U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

What Does the Dallas Outcome Tell Us About HUD? What Does It Say About Feds in General?

I'm headed out of town for a week's vacation. Spent a good deal of yesterday thinking about the outcome in the HUD case against Dallas. As you know by now, HUD folded a couple days ago and withdrew its racial segregation allegation against the city. If you were here yesterday, I already bored you wi ... More >>

Dallas Won. HUD Lost. Oops.

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 ... More >>

HUD Whistle-Blowers' New Lawsuit about How Dallas Promoted Segregation Could Still Cost Millions.

New Lockey/MacKenzie Lawsuit Seeks to Reopen Can of Worms in HUD Case

The Lockey/MacKenzie federal whistle-blower lawsuit accusing Dallas of deliberate racial segregation, dismissed last year because the judge said I had already blown the whistle, is back in court in all new clothes, filed Friday, this time with less of me and more of former City Council member Angel ... More >>

Morning News Does Half-Hearted Correction on Editorial Slamming HUD Whistle-Blowers

Oh thank you, God of Lazy Non-Recyclers, for sparing that grocery sack full of this week's copies of The Dallas Morning News, hiding it in that corner of the bedroom from the eye of The Great Recycler with whom I live, so that I was able to retrieve from it a hard copy of last Wednesday's newspaper, ... More >>

Ignore All the Smoke Around HUD's Case Against Dallas and See Something Ugly in the Mirror

HUDs Coming Settlement with Dallas over Segregation Caps a Trail of Lies

This is the week something should happen in the now 5-year-old dispute between the city of Dallas and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over HUD's landmark segregation complaint against Dallas. HUD and the city have been jaw-boning each other for several weeks now over what Dallas ... More >>

Dallas Pushing HUD to Withdraw Letter Accusing City of Misusing Housing Funds

Yesterday I said I would eat crow if Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rudy Bush turns out to be right and I turn out to be wrong about the outcome of the HUD racial discrimination complaint against the city of Dallas. Today after much more snooping around, I would offer this as my opening positi ... More >>

When HUD Releases Its Segregation Settlement With Dallas, Someone Is Going to Get Smoked

Oh, man, I shouldn't even tell you about this. I guess it's me and Rudy Bush, "High Noon," "OK Corral," all those old movies. One of us has got to wind up on his back in the horseshit with his toes in the air. I promise I'll let you know which one it is, if I still can. Bush is a former City Hall r ... More >>

In Fight Over Dallas' Racist Housing Policies, HUD Threw the Whistleblowers Under the Bus

If the editorial in The Dallas Morning News this morning has any credibility, and I am sure it does, HUD has agreed to throw the whistleblowers under the bus in the Lockey/MacKenzie racial segregation complaint against the city of Dallas. It's not a surprising outcome, because paying off the two d ... More >>

While Dallas Leaders Talk about Paying Back HUD, the Feds' Real Payback Is on its Way

The other day, I was talking here and Rudy Bush was talking in The Dallas Morning News and Scott Griggs and Philip Kingston were talking on the city council about the $810,000 the city had to pay back to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). I just want to point out before the ... More >>

Dallas Fudges Numbers to Put HUD Money in Favored Pockets

HUD's Free Money Poisons Dallas

Wherever Mary Suhm's Body Is, Her Spirit Still Haunts City Hall

$800 Grand, Sex Extortion, Pit Bull Attacks: No Red Flags Seen at City Hall.

Late yesterday, just before finally answering my days-old question about it, the city manager sent a memo to the City Council characterizing $800,000 repaid to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a kind of technical accounting error and no big deal. Most of it involves money stolen ... More >>

Dallas City Hall Has Repaid $800,000 to HUD in the Last Year, but for What?

