whose neglect might be the most historic thing about it at this late date<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI see a lot of two-, three-story houses sitting over those old homes, and I don\u2019t support that,\u201d Johnson told me Tuesday. \u201cWe should be able to preserve these neighborhoods. Some developers don\u2019t like that approach. In fact, I don\u2019t even talk to developers unless I have someone from the neighborhood at the table with me. \u00a0I am not going to support pushing out residents with new builds and high prices. I believe we should be pro-neighborhood and pro-business at the same time. You can do both.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Mixon figures that sooner or later, this neighborhood will tilt toward the new. In 10 years, she guessed, it won\u2019t look the same \u2013 the houses, the people. She said one of the newcomers came from California.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time a house is finished, someone moves in, like they\u2019re just waiting for it,\u201d she said. \u201cThey never sit empty.\u201d Except, maybe, for a couple of new builds on Faulk, which longtime residents say are being rented out as Airbnbs, bringing with them visitors who make a lot of noise for a few days before moving on.<\/p>\n
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A tossed-out recliner in an overgrown lot along Avenue B, just off South Corinth Road.<\/p>\n
Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n
As Mixon and I spoke, a couple of loose dogs ran up and started barking, loud enough that we couldn\u2019t hear each other. She said she didn\u2019t think they\u2019d bite.<\/p>\n
A man who lives on Crete, dressed in Sherwin-Williams painters\u2019 clothes stained after a day\u2019s work, came out to curse and chase off the dogs. He introduced himself as 70-year-old Mario Lopez, and said he, too, gets about 10 calls a day from developers, builders and investors trying to buy his house and the rent house he owns across the narrow street.<\/p>\n
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\u201cTen calls a day,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he\u2019s lived here for 40 years, long enough to remember when this was an undesirable neighborhood. \u201cIt was pretty bad,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s OK now. But these new houses \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez said he saw this coming a decade ago, back when he was painting the new houses that began transforming swaths of Oak Cliff and West Dallas that are no longer recognizable to longtime residents who pushed for area plans seemingly written in invisible ink. He pointed over his fence, toward Sicily, where it dead-ends into a thicket of trees separating it from Corinth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The very\u00a0old and the brand-new sit side-by-side along Avenue B.<\/p>\n
Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are two empty lots there,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if that guy sells, I may have to. Because I won\u2019t be able to have something like that right next to me. The taxes alone! But we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
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We parted ways when Lopez\u2019s young grandson came out to play. A few steps toward Sicily, I thought I\u2019d been shot in the back of the leg. That dog came out of nowhere; so, too, the steady stream of expletives that caused Lopez\u2019s wife to rush out with a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol filled with eucalyptus leaves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are fighting against these wild dogs, stray animals,\u201d Johnson said Tuesday morning. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking to animal services, and we have a meeting about that soon. Streets, strays \u2013 a lot of things that influence public safety. The council is on recess. But I\u2019m still working for these neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just be careful, I told him. Because these streets bite back.<\/p>\n
Have thoughts about this? Send a letter to the editor using our letters form<\/a> or email letters@dallasnews.com. Letters should be no more than 200 words and include the first and last name of the writer and city of residence. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday started in a northwest Dallas park talking to a trail walker about a broken water fountain. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,88000,93056,88945],"class_list":["post-382211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-dallas-city-council","tag-tp-homes","tag-tp-oak-cliff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}