Meet the West Dallas girl who grew up to be housing director
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A West Dallas native retires this week after 19 years in the City of Dallas housing department.
Dallas Free Press reporters Jennie Trejo and Camilo Diaz Jr. interviewed Cynthia Rogers-Ellickson earlier this fall at the West Dallas Multipurpose Center — the place the City of Dallas recruited her to manage 19 years ago. She didn’t get the job, but only because when then-assistant city director Joey Zapata interviewed her, he deemed her overqualified.
“So he recommended me to the housing department,” Rogers-Ellickson told them.
When the City of Irving began accepting federal HUD funds in 1999, they hired Rogers-Ellickson to build their housing programs from scratch. What she designed, drawing on 30 years of research from other cities, is still in use.
After taking the City of Dallas job in 2006, Rogers-Ellickson progressed “through every part of the housing department that you could think of, and now I’m the director.”
Trejo asked Rogers-Ellickson several questions about how growing up in West Dallas shaped her. Her mother was Mexican and her father white, and she split her time between the Ledbetter and Los Altos neighborhoods, traversing the railroad tracks to walk to her grandparents’ house.
“She said she wouldn’t be the same if she had been raised in any other part of the city,” Trejo recalls. “She was very proud of how hard working the community is and said, ‘I don’t know a single person who isn’t hard working.’ “
Her last day as director of housing and community development is Nov. 30. After Rogers-Ellickson announced her retirement, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert reorganized the department and three others into a single department: the office of housing and community empowerment (more on this soon).
This new department is led by Rogers-Ellickson’s assistant director, Thor Erickson, with housing and homelessness helmed by another West Dallas native, James Armstrong.
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Keri Mitchell has spent 20+ years as a community journalist, including 15 years dedicated to community and civic journalism at Dallas’ Advocate magazines. She launched Dallas Free Press in early 2020 with the belief that all neighborhoods deserve reporting and storytelling that values their community and holds leaders accountable.
Mitchell says she is energized by “knowing our work is making an impact — listening to people, telling their stories with strong narratives paired with compelling data that leads to change. I also love spending time in our neighborhoods and with our neighbors, learning from them and working to determine how journalism can be part of the solution to their challenges.”
Mitchell is proud to be the winner of multiple awards during her journalism career including: Finalist in Magazine Feature Reporting (2018) and Finalist in Magazine Investigative Reporting (2017) from Hugh Aynesworth Excellence in Journalism, Best Feature Story (2011) from Texas Community Newspaper Association and Best Magazine Feature (2011) from Dallas Bar Association Philbin Awards.
Areas of Expertise:
local government, education, civic issues, investigative and enterprise reporting
Location Expertise:
Dallas, Texas
Official Title:
Founder + executive director
Email Address:
keri@dallasfreepress.com