WOW. Looks like bigbexardaddy knows whereof he speaks. Little over a week ago bigbexardaddy commented on an item I had posted here about the Bexar Street boondoggle, giving away a lot of detail that sure sounded like it came from inside City Hall, including a claim that Dallas, even in advance of ... More >>

Suddenly, Dallas Says HUD Segregation Investigation Is a Blessing

How to Read the News and Not Pass Out

Always fun for me to read The Dallas Morning News on Sunday, or, as I call it, Pravda Day. That's when the big think-pieces come out in the special "Pointy Section" of the paper ... oh, 'scuse me, it's really called the "Points Section," but you get my point. It's the Sunday editorial section, and i ... More >>

Mayor Rawlings and Merten Tell Me the Whole HUD Thing Was Just HUD's Big Goof. Wow.

Very interesting press conference Friday in the Flag Room at Dallas City Hall ... wait ... wait. Oh, no. Did I just tell you there was an interesting press conference in the Flag Room at City Hall? Tell me I did not just say that. No, what I meant to say was that there was a typically turgid Kabuki ... More >>

If Dallas Thinks It Can Bluster Its Way Around HUD, We Should Visit Our Sister in Sin

We should be doing what we can to keep up with news about our sister community, Westchester County in New York. It's the other local government entity in the nation, along with the city of Dallas, formally accused by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development of practicing deliberate racia ... More >>

Dallas to HUD: Stuff It!

Right after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development accused Dallas last month of massive racial segregation and housing fraud, Mayor Mike Rawlings was all for making nice. That lasted all of two weeks. Now he and the city attorney are telling HUD to go screw itself. Last month, days a ... More >>

Demon Possession or Just Good Thinking, the News' Segregation Editorial Was a Good Thing

Yesterday The Dallas Morning News carried a really tough, plain-talking editorial condemning City Hall policies that have produced deliberate racial segregation in Dallas. It was the kind of editorial that should be applauded and really doesn't deserve to be nitpicked. But when did that ever stop me ... More >>

Is the Morning News Just Not Going to Cover the HUD Segregation Story?

Hey, I think I have waited about long enough for The Dallas Morning News to weigh in on the racial segregation complaint lodged against Dallas by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development in early December. A month. Even allowing for Santa Claus and all, a month seems a bit long for the c ... More >>

The Source of Dallas' HUD Problem

It's not me. It's the two whistle-blowers suing the city.

Dallas States Its Case on Federal Racial Segregation Charges

We spoke last week about the way city staff is dealing behind the scenes with a recent accusation of racial segregation by the federal government. Maybe we should talk, too, about the way they're dealing with it in court. Late last month the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) w ... More >>

Dallas' City Staff Has Two Stories Why HUD Complaint Is No Big Deal, Both Stupid

The city of Dallas went to federal court earlier this week to stop a federal judge from expressing his opinion about a recent federal investigative report accusing Dallas of practicing racial segregation (the city's brief is below). Plaintiffs in a whistle-blower lawsuit will come back today with th ... More >>

Dallas and Its Housing Authority Credit Me With Uncovering Their Housing Scam. I Wish.

Not that you asked, but here's what it's like to be me. I'm walking my dogs, Penny and Dorothy, up and down alleys in East Dallas, and I've got my little cell phone ear-bug deal going so I can talk to people and keep my hands free for clean-ups. And this is what I hear in my ear: "... white scienti ... More >>

How City Hall Resegregated Dallas

The city was becoming less divided. Then corruption stepped in.

Dallas Doesn't Have To Be the City Portrayed in the HUD Segregation Complaint

As the full implications gradually become better known, the federal investigative report released late last month accusing Dallas of segregation will shine a bright national light on the city. One housing policy watcher is already calling the case "Westchester on steroids," a reference to the last ... More >>

How Dallas City Hall Put Us Back Behind a 25-Year-Old Eight-Ball on Segregation

A scathing federal report on housing policy in Dallas, unveiled this week after two City Council members demanded copies from the city attorney, has stirred local debate about federal desegregation law. But that debate begs two questions. See also: The Feds Say Dallas City Hall Has Promoted Racial ... More >>

Dallas City Hall Claims HUD Was in on Local Misdeeds. They Were Still Misdeeds.

