Perhaps you’ve been reading about the city of Dallas’ dispute with HMK, the company run by the Khraish family that owns a few hundred rental homes in fast-gentrifying West Dallas.

Mayor Mike Rawlings and Morning News columnist Robert Wilonsky assure us that there’s no conspiracy against the Khraishes: that this is just about getting lousy houses up to code. But then the Observer’s Jim Schutze published an audio recording in which Rawlings seemed far less interested in getting code violations fixed than in getting the Khraises to sell.

What do you think is going on?