On Tuesday, some of Temple Emanu-El's best and brightest -- plus a few outliers, among them a city employee, a builder, a developer and the Rev.
B.L. Smith of the Jericho Road Community Development Corporation -- gathered to brainstorm what their group has in mind for affordable
housing in the city. It's a daunting task being spearheaded by the Dallas Faith Communities Coalition, whose holding-pattern Web site serves to remind that any solutions are still closer to concept than reality. But the small group of 15, led by Rabbi Asher Knight and DFCC's
Regina Nippert, remained on point throughout the evening, save for those few moments when Smith had to explain black tar heroin and "poverty pimps" to a couple of prim but
feisty grandmotherly types.
While
many members articulated lofty ambitions for ending homelessness and
fomenting a citywide affordable housing "movement," others thought the
most practical answer to Dallas's affordable housing crisis is action -- in
other words, building houses.
"Platitudes are great, but the
world is full of platitudes," said builder Richard Harwood. "We've got
to be pragmatic about this. There are constraints in the market to
where we may not be able to do project A, B, C or D. Project F may be
the least desirable, but it may be the most feasible."
Harwood
was perhaps the best-prepared one there: Drawing on his decades of
experience as a builder, he produced a comprehensive plan for a housing
project, from its broadest ideological beginnings to the specific (and
crucial) endpoint: financing. That, of course, will be the sticking
point, should this group decides to pool its goals and resources and
enter the affordable housing business -- and during a recession, no less.
Still, there's time: Meetings are scheduled monthly through October,
and, as Nippert put it in an e-mail to Unfair Park, "it is always
interesting to see how the sausage is made."