Tag: Dallas
Housing Forward sees more than 2,000 residents in homeless system at end of 2023
Data presented at this month’s Dallas Area Partnership to End and Prevent Homelessness meeting led to more questions from partnership members. Members seemed especially surprised that two-thirds of unhoused residents surveyed in 2022 self-reported that they were experiencing homelessness for the first time, according to Housing Forward’s Homeless Management Information System. The partnership is a […]
Meeting barriers: What Documenters have learned about Dallas public meetings
When we launched the Dallas Documenters program in Spring 2023, we intended to train and pay residents to attend public meetings like any other resident would and to break down access barriers. Documenter programs are nationwide, and we knew we would very quickly find issues accessing public meetings. Although the Freedom of Information Act and […]
Where has the 2017 Dallas bond money gone?
Take a look at our spreadsheets to find out what 2017 Dallas bond projects have and have not been completed over the last seven years.
Park South Family YMCA renovation delays blamed on city’s permitting process
The community is excited about the new amenities and upgrades to their Park South YMCA, but permit delays leave them without their Y until the end of 2024 or early 2025.
District 6 residents ask for improvements to fire station, Jaycee-Zaragoza Recreation Center during bond town hall
The latest: District 6 residents prioritized two projects for the 2024 bond: improvements to a community fire station and the Jaycee-Zaragoza Recreation Center. The city’s Office of Bond and Construction Management hosted a town hall meeting last month at the recreation center on the proposed 2024 Capital Bond Program so neighbors could provide input. Why […]
Activist Ernest McMillan retraces Dallas’ Civil Rights movement in his memoir, ‘Standing’
This excerpt from Ernest McMillan’s book, “Standing: One Man’s Odyssey through the Turbulent ’60s" is a glimpse into the work of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, in South Dallas.
Meet Lincoln High School’s new principal: Lance Williams
Lincoln High School welcomes a new principal, Lance Williams. Dallas Free Press sat down for a conversation with Williams to learn more about his vision for the 2023-24 school year.
Demand for protesting property values goes up as families fight to stay in their homes
Property tax consultant Toby Toler worked with more than 100 people over DCAD’s four-week protest period in April and May. He feels like the majority of the people he helped in Southern Dallas were able to successfully challenge their property values and lower their taxes.
Back-to-school events with school supply giveaways near you
Here is a list of Back to School events happening in your community that will have backpack and school supplies giveaways, health and family resources and other services for students.
Dallas ISD parents unclear on why clear backpacks are needed for pre-K and elementary students
Dallas ISD is requiring all students, including preschoolers as young as 3-year-olds, to carry a clear backpack as part of the district’s “ongoing effort to ensure safer schools.”
A new public safety project in Mill City may be a solution to the city’s 311 problem
A task force on safe communities is spending $150,000 to help clean up nearly 600 vacant lots in Mill City, with the goal of cutting crime along with the grass in the neighborhood.
Goal of MLK Food Park, now in Fair Park, is ‘welcoming’ South Dallas residents and people of color
Phase 4 of the month-long food park aimed to create a community environment for South Dallas residents and businesses of color.
Diane Ragsdale: A lifetime of community organizing in South Dallas
The Hon. Diane Ragsdale, who will turn 70 this year, has spent her entire life in South Dallas. Her story has been shaped by the neighborhood and, likewise, she has shaped her neighborhood in significant ways. She’s still fighting some of the same issues that led her to run for Council, and as a registered nurse, she approaches the systems as she would her patients — a belief in preventative medicine that will treat the underlying causes, not just the symptoms.
Cornerstone Baptist’s profitable nonprofit grocery store ‘creates dignity’ in South Dallas
Southpoint is proving to be a miracle in this sparsely populated South Dallas neighborhood between Al Lipscomb and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards. Access to healthy, affordable food has been among the top concerns for residents here.
Singleton United/Unidos: The new neighborhood on the block
Janie Cisneros credits her neighborhood-based activism to serendipity. She is the leader of Singleton United/Unidos, a newly established neighborhood association in West Dallas, fighting for clean air and the removal of the long-standing roofing shingles plant, GAF, from her residential neighborhood.
Is the City of Dallas going to save the Save-U-More grocery store in southern Dallas?
