Solving affordable housing problem: community and national leaders call for all hands on deck

By Norma Adams-Wade
Texas Metro News

Home is where the heart is, right?

But if average citizens can no longer afford a home, where do they lay their heads and hang their hats?

Affordable housing has become a national crisis.

Even U.S. President Joe Biden mentioned this plight in his March 7, 2024 State of the Union address.

“I know the cost of housing is so important to you,” he told the Nation, as he admonished Congress: “Now pass and build and renovate two million affordable homes and bring those rents down.”

Affordable housing is the complex issue that moderate to low-income community problem-solvers are tackling. Their battleground is chaotic in today’s economic environment of rising prices, political unrest, and national and local leadership instability.

Diane Ragsdale and Sherri Mixon are long-time residents of the South Dallas/Fair Park and Bonton neighborhoods; two low-to moderate-income communities where housing and economic issues are major concerns and the areas have changed and are continuing to rapidly evolve.

Ragsdale is a former Deputy Mayor Pro Tem on the Dallas City Council from 1984-1991.

The two neighborhoods were part of her district and she was depended on to be a voice for an area that many considered to be ignored.

She entered the political arena as a community organizer and grew up as an NAACP Youth Council member, mentored by the local and national civil rights and NAACP icon, Juanita Craft.

Ragsdale founded the non-profit South Dallas/Fair Park Innercity Development Corporation (ICDC) in 1986; while still on the Dallas City Council.

Mixon is executive director of the nonprofit T. R. Hoover Community Development Corporation that her mother, Jacqueline Mixon, founded in 1997.

The two nonprofits illuminate similar community issues; including housing, health, jobs, and senior citizen and youth needs. Ragsdale operates largely in the South Dallas/Fair Park neighborhood, Mixon mainly in the Ideal Neighborhood and surrounding Lincoln Manor and Bonton communities.

Common Battle: Save Affordable Housing Maintaining affordable housing is on the common radar of the two community problem-solvers from two different generations.

Ragsdale founded ICDC nearly 40 years ago. Then about a decade later, Jacqueline Mixon, founded Hoover shortly after her daughter graduated from college. When her mother’s health began to decline, Sherri Mixon took on leadership to “help out.”

She soon was sucked into the needs of her neighborhood and community, moved to top leadership, and has never left that role or strayed from her mission..

Both influencers took a recent stroll down memory lane and a look toward the future. That panorama brought both satisfaction looking back, but it was a different story looking forward.

“You have to look at two ways to confront the problem of affordable housing,” Ragsdale, 71, said. “One is to build an institution to confront the problem, and two is to serve as a catalyst, a model for others to follow. You have to set an example.”

Sherri Mixon, 54, says the housing transformation is both positive and negative: “The explosive change is a transformation in what is being done here today. The studio style, compared to what we built, will attract a younger generation of (business-minded) people vested in being here because of housing opportunities being made,” Mixon said. “What concerns me is that the cost…and taxes will drive some people out. We’re going to lose some good neighbors.”

When Ragsdale retired as executive director from South Dallas/Fair Park ICDC three years ago, she explored various candidates to pick up her mantle.

Leaving the helm of the institution that she conceived was no easy matter.

After some interim administrators, Rev. Billy Lane, 55, has come aboard as ICDC executive director. He and Ragsdale say they work well together with her now as an ex-officio volunteer chair of policy and advocacy and him leading onsite, day-to-day operations.

Rev. Lane’s background is nonprofit administration, theology, and human rights advocacy. He said his skills come into play with the duties of advocating for affordable housing. He assesses the rapid growth of new architectural styles as a “mixed-bag” –contemporary multi level formations on narrow lots, replacing traditional low-income shot- gun and small cottage-style homes.

Before ICDC, empty lots and deserted homes were common in the neighborhood. Ragsdale’s and Lane’s group used the method of in-filling deserted lots with affordable homes, largely for first-time homebuyers.

But private developers now rule the day.

“You cannot ignore that the reason those lots remained vacant and old houses deserted was because of systemic disinvestment. Traditional development ignored the area,” Rev. Lane said. “So finally, now private investment comes in, prices go up, and while it at least looks better, it leads to displacement and gentrification. It’s one thing if I have the choice to move, but this is forcing people to move, and that is bad.”

ICDC Mission, Achievements

Over nearly four decades, ICDC has made noticeable strides toward fulfilling its mission to “create a stable, safe, and vibrant, South Dallas/Fair Park community.”

The group has done so by providing “homeownership opportunities, economic development, community education, and advocacy.”