Yesterday in its first official response to a federal investigation that found Dallas guilty of misappropriating funds and furthering segregation, Dallas City Hall said the feds were in on the whole thing themselves from the beginning: "It is important to note that HUD has given final approval of ... More >>

The Feds Say Dallas City Hall Has Promoted Racial Segregation in Housing Projects for Years

Elected officials and city staff in Dallas colluded over a decade to break federal housing and civil rights laws and promote and worsen racial segregation across the city, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has found, dealing City Hall a scathing, and potentially costly, blow ... More >>

How City Officials Keep Dallas Segregated, and the Two Developers Suing to Stop Them

Yesterday I wrote about Curtis Lockey and Craig MacKenzie, who were on my mind Tuesday night as I watched the final electoral votes for Obama click into place. Lockey and MacKenzie are real estate developers suing Dallas in federal court over what they claim is massive misuse of federal de-segregati ... More >>

Whistle-Blowers Claim City Misused Housing Money

Federal dough meant for affordable housing went to downtown.

Dallas City Hall gets whopped upside the head for its low-income housing policy.

City Expects $2 Mil In Federal Money Will Spur Development Around Four Light-Rail Stations

The Hatcher Station, one of four light-rail stations identified as by the city as a recipient of the feds' grant announced this morning​This morning we've received several press releases from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Transportation announcing ... More >>

How Affordable Is Downtown Dallas Housing? We Send Our Intern to Find Out.

Photos by Elliot Kaiser​Note from Jim: In the last week of April I asked the city to tell me how many guaranteed low-income housing units are available in downtown Dallas. There should be lots of them by now -a a couple thousand by some estimates -- because over the decades, the city has used hu ... More >>

City Hall Had Better Look Over Its Shoulder Because HUD Is Ready To Kick Some Fair-Housing Butt.

City Hall's Desire For A Fancy Downtown (Without Too Many Poor People) Costs Developers $30 Million

The City's Still Trying to Skate on Southern Skates, But HUD Will Have Last Word

​No need to recap the sad history of Southern Skates -- our October 19 item about the beleaguered roller rink on East Ledbetter Drive should bring latecomers up to speed, while old-timers know the song by heart. With that, second verse same as the first: The council's Economic Development Committe ... More >>

City, Hamiltons to Rework Atmos Complex Deal in Hopes of Jump-Starting Development

The Atmos Complex, which the Hamiltons are still intending to develop behind the Statler Hilton​Larry and Ted Hamilton took control of the four-building Atmos Complex, situated almost directly behind the Statler Hilton, a little more than a year ago, after Forest City got tired of paying penalties ... More >>

Everyone Get Out on the Floor! It's an All Skate as City, Yet Again, Ponders Rink's Fate.

Southern Skates​The first time we wrote about Southern Skates on E. Ledbetter Road was a month after Europe agreed go with the euro, a month before Saving Private Ryan opened and six months before the House impeached Bill Clinton. In other words, a million years ago. Back then, former Black Panthe ... More >>

Alphonso Jackson and His Wife Know a Lot of People, Sounds Like

It's probably a safe bet that former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, Alphonso Jackson, wishes he'd never given that April 2006 speech in Dallas, during which he said, "If you have a problem with the president," you won't get a contract with the U.S. Housing and Urban Development D ... More >>

Housing the Homeless, How Novel

Brian Harkin Larry James, president and CEO of Central Dallas Ministries In February 2005, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson stood at a homeless shelter in Los Angeles, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and announced that HUD would be doling out $1.4 billion in g ... More >>

No Room at the Inn (Well, Apartment Complex, But, You Know)

The Allure of Azure

Harwood builds a fancy condo tower without a nickel in handouts from City Hall

Union busting

Managers of a publicly subsidized apartment complex try to shut down tenant organizers

Gimme Shelter

With public housing under assault from Congress, the Justice Department, and HUD, Dallas tenants' advocate Alice Basey is part of a grassroots movement fighting to keep poor families from going homeless

Early thaw

Hope is renewed for four downtown housing projects

Bad landlord

HUD audit urges ouster of firm targeted in Observer story