Latest Stories

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  Dallas Apartments Getting Smaller, More Expensive

  December 7 at 4 a.m.

  Anyone renting or looking to rent in Dallas won't be surprised by this news, but the confirmation is nice at least: Apartments across DFW have gotten smaller and significantly more expensive over the last 10 years, according to new analysis from RENTCafé, a rental listing website. Between 2008 and 2018, the...

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  Heartstrings and Purse Strings Tugged in Tough Council Debate on Housing the Poor

  November 1 at 4 a.m.

  A lot of the time, probably too much, we talk about the Dallas City Council strictly in terms of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, death, famine, war and conquest. There’s more to it than those four guys. A recent debate about a run-down apartment complex in far West Dallas...

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  We Hope Our Homeless Will Fade Into Ash, and Soon Enough They Do

  October 5 at 4 a.m.

  Genocide is a tricky, ugly word to trot out in an argument. Comparing something to the brutality and madness of genocide to make a point is likely to blow up in your face. Survivors are justifiably touchy about anything that remotely devalues their suffering. Plus, my editor won't let me...

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  First Some Crow to Eat, Then We Dig Into the Good Stuff

  September 24 at 4 a.m.

  Last week I got an important fact wrong in a story about a troubled apartment complex in far West Dallas. I said the agency responsible for enforcing basic standards there over a period of years was the Dallas Housing Authority. That was not true. In fact, an entity in Austin...

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  City Staff Push Policy Change That Reinforces Racial Segregation

  September 19 at 4 a.m.

  Monday The Dallas Morning News made some great points in an editorial about racial segregation in the city and the Trump administration’s troubling initiative to de-emphasize desegregation in national housing policy. The defect in the editorial — the thing always left unsaid in Dallas — is that segregation is what...

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  Booming Economy Driving Up Dallas Rents. Incomes not so Much

  September 12 at 4:01 a.m.

  Ivan Garcia was born in Dallas and lived in the city for most of his life, but he was still shocked when he began apartment hunting in February. He didn’t know that his first apartment would cost so much — especially in his own hometown. North Texas has seen the...