The Dallas City Council this morning is talking over what’s known as a “market value analysis,” which is not as agonizingly dull as it sounds. The new mapping tool, accessible online, will play a key role in the city’s creation of long overdue housing and economic development policies.
There are lots of data in the analysis, much of it confirming what we’ve already known: poverty in Dallas is extremely concentrated, with large swaths of the city off-limits to lower-income residents, and opportunity segregated sharply along racial and economic divisions. But the analysis here, created by the Philadelphia-based Reinvestment Fund at the behest of City Manager T.C. Broadnax, goes into an unprecedented level of detail, evaluating neighborhoods on their median home sales price, their percentage of owner-occupied homes and public housing, and a number of other factors that can guide smart investment.
It’s a finely illustrated breakdown of which neighborhoods need help. How those neighborhoods will be helped remains to be sorted out, although this should help policy-makers with those decisions. There are public meetings to be held, studies to be finished, arguments to be had. A presentation delivered to City Council breaks out some of the information in the market value analysis, as well as some of the many challenges ahead. You can dive into the data yourself here.