Highland Hills fresh foods grocery store, Save-U-More, struggles to stay open and widen the food desert gaps happening in South Dallas.
South Dallas nonprofit Miles of Freedom features and funds incarcerated artists through ‘Arts of Oppression’ exhibit
Art comes in many forms and the ‘Arts of Oppression’ exhibit conveys that art is not limited to paintings or drawings, but extends to things like music, dancing and many other things which can be accessed if incarcerated individuals have access to resources.
Now open: West Dallas STEM school
This year, though seventh- and eighth-graders are at L.G. Pinkston High School's campus, they’re in a separate school with a unique learning approach — the new West Dallas STEM school.
A parking lot symbolizes the State Fair of Texas’ racist history
Historians and journalists have documented — and today’s staffers recognize — the State Fair of Texas’ racist history. In the early 1900s the fair hosted one “Colored People Day” per year. It was discontinued in 1910. On a Wednesday in fall 1923, Ku Klux Klan Day drew some 160,000 Klansmen to the fairgrounds for the initiation of the “largest class in the history of Klandom,” according to the flier, which included an application for membership on the back. Negro Achievement Day launched in 1936. Each year on Oct. 14, Black fairgoers were admitted inside the gates.
Local newsrooms, universities and nonprofits join forces to focus on affordable housing in Dallas
The key partners on the project say affordable housing is a topic none of them has been able to consistently address on their own — but it’s a vital, systemic issue demanding greater response.
The State Fair of Texas is trying to remedy past injustices to South Dallas via its urban farm
It’s a tragic irony that the largest agriculture promoter in the state, the State Fair of Texas, is surrounded by a food desert, the neighborhood of South Dallas.
Changes are coming to Hattie Rankin Moore Park in Los Altos. The City wants West Dallas’ input.
After listening to residents in early 2020, the City of Dallas planned to add colorful murals, artificial turf, family grills, playground equipment and more athletic fields to the park in the Los Altos neighborhood, located just south of Anita Martinez Recreation Center and Lorenzo de Zavala Elementary School.
A South Dallas artist residency aims to ‘capture the now before the future’
John Spriggins, manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center, launched the Juanita J. Craft House Artist in Residency to provide artists with studio space to create work that “capture[s] the immediacy of the moment where historical neighborhoods are rapidly changing due to socio-economic shifts."
Los Gallos: A gym from West Dallas where boxing teaches life lessons
The Los Gallos Boxing Club wants to teach their students that with discipline and hard work, any obstacle that life brings can be overcome.
New Dallas Media Collaborative seeks its first project manager
The Dallas Media Collaborative is searching for a part-time Project Manager to coordinate and lead its efforts toward a connected, city-wide solutions journalism network.
Mercy Street responds to winter storm suffering in West Dallas
In the middle of February was a horrendous week blanketed in white snow and suffering. West Dallas residents lost power, water and hope.
Two fires char Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Museum in South Dallas
A couple doors down from the corner of Driskell and Wendelkin streets in South Dallas is what used to be a beautiful historic landmark, the Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Museum, now completely damaged from two intentionally set fires.
Nearly five high schools worth of Dallas ISD students are MIA
Dallas ISD high school, middle school, and elementary students have missed days of school. Authorities presented a plan to address this.
Does the fate of West Dallas rest on a 400-foot tower next to La Bajada?
On Thursday, the City Plan Commission will consider West Dallas Investments’ request to allow a 400-foot tower on the north side of Singleton, adjacent to La Bajada, with the hope of attracting a Fortune 500 company like Amazon, Google, AT&T or Toyota.
Not My Son founder Tramonica Brown transforms Dallas
Officers ordered protesters to get on the ground and began throwing smoke bombs and tear gas that blended their flashing red and blue lights into purple fumes. The air was filled with smoke screens and screams. More than 600 protesters, lying face down on the concrete, had their hands zip-tied behind their backs. A few even jumped over the side of the bridge in an attempt to get away from the arresting officers and flying projectiles. But not Tramonica Brown.
3 free WiFi options for Dallas ISD families
Dallas ISD officials have a three-phase plan to give families free WiFi that could minimize the city’s digital divide.
