Dallas City Council Meeting - October 26, 2016 - Item 48 - Ordinance to Deal with Source of Income Discrimination in Residential Property Rental

Wednesday was actually a pretty exciting day for Dallas! The Dallas City Council passed an ordinance to deal with source of income discrimination. They considered, “two alternative ordinances amending Chapter 20A, ‘Fair Housing,’ of the Dallas City Code to either (1) prohibit discrimination in housing on the basis of source of income; or (2) prohibit discrimination in housing on the basis of source of income, except as prohibited by state law.” Check Item 48 here to read the lengthier pertinent texts, http://dallascityhall.com/government/Council%20Meeting%20Documents/agenda_101416.pdf.

Our blog post from last year, Not So Fast - The Final Part of Our Series on Source of Income Discrimination, explains the background to this discussion. Though that post contains enough information to understand what City Council discussed and decided, you may want to go back to Rents Rise, the first part of this series, and start there for fuller context.

The meeting featured robust and quite interesting discussion, and it is worth watching the whole thing. Go to: http://dallastx.swagit.com/play/10262016-679/#11 and then http://dallastx.swagit.com/play/10262016-679/#12. I won’t keep you in suspense, though; Option 1 was rejected 9-6, and Option 2 was passed 9-6.

Dallas City Council Member, Mark Clayton

(Courtesy of the City of Dallas)

Robert Wilonsky wrote a great piece on this in the Dallas Morning News, Dallas council rejects effort to require landlords to accept housing vouchers . I highly recommend reading it. Here is a key quote: “[Mark] Clayton, who has become the council's leading anti-poverty advocate, said most are being rejected for one simple reason: the color of their skin. ‘And he hit the nail on the head,’ council member Philip Kingston said after the vote. ‘To say it's not about skin color is to ignore the data. Over 90 percent of voucher holders are minorities, and there are 1,100 of them trying to get housing, trying to put their kids in school, who need to know where they're going to sleep at night. And they can't get housing in Dallas.’" I don’t know if he then dropped the mic, but it sure sounds like it…