Recycling and garbage cans sit along a street in East Dallas.
Elías Valverde II/Staff Photographer
Dallasites across the city share many of the same everyday concerns, according to the past six years of reports to Dallas’ 311 service.
Animal cruelty, abandoned vehicles, issues with trash and recycling, and many different sorts of code violations show up frequently in the 2.6 million requests to the service filed across the city’s 14 City Council districts since October 2020, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis.
Every year, the service receives more than 400,000 requests. The two council districts making the most requests – District 4 and District 7, both south of Interstate 30 – average about 50 requests per 100 people living there, measured by 2024 district population data from the city’s Office of Economic Development. District 4 was the only Dallas City Council district to make more than 10% of all 311 requests since October 2020, according to The News’ analysis.
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Requests tend to peak in the summer, with May through August showing the highest numbers across the past six years. June has had the most requests in that time, with more than 250,000 in total.
When someone files a request with 311 – via a phone call, a website, an app – city employees route that request to an appropriate department to investigate. There might be multiple requests about the same issue, such as an apartment complex not up to code with a stray dog.
For 10 of the 14 districts, the No. 1 city department getting those requests has been Code Compliance. District 4, which made the most 311 requests overall, also had the most requests to a single city department, with 95,000 to Code Compliance since October 2020. No. 2 in District 4 was 48,000 requests to Sanitation – which would have been the most requests to any city department in five other council districts.
But beginning downtown and continuing almost directly north, districts 11, 12, 13, and 14 are exceptions.
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District 14, which has its southern edge downtown and wraps around the south and east edges of Highland Park, sent more requests to Transportation & Public Works – departments which merged in 2024 – than to any other department: almost 71,000.
The same is true of District 11, which covers portions of North Dallas and Far North Dallas. Reports from that district to Transportation & Public Works totaled almost 28,000.
In District 12, Dallas’ northernmost council district, the city department getting the most 311 requests is Sanitation, with almost 30,000.
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District 13, south of Interstate 635 to the western edges of University Park and Highland Park, also sent more requests to Sanitation than to any other department: about 46,000.
Another difference: Districts north of Interstate 30 – six of the eight – were the only ones in Dallas to include encampments of houseless people in their top 10 issues, according to The News’ analysis.