In this section, we take a deep dive into three distinct Dallas neighborhoods facing unique and significant displacement pressures in order to better understand the socioeconomic and housing market conditions that make these neighborhoods particularly susceptible to displacement and to help residents, policymakers, and advocates match specific policies and strategies to the demonstrated needs of each neighborhood. These neighborhoods are: West Dallas, South Dallas and Vickery Meadow.
These three neighborhoods were selected by our Project Team and Advisory Committee through a multistep, collaborative process, with community feedback collected at our citywide case study selection workshop in May 2023. Our goal in selecting these three focus areas was to make sure we captured the diversity of Dallas’ vulnerable neighborhoods from a socioeconomic, housing market, and geographic perspective. To accomplish this, we led our Advisory Committee through a series of exercises examining the vulnerability, demographics, and housing market types and conditions of over 30 Dallas neighborhoods. Through multiple rounds of voting and the incorporation of community-wide feedback, we arrived at our final three focus areas.
Working with our engagement consultants, CoSpero Consulting, and outreach partners, Somos Tejas and Offord & Associates, we then set out to conduct extensive community outreach and engagement in each of our three focus areas, including:
Three neighborhood focus groups with key community stakeholders, including elected officials, neighborhood leaders, and nonprofit organizations;
Three community listening sessions and one-on-one interviews with impacted residents; and
Door-to-door outreach to 1,000+ households and the collection of over 400 survey responses.
We did all of this to ensure that our overall project direction, but especially our policy recommendations, would be responsive to actual community concerns and needs. We strongly believe that vulnerable community voices should be centered and uplifted in all development decisions impacting their neighborhoods, including research and policy initiatives like this Toolkit. Additionally, it was important to us to collect considerable qualitative as well as quantitative data to inform our case studies and ensure that we were telling true and authentic stories of neighborhood history and change.
