The plan seemed reasonable. Dallas would use bond and COVID relief funds to buy or renovate a vacant hospital and four aging motels into transitional and permanent supportive housing for homeless individuals and families. The five projects would provide 680 new beds for these vulnerable Dallasites.
About five years later, only two properties are complete: one that the city bought and remodeled and another it helped a nonprofit purchase and renovate. Another hotel that the city acquired was ready to start construction but stalled last year because of unexpected changes in federal funding.
The final two are simply losses. The 12-acre hospital site, located at 2929 S. Hampton Road in Oak Cliff and purchased in 2022, is being sold. Relentless community opposition and tone-deaf city leadership at the time doomed the project from the start.
The last property, a derelict extended-stay hotel on Independence Drive, backs up to Interstate 20 and sits between other declining motels. The city evicted about three dozen people who were living in it at the time of purchase, forcing them to scramble for other cheap housing. The deteriorating hotel is in a tough commercial area with an abundance of underperforming retail strips and should probably be demolished.
Opinion
The city has tried — twice — to interest developers in the hotel, but never received a realistic, financially viable proposal. On Wednesday, the City Council formally closed the final round of solicitations. The vote allows the city to begin reconsidering plans for the site.
Dallas spent about $11.5 million to acquire these two properties, and another $1.9 million on rehabilitating and furnishing the hotel’s community rooms.
It’s obvious now that the city should not have bought the two properties, but we can’t fault the goal. Dallas still needs more housing for its homeless residents. And former hotels can be transformed into snug but comfortable apartments for individuals and families, as the Catholic Housing Initiative and Family Gateway have shown.
But the failed projects confirm that Dallas should stay out of the real estate business. When it comes to adding new homeless service facilities, let respected, experienced nonprofits identify properties and develop plans, with the city smoothing bureaucratic hurdles. Politicians could work with community groups and local residents to promote collaboration with, rather than rejection of, homeless facilities in stable neighborhoods.
If nothing else, avoiding future real estate transactions would give council members one less thing to bicker about. The council’s most recent discussion about the Independence Drive hotel was pointless. It didn’t move the city any closer to housing homeless residents.
The only encouraging outcome in this whole saga is that an experienced local developer has apparently purchased the Oak Cliff hospital property. The city declined to confirm the buyer or the final sales price, but taxpayers should not have to foot the bill to maintain and secure the acreage much longer. That’s more of a draw than a win, but we’ll take it.
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