Politics & Government

Figuring out the Slumlord Battle Requires Us to Look Beyond Stereotypes

Khraish H. Khraish, the landlord locked in battle with the city over houses in West Dallas that the city says are substandard, says he met with Mayor Mike Rawlings and City Council Member Monica Alonzo Thursday morning to offer a settlement including the sale of more than 300 properties to…

Dear City Council Members Who Fought For Tougher Rental Housing Standards: It’s not your fault. The mess that Mayor Mike Rawlings has stirred up with landlords and tenants in West Dallas is not the product of the rental housing reform that you passed last month.  Nor is it evidence necessarily…

The accusation against Khraish H. Khraish, who with his father owns hundreds of cheap rental houses in South Oak Cliff and West Dallas, is that he’s a slumlord who doesn’t maintain his houses within the requirements of city building codes, subjecting tenants to vicious living conditions. So how is it…

Mark Miller, a candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, took the stage at Gilley’s last night to warm up the crowd for Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Bill Weld. He propped up presidential candidate Gary Johnson and railed against the two mainstream opponents, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, with a…

Let’s get real about what’s really going on with the Khraish family, called slumlords by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and WFAA Channel 8 for shutting down 300 low-rent houses in West Dallas and South Oak Cliff. This is a land play. The city has offered no provision, no contingency, no…

Hey, I have to hit the pause button here and talk about a topic that has bothered me for years: tax increment finance district or “TIF” funds and property taxes. I am inspired to talk about it by an honest and sincere comment from a guy who wrote yesterday on…

Dallas City Council’s plan to hand over the day-to-day operations of Fair Park to a private foundation headed by Walt Humann is on hold. In a Thursday afternoon memo, new Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto told Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and the rest of the council that the city would…

Please note, dear Dallas, there is one place Donald Trump flies straight to with his coattails on fire when he needs an emergency injection of cash. Here. Yikes. His political castle crumbling at his heels, Trump knew there was one spot in this whole nation he could always count on…

Fresh off a Sunday night debate performance, GOP presidential nominee and admitted genital-grabber Donald Trump swung through Texas on Tuesday to pick up a pile of cash at private fundraisers in San Antonio and Dallas. The media was not allowed inside either event but Katrina Pierson, Trump’s Dallas-based spokeswoman, streamed…

Mayor Mike Rawlings called a news conference at City Hall yesterday to take credit for a 14-day restraining order granted by District Judge Ken Molberg to stop the Khraish family and their firm, HMK, from evicting 300 tenants living in low-rent single-family homes in southern and West Dallas. More on…

This, I hope, will not turn into a rant. I want it to be more of a solemn prayer. I pray that this city, my city, will deeply and sincerely examine its heart where the poor are concerned. But I could start ranting anyway. It happens. I want you to…

Friday, Donald Trump got caught. The Washington Post published a transcript of a tape, recorded while Trump talked to Billy Bush on a bus ride to a soap opera cameo. (For those who haven’t read the transcript, it’s at the end of this post.) Trump’s foes gleefully attacked, but so did a…

Texas Senator Ted Cruz continued his Donald Trump-supporting tour Tuesday morning, stopping by right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show to insist his formal rival won the first general election debate on Monday night.   The senator earlier called Trump a “sniveling coward,” “serial philanderer” and “pathological” this spring. But these days he’s…

The Dallas City Council’s transportation committee left no doubt Monday about what the city wants DART to do as the transit agency moves forward toward its new 20-year plan: Build a subway downtown and fix the dysfunctional bus system. And the committee had one “don’t” as well: Don’t allocate a ton of…

Dallas Police Department Deputy Chief Rob Sherwin, the new temporary leader of Dallas Animal Services, didn’t hide the grim reality of what his department is going to have to do to stem the tide of the more than 8,000 loose dogs currently roaming southern Dallas. Dallas Animal Services is going…

The first draft of Dallas’ surprisingly controversial southern Dallas deck park is out. Phase one of the proposed $118 million park build-out looks an awful lot like its cousin, Klyde Warren Park. Spanning I-35 between Ewing and Marsalis Avenues, the park — assuming it gets funded — will initially feature…

This week the Dallas City Council completed its single most important task of 2016 when it passed the city of Dallas’ budget for the next fiscal year. Like the city itself, the new budget was heavily influenced by Dallas’ formative event of 2016, the July 7 police ambush that killed…

Construction cranes rise all over the skyline, traffic jams rush hour, so many apartment/condo projects crowd the city’s older neighborhoods that you can hardly see the neighborhoods. With this sheer volume of economic activity that we can see in this city with our bare eyes, how does City Hall still…

Years go by. I’m OK. Sleep great. Steady hands, no shakes. Then out of nowhere I awaken one night from a dead slumber covered in a cold sweat with eyes like silver dollars and a throbbing heart. And I know. Somewhere out there in the black of night, the beast…

Too many times I tell you how City Hall doesn’t have a single desk where the buck stops, how you can’t get City Hall to do anything for you, and I always forget to mention the exception. There is one thing you can do to make City Hall work like…

Dallas Police officer Jesus Martinez, over the last two-plus years, has been charged, fired, let go by a grand jury and rehired by the Dallas Police Department. Thursday afternoon, the saga of this officer continued as he announced that he was suing outgoing Dallas Police Chief David Brown and the…