The city of Dallas is about to throw away $80 million.
Remember Matt Goodman, who left us? Over at his current gig, The Lab Report, Matt has written about the lawyer Mark Melton and the Eviction Advocacy Center, which Melton founded. An independent study found that every tenant the EAC serves saves the city $8,000 on healthcare, criminal justice, and shelter expenses. The EAC is on track to serve 10,000 tenants by year’s end, meaning it will save Dallas about $80 million. The city was supposed to pay the EAC about $1 million to do this work, which seems like a good investment. Not only does City Manager Kimberly Tolbert’s proposed budget cut out EAC funding, but it sure looks like the city has already failed to pay money it owes the group. Read more about this embarrassment here. And you can see here which councilmembers oppose funding the EAC.