Groundbreaking for affordable Dallas workforce housing

A big international developer joined forces with Dallas non-profit groups to break ground Monday on an affordable workforce housing project.

‘Mill City 50’ is named for the number of units and the location in the South Dallas Mill City neighborhood.

To build it, ‘Good Urban Development,’ is a joint venture of non-profit Urban Specialists and developer Matthews-Southwest.

The project helps tackle an estimated need for 33,000 affordable Dallas housing units for low and middle-income workers in a city where it is increasingly expensive to live.

Community leaders at the groundbreaking said the inclusion of developer Jack Matthews and his firm is a major boost for affordable housing.

Matthews-Southwest built the Dallas Omni Convention Center Hotel and other landmarks. The firm was awarded the contract to build a new Dallas Convention Center in September.

“This is what happens when you get a community partner,” Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price said.

The plan is for quality homes priced low enough that tax values do not soar for people already living in the neighborhood.

Matthews said he is involved with this instead of other things he could be doing because this really matters.

“This matters to the existing neighborhood. It matters to the people who are going to move in here. It matters to the city long term. If we can demonstrate you can come into an area and lift it up without hurting the existing people in the community, if you can do that, the world is a better place. That’s what we’re trying to do here. It’s a big lift,” Matthews said.

It’s a big lift because vacant lots in the neighborhood need upgraded streets, sidewalks, water and sewer lines that other Dallas neighborhoods received many years ago.

“It indicates really, a legacy of racism. The absence of equity,” former Dallas City Council Member Diane Ragsdale said.

She now runs a non-profit Innercity Community Development Corporation which has worked for many years in the same South Dallas area to provide affordable housing, facing the same challenges with infrastructure and financing.

“We recognize we could not do it all by ourselves. We need partnerships to help out because there has been so much neglect over the years,” she said.

Now Ragsdale is also working with the Dallas Housing Coalition, another group fighting for much more funding from a 2024 Dallas public improvement bond referendum to help accomplish similar projects for such an enormous shortage of workforce housing.

“We need to do what we can to ensure that we provide affordable housing because the absence of that is what leads to homelessness,” Ragsdale said.

The architect behind renderings for the new Mill City 50 homes is one of three African-American women leading this project.

The homes will be priced from $209,000 to $271,000 in a city where the September 2023 median home price was $480,000, according to the website Realtor.com.

Former gang member and prison inmate Antong Lucky is now President of Urban Specialists. He grew up in Mill City.

“The whole idea is to bring families back to this community,” he said. “When you bring people back, they will patronize businesses and will create the thriving community that this once was.”

What had been a run-down nuisance store adjacent to the new housing development has been purchased by the group to become a coffee house and gathering spot for the residents.

“It instills that pride back into the community,” Lucky said.

The City of Dallas contributed $3 million to help pay for the streets and utilities.  Dallas County invested $2.5 million which will help reduce the cost of homes.

Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said Inwood Bank is also a partner to help former renters become homeowners with a reputable lender.

“So these folks will not only own their own home but they won’t be ripped off every month in the process,” Lewis Jenkins said.

The first 8 new homes should be ready in early 2024.