What the Demolition of an Oak Cliff Tower Says About Dallas’ Homelessness Fight

The Dallas Housing Authority has nearly finished the process of moving hundreds of formerly homeless residents out of the Cliff Manor apartments and into new homes. When the building is demolished later this year, it will be the end of a 15-year saga that epitomizes Dallas’ slow-fought battle to home the unhoused. 

Cliff Manor was erected in the 1970s on Fort Worth Avenue in North Oak Cliff. A hulking, sand-brown brick building, the city-owned complex housed seniors and residents with disabilities until 2010, when the Dallas Housing Authority put forward an experiment – at least, it was experimental for Dallas: Units in the building would be designated as homes for the chronically homeless. 

The idea almost instantly resulted in neighborhood opposition – at the time, a resident of the adjacent Stevens Park Village told WFAA that it wasn’t “fair” of the city to make her neighborhood the “guinea pig” in this housing test run. Later on, legal threats and compromises left both sides grumbling. 

The entire development drama was recorded at length by the Observer staff members of the era. What becomes most clear when reading these recounts of the uproar is the fact that 15 years later, Dallas has made very little progress in navigating the emotional, unsexy, tedious politics of solving homelessness. 

While the Dallas Housing Authority did not respond to an interview request to discuss Cliff Manor’s legacy, a DHA spokesperson said plans for the property’s future following the complex’s demolition have not yet been decided. According to officials, security surrounding the Cliff Manor will be ramped up in the coming months to prevent squatting or encampments ahead of the demolition. 

“We’re very happy that the building has lived its life,” Trudy Newton, president of the Stevens Park Village neighborhood association, told the Observer. “It’s really an eyesore.”

Destitute Digs and Resident Distrust

Newton said the neighborhood’s relationship with the building improved in recent years when they were able to get in contact with a representative of the Dallas Housing Authority, who listened to their concerns and addressed any nuisances that arose. Still, she’d found herself concerned about the conditions within the building; she’s heard rumors of unreliable plumbing throughout the complex, for example. 

NBC 5 painted a more destitute picture in a 2017 report that found the building plagued by mold, mildew, bedbugs and faulty elevators. 

“It’s messing with my health, my security, my peace,” resident Sonja Blue told the outlet. “There’s addicts, alcoholics, prostitution. It’s too much.”

Another resident told NBC reporters that she’d “heard the same spiel” from the DHA about fixing the building during her two-and-a-half years living there. Living on a fixed income, she asked, “What choice do you have?” when it comes to finding a place to live. 

City Council Member Chad West, whose district includes Cliff Manor, said the complex became a “campaign issue” from the moment he decided to run for Dallas City Council. Concerns about crime were consistently voiced by neighbors. 

“I think [Cliff Manor] sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly received the blame for crime that happened along Fort Worth Avenue just because there was a perception of a lot of loitering happening over there,” West said. “It just was always something that neighbors wanted to see be a little more thoughtfully cared for.”

When DHA opened Cliff Manor to the homeless in 2010, neighbors said they felt blindsided by the city. That feeling was triggered again in 2020 when the City Council approved the $3.5 million purchase of the Hotel Miramar – which sits just one mile down from Cliff Manor on Fort Worth Avenue – for another permanent supportive housing project.

West says purchasing the Miramar, which the city now refers to as the 1650 Fort Worth Avenue project, was complicated because of the restrictions on federal pandemic dollars that had to be spent. Everyone was figuring out virtual communication, too, which made public outreach in a short timeframe tricky.

For neighbors, though, it felt like Cliff Manor was happening all over again. (The Miramar and Cliff Manor projects do have several key differences, the main one being that the Miramar property is not managed by the Dallas Housing Authority.)

“Instead of evolving slowly and letting people kind of talk about [the Miramar] for a few months and really understand it, we had to jump in headfirst as a neighborhood. And it was very, very difficult,” West said. “The baggage from the Cliff Tower carried over into the Miramar discussions, it kept coming up in public meetings.” 

Because the Cliff Manor project was well before West’s time in politics, he said he wasn’t sure what the public outreach regarding the facility looked like. We searched the archives, and reading about the Cliff Manor meetings sounds nearly identical to what went down during the neighborhood talks about the Miramar – which, four years later, is still vacant. 

At meetings a decade apart, concerns about property values and crime, and a deep-seated distrust in the city’s homelessness response, ultimately boil down to the fact that people are uncomfortable with the idea of living next to the homeless. 

They were in 2010, and they still are now. 

Success Stories Exist, Dallas Should Replicate Them

Dallas still hasn’t completely figured out how to approach the type of emotions these projects elicit in residents. 

In 2022, Dallas bought an old hospital building in District 3 to develop into a permanent supportive housing and services complex. It’s the same old song and dance: neighbors felt blindsided by the purchase, proximity to a nearby Dallas ISD elementary school is concerning to those who worry the site will become a “drunk tank” for more unruly individuals, and the council doesn’t seem to have a concrete plan on why this facility will work. 

Like the Miramar, the hospital still sits empty. Unlike the Miramar, which is finally on track to open after management fall-throughs and asbestos remediations, the hospital’s future doesn’t seem set. The City Council has kicked around the idea of selling the facility, although they aren’t sure they’ll be able to recoup the money they spent. 

In last week’s Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee meeting, Council Member Paul Ridley asked what city staff’s plan is for the building, now that two years have passed. Committee Chair Jesse Moreno responded that the city is waiting to hear how the committee wants to move forward with the facility, something that doesn’t have a “hundred percent consensus.” 

In the meantime, the city is spending $35,000 a year on security for the complex that could offer hundreds of much-needed beds to Dallas’ homelessness mitigation efforts.

Dallas has gotten better about finding the “success stories,” though, West said. 

The Dallas Housing Authority runs another Oak Cliff facility down in Ruthmeade Place, just south of the Bishop Arts District. The facility required a zoning change to build, and, having cut his teeth on the Miramar opposition, West was ready to take a different approach to integrating the formerly homeless into a neighborhood. 

Using the zoning case as leverage, the neighborhood was able to sit down with the DHA ahead of its opening in 2023 to negotiate design and logistical preferences. They also insisted the neighborhood association have a point of contact for the facility to help build an ongoing working relationship. So far, West said the only complaint he’s received about the facility was an isolated gripe about parking, which was resolved. 

To his knowledge, a majority of the former Cliff Manor residents were moved into the Ruthmeade Place facility. 

In District 12, Council Member Cara Mendelsohn earned similar applause in 2020 when the council approved $6 million to purchase a 50-unit Candlewood Suites, which has since become a family shelter. Mendelsohn held a number of community meetings about the potential shelter ahead of the purchase to discern community needs and preferences, outreach that neighbors told the Dallas Morning News resulted in a positive project. 

All that to circle back to Cliff Manor, which will soon be a large patch of city-owned grass. For Newton, she wouldn’t mind seeing the land stay a green space for a while. But if the Dallas Housing Authority does decide to take a second swing at the land, she hopes the neighborhood is included in the process. She’s down to get “creative,” she says. 

West offered a similar sentiment when imagining what future could be found in Cliff Manor’s shadow.  

“I’d like [to see] a concept that could benefit existing neighbors, but also welcome in new neighbors. Something that’s a little bit more gentle on the density side than a tower, possibly incorporating some type of retail and some open space,” West said. “Something very thoughtful. Like, let’s get the neighborhood engaged and master plan the hell out of it.”