Dallas Won. HUD Lost. Oops.
hud.gov Obama's new HUD Secretary Julian Castro: Focus on this picture for a while, and you can see him blink.
City Hall announced late yesterday that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has caved on the 4-year-old Lockey/MacKenzie racial segregation complaint against Dallas officials, vacating most of the findings of a four-year federal civil rights investigation. A settlement signed yesterday by HUD and the city (see below) is a clean-sweep victory for Dallas and a bruising defeat for HUD.
In yesterday's settlement, HUD admits unspecified errors in its November 2013 finding of noncompliance. HUD releases Dallas from any obligation to pay a fine or suffer a loss of federal funding. The agreement makes no mention of compensation for Curtis Lockey or Craig MacKenzie, downtown developers who claimed Dallas scotched their tower re-do deal at 1600 Pacific because it would have accepted too many minority tenants.
See also: The Feds Say Dallas City Hall Has Promoted Racial Segregation in Housing Projects for Years
The accord signed yesterday is a bitter slap for Lockey and MacKenzie and I hope I can say, without sounding too self-referential, for me as well, since I've been pretty much the Lone Ranger around here for the last couple years predicting exactly the opposite outcome.
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