Ronald Reagan was U. S. President in 1986 when the nonprofit ICDC was founded.

The public also was consumed with world news of the day: the deaths of astronauts who died in the Challenger space shuttle explosion, and the standoff talks between Pres. Reagan and Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev over their arms control differences.

First Lady Nancy Reagan was telling the nation to “Just Say No” concerning the rising use of cocaine and other illicit drugs.

Former attorney and civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall was still on the U.S. Supreme Court – five years before conservative Republican Clarence Thomas took a seat. American citizens and physicians still were terrified of the relatively new HIV/AIDs epidemic that health agencies officially recognized five years earlier in 1981.

A recent happening in a different part of southern Dallas — the historic 10th Street Historic District in Dallas’ Oak Cliff area — seemed like déjà vu for ICDC in South Dallas/Fair Park.

Advocates there had been fighting for ways to save and renovate sub-standard low-income homes, particularly as the availability of affordable housing was clearly becoming a crisis.

So, ICDC and South Dallas/Fair Park celebrated along with Oak Cliff when preservation advocates won a victory for the 10th Street area that is one of the nation’s prominent original Freedmen’s Towns.

Ironically during Black History month in February, the Dallas City Council ended a long-standing ordinance that had allowed demolition of historic homes in predominantly low-income, African American and Latino communities, if they were labeled substandard; despite being historic. The ordinance change was a victory for saving affordable housing.

T. R. Hoover CDC Mission, Achievements

When T. R. Hoover CDC opened in 1997, the world was engrossed in news about the sudden car-crash death of Princess Diana of Wales. Entertainer Ellen DeGeneres announced that she was gay. Also, the public would learn about a two-year affair that ended that year between then U. S. President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewin-sky.

Founded as a way to combat classic symptoms of poverty in the Ideal neighborhood where she lived, near well-known Bexar Street in South Dallas/Fair Park, Jacqueline Mixon lit her torch after traditional neighborhood problems of poverty and crime began to escalate.

She had inherited her sense of community caring and action from her daughter’s great grandfather, T. R. Hoover. So, the family named the organization in his honor. Today its services include a popular food bank, after-school and weekend youth activities, and referral to various social services. Fighting for affordable housing is high on Hoover’s priority list.

“Just about every day as I’m driving, I’m looking at the transformation,” Sherri Mixon said. “Today potential residents and renters are being asked to pay about $1,500 a month and the rooms are small like closets. That conversation comes up constantly in our neighborhood residents’ meetings.”

Homeownership is where the heart is

When all is said and done, owning your own home is worth the anxiety, financial grip it holds on you, and the gamble of facing an unknown future about the surrounding community, said new homeowner Brenda Love.

The working mother of three adult offspring and five grandchildren bought a home in the South Dallas/Fair Park community two years ago and shares it with a daughter and two grandchildren.

Love said she moved from North Dallas, where she was close to her job, to South Dallas/Fair Park to be close to family and give her grandchildren a sense of their culture.

She confessed that she misses the available North Dallas amenities, such as choices of grocery stores and 24-hour drug stores.

She wishes her neighborhood had more such choices and other features, such as speed bumps to make streets safer for children and residents. And although never the victim of burglars, she wishes for police presence.

There was, though, one traumatic incident that led her to add more community youth activities to her wish list.

She awoke one night to a group of teenagers standing in her driveway shooting a gun in the air. A neighbor called the police before she could. The teens ran away, but she began to wish there were nearby positive activities and mentors to replace the youths’ idleness.

All-in-all, she remains grateful for her new abode, although the area housing boom and spiked costs make her uneasy.

“It concerns me,” said Love, a hospitality associate in a downtown Dallas attorney’s office. “If you’re not firmly established and on your feet, the people will not be able to afford the homes they (developers) are building. …They’re beautiful homes. But more-and-more, the people can’t afford them. And the ones already there are being pushed out.”

Property fraud, loss of status woes

Attempts to maintain affordable housing in low-to moderate-income areas does not just include fighting rising costs and preventing break-ins and street violence. There are various other factors.

There is the need for residents to stay ahead of threats that include various forms of property fraud, which occurs when unscrupulous potential buyers somehow change ownership deeds by forging signatures on scammed property deeds.

The crime often is done after an elderly owner dies, their home is left vacant, and relatives are distracted or not paying attention to what’s happening to the property.

Next is the hurdle of a neighborhood losing status and reputation because of either crime and/or unscrupulous residents who move into the area, i.e., drug, gambling or prostitution houses.

