Dallas Knows More About Evictions Than Ever Before, Just in Time for a New Surge
CLICK HERE TO VIEW FULL ARTICLE
Here is an excerpt:
Before the pandemic, the city of Dallas knew very little about how many evictions were being filed. We now have the data. So what will Dallas do with what it has learned?
During the first month of 2022, Dallas landlords filed 2,056 evictions against tenants within the city limits. While these numbers are about half of what was filed during the same period in 2020, this is still the highest point in the pandemic. For much of January, the only American city where evictions were filed more frequently than Dallas was Houston, where about a million more people live.
City officials and housing advocates are watching this matter closely. There is concern that Dallasites fighting housing insecurity are more vulnerable than they’ve ever been during the pandemic, right as a patchwork of federal, state, and local protections begins to fray.
The nonprofit Child Poverty Action Lab began tracking eviction data on behalf of Dallas County during the pandemic. The data can be segmented by city and county, but it can also explore more granular trends, like by ZIP codes. Before it launched its Eviction Filing Dashboard, this data didn’t exist, and certainly wasn’t presented in a dashboard that allows you to see trends over time.
It is a gift: the city now has eviction data going back to 2017, allowing policymakers to see the problem before and during the pandemic. The hope is that it will inform new protections for this population after pandemic-related protections end.
View more
Yes, Dallas violent crime dropped in 2022, but the number of arrests is even more
CPAL analysis shows Dallas is getting safer while the number of arrests continues to fall.
- Reducing those arrests that do not make us safer is important: 80%+ of arrests are for nonviolent offenses and 75% of the jail population is pretrial, impacting thousands of children and families.
- A recent CPAL study showed Dallas County children are more likely than kids in any other Texas county to have parents in prison. At least 80,000 of them had a parent behind bars, according to the report.
Dallas Knows More About Evictions Than Ever Before, Just in Time for a New Surge
CPAL’s new eviction filing dashboard is helping Dallas grasp the scale of the housing insecurity problem tenants face.
- CPAL’s dashboard allows a user to segment eviction filing data by city and county, but it can also explore more granular trends, like by ZIP codes, council districts, and school boundaries.
- In January 2022, Dallas landlords filed 2,056 evictions against tenants within the city limits. While these numbers are about half of what was filed in January 2020, this is still the highest point in the pandemic.
Housing Remediation as an Effective Intervention for Pediatric Asthma
This issue-brief describes the impacts of asthma in Dallas and how home repair can better asthma outcomes, increase economic mobility, and improve the quality of life for children
- Asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism and is costly. In 2023, Dallas County children experienced 1,036 asthma inpatient hospital visits. The combined costs of these visits were ~$10.3M, for an average cost of $9,966 per visit.
- The Green and Healthy Homes Initiative estimates that 40% of all asthma episodes are caused by preventable home-based asthma allergens, like dust, pests, and mold.