlords who rent to families at very low rents. It’s all their fault.
That’s quite a trick.
With refreshing candor and no trickiness at all that I could discern, Dallas City Councilman Lee Kleinman gave a great explanation right here in the Dallas Observer the other day of the way many people in positions of responsibility in Dallas feel about low-income housing:
“One thing in housing that people don’t think about is in this city a single-family home needs to be worth about $225,000 to about $250,000 to generate enough tax revenue to pay for the services that that family will be using in the city,” Kleinman told Observer Editor Joe Pappalardo.
Read more: http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/mayor-and-cheap-housing-opponents-play-catholic-charities-for-fool-9168329