That is what has happened to the once high-brow community of South Boulevard/Park Row; one street north of Martin Luther King jr. Blvd.

Local realtor Tracey Serrell, a Dallas native, recently shared disappointing news about a usually respected neighborhood that has lost status.

On her real estate YouTube channel — @TheDFWLife-cn- 7yo – Serrell, on December 18, 2023, quoted researchers who labeled South Boulevard/Park Row as “#1 on the list of worst places to live if you are considering moving to Dallas.”

This conclusion was based on property crime and violence research done by Property Club, an Australian-based national real estate consulting group.

Serrell’s YouTube channel regularly advises individuals seeking guidance on where to buy homes in the DFW metroplex.

“I help people relocate to Dallas-Fort Worth on a fairly regular basis. And one thing I hear very often is: ‘Tracey, is this a good place to live?’ And that is code for is this a safe place to live,” Serrell said in the video. “As a realtor, I can’t steer you in an area or away from an area. I can only provide you with statistics and resources and things for you to do your own research for you to determine what works best for you.”
Serrell further admonished:

“Remember, when you buy a home, you’re not just buying that singular address, you’re buying the entire area, the community. I want you to go into every area that you see with your eyes wide open.”

Property Club published its findings in January 2023, with South Boulevard/Park Row as #1 among the 10 most dangerous neighborhoods in Dallas, with a crime rate that is “277 percent higher than the Dallas average.”

Some other surprising listings among the 10 include South Dallas/Fair Park, the Dallas Convention Center district downtown, and the Cedar Crest area.

The group’s report strangely noted that South Boulevard/Park Row has a population of 26,359, adding that the violent crime rate is 3,255 and property crime rate is 6,492 per 100,000 people.

Questionable, though, is why the area population is given as 26,459 when South Boulevard and Park Row are only two streets. Clearly the report takes in a much larger area than the two streets.

Reacting to Serrell’s report, one resident responded with her own theory about the high crime statistics. The resident opined that the startling stats largely centered on four seriously rundown, blighted properties near the corner of South Boulevard and Meadow St. where she said “trap houses and drug dealers” function in the open.

At the far opposite end of South Boulevard, the traditional upscale, well-kept turn-of-the-century colonial homes still attract new, younger professional residents who restore the large, attractive properties with wide, expansive porches.

A don’t-give-up mentality can win seemingly impossible warfare

Despite their age differences, Ragsdale and Mixon grew up in close areas where faith philosophies were common. They both say they are familiar with an often-quoted Biblical scripture, Matthew 26:11, which reminds everyone that “the poor you will always have with you.” (NIV)

Yet, even that divine warning has not stopped them from zealously seeking solutions to community problems that would stymie less-hardy souls.

Rev. Lane said Ragsdale has left a firm footprint for those who want to be change-makers to follow.

“She’s created a system and culture through ICDC where others can follow and have followed,” Rev. Lane said, adding that he and Ragsdale get to share and see ICDC’s impact working with state and national groups that include the Texas Association of Community Development Corporations and the National Community Rein-vestment Coalition.

Ragsdale’s approach is that of a socially-aware neighborhood youth who rose to high-ranking Dallas city leadership. She then used her position to be a change-maker for the down- trodden.

In her youth and young adult years, she was part of civil rights street protests. She challenged the establishment and the neighborhoods have benefitted. Her sights now are set on implementing policies that improve lives for renters and homeowners.

“The reality is that 65 percent of our people in South Dallas Bexar Street area are tenants now,” said Ragsdale. “Many are stable, good neighbors who, like homeowners, have a stake in the neighborhood. They deserve attention, too.”

Sherry Mixon agrees. She devotedly crusades from her perch as one who earned, then pocketed her college degree that was preparing her to pursue a medical career.

Instead, she now fights to heal problems of the low-income community where she grew up. Mixon has hopes for a new generation of leaders – even new African American real estate developers who will put affordable housing needs of the people above making a dollar.

“People do need housing,” Mixon said. “But people need sustainable housing. They do not need an over-priced situation where they live there one month and then are out the door the next because they cannot afford to stay where they are.”

Through the efforts of Community Development Corporations, some communities are growing. Still, there is so much more work to do and resources needed. The issue of affordable housing has not gone away and the number of homeless citizens in the U.S., according to HUD, is rapidly approaching 700,000.

Thanks to the efforts of Ragsdale, the Mixons and Rev. Lane, as well as others who are involved in combating the housing crisis in America, bit by bit progress is being made.