Dallas News runs major story on CityWalk@Akard

Thanks to Roy Appleton from The Dallas Morning News for covering our recent event at our Downtown building. Here is the full story:

Low-income housing set to open by spring in downtown Dallas
http://www.nbc5i.com/news/17313522/detail.html

03:19 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 26, 2008
By ROY APPLETON / The Dallas Morning News
rappleton@dallasnews.com

With all its funding now in place, a project to bring low-income housing to downtown Dallas is moving toward occupancy by next spring, leaders of the effort said today.

“It’s good for us to know that it’s really going to get built,” John Greenan, executive director of the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation, told an audience gathered in the cavernous, bare-walled ground-floor space of what will become City Walk at Akard.

There, at 511 N. Akard St., workers are transforming a 15-story office building, vacant since the early 1990s, into offices, retail space and 205 residences, 50 of which will be reserved for the formerly homeless.

“This is about more than housing. This is about people, many of whom are on our streets today,” said Larry James, chief executive of Central Dallas Ministries, a project sponsor.

In time, his organization and the central Dallas development corporation will move their offices to the building. Project developers are talking with a restaurant and book store about the ground floor retail space.

But the focus of the project is housing. Four of five 15th-floor penthouses have been sold. The remaining 200 units, most of them one-bedroom efficiencies, will be rented to applicants who meet income guidelines — generally less than about $27,000 a year for one person.

“This is about high quality, affordable housing for people who want to work downtown,” Mr. James told the crowd of about 100 people.

Two years in the works, the $35 million project will draw on public and private dollars in reviving a structure built in 1958 by the Baptist church’s annuity investment board.

Private investors have put in about $15 million through the purchase of government tax credits. Private donors have contributed more than $6 million. The city is providing $2.25 million from federal community development block grants and the bond issue that built the city’s new homeless shelter. Private loans will make up the rest.

The Rees-Jones Foundation, created by Dallas oil billionaire Trevor Rees-Jones and his wife Jan, provided $5 million of the private donations. Without that support, “this deal would have failed,” Mr. James said this morning. “It enabled us to work with banks and take on debt.”

The community development corporation will manage and in time own the project with help from Central Dallas Ministries.

Mayor Tom Leppert praised the partners and supporters for “bringing together a vacant building and need for permanent affordable housing” downtown. “It’s amazing what perseverance and commitment can achieve,” he said.

Opponents have said they fear the project will increase crime and loitering, as well as be dangerous to children at a nearby private school.

One of those critics, downtown housing developer Larry Hamilton, said Monday that his concerns have eased, in part because the development corporation and ministries group will office at the site.

“I think they are going to be on top of their game,” he said. “Pulling people off the streets is laudable. I hope it works.”

NBC5i covers CDM's event in Downtown Dallas

Thanks to KXAS/nbc5i for covering our event with their story, Mixed-Use Development Under Construction In Downtown Dallas, here:

http://www.nbc5i.com/news/17313522/detail.html

The event was also broadcast on television, and we hope to secure a copy of that for the blog soon.

DFW HOME Page blogs on CDM

Thanks to DFW HOME Page for covering our recent event:

http://dfwhomepage.blogspot.com/2008/08/affordable-housing-coming-to-town.html

DBJ Article on CDM: Rees-Jones Foundation gives $5M to Dallas homeless project - Dallas Business Journal:

Thank you to Brooke Cowlishaw from the Dallas Business Journal for covering the construction launch of our http://www.citywalkatakard.com project:

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2008/08/25/daily23.html

Rees-Jones Foundation gives $5M to Dallas homeless project

The Rees-Jones Foundation awarded a $5 million grant Tuesday to kick-start citywalk@akard, a homeless and transitional housing project being built in downtown Dallas.

Citywalk@akard is a project of Central Dallas Ministries and the Central Dallas Community Development Corp., which celebrated the grant and the commencement of construction during an event Tuesday at 511 N. Akard St., the location of the project.

The development will house 9,500 square feet of ground-floor retail, 18,600 square feet of office space spread over two floors, 50 apartments reserved for formerly homeless people and 150 units for those making less than $27,000 per year. The project also will have five condos, of which four have been sold.

Central Dallas Community Development Corp. Executive Director John Greenan said the $5 million contribution came at a critical time, when the project needed a “serious injection of capital” to survive.

The money complements nearly $18 million in public funding for the development.

T. Hardie, president of the Rees-Jones Foundation, said the organization was eager to “invest in the leadership that is shown by these organizations.”

The Rees-Jones Foundation is a Dallas-based private foundation founded by Jan and Trevor Rees-Jones.

Occupancy is expected in spring 2009.

Join our celebration tomorrow!

Join our celebration!

Open House & Media Advisory

Tuesday, August 26th
11:00 a.m.

http://www.citywalkatakard.com/

511 N. Akard
Dallas, TX 75201

Please join Mayor Tom Leppert, Central Dallas Ministries and Central Dallas
Community Development Corporation as we kick-off the construction phase of our citywalk@akard development in Downtown Dallas.

Details of the project are available here:

http://www.citywalkatakard.com/

Free valet parking is provided. For directions, click here.

For questions, please call Jeremy Gregg at 214-823-8710 x 127.

CDM's Destination Home program covered by Dallas Morning News

Thanks to The Dallas Morning News and reporter Kim Horner for the following story about Destination Home, our housing program for the chronically homeless:

Dallas charity's housing-first program for homeless gets city officials' attention

For Darrell Irlanda, a charity's offer of an apartment came just in time.

"I was fixing to end it," he said, tears running down his face as he described his despair after a year living on the streets.

Mr. Irlanda, a 56-year-old Vietnam veteran, is one of 50 formerly homeless people living in apartments through a project called Destination Home. It's offered by Central Dallas Ministries, a nonprofit agency whose services include low-income housing, food pantries and medical clinics.

The approach of Destination Home and efforts like it sounds almost radical: Combat chronic homelessness by giving people homes.

That philosophy – dubbed permanent supportive housing – is being viewed as an alternative to a system that cycles homeless people through shelters, rehab, mental-health facilities and jails.

"The vast majority, 85 percent, of homeless people really just need their own place," said Larry James, president and chief executive officer of Central Dallas Ministries.

Destination Home participants are disabled. Many receive government checks that are too small to pay the rent. They pay 30 percent of their income in rent and must sign a lease and agree to work with a caseworker twice a month. They can stay as long as needed.

Central Dallas Ministries received $900,000 for the project from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The agency expects to receive additional federal funding for 55 more apartments.

The program is one that Dallas city officials want to duplicate.

Mike Rawlings, Dallas' homeless czar, said programs like Destination Home are the solution to ending homelessness – and overcrowding at the city's new shelter, The Bridge. Mr. Rawlings is scheduled to present a plan for opening more homes at a city committee meeting today.

Dallas has about 800 units of the type of housing needed, Mr. Rawlings said, but it needs at least 700 more. Additional projects are in the works, but officials face obstacles, including lack of funding and potential opposition from neighbors.

Mr. Rawlings said people in all parts of the city must be willing to accept housing for the formerly homeless, who he said face unfair, negative stereotypes.

"Each neighborhood is going to say, 'Wait a minute, I don't want a project in my back yard. I don't want a homeless person in my apartment complex,' " Mr. Rawlings said. "But we haven't had any issues and there are already 800-plus [formerly homeless people] out there."

Central Dallas Ministries faced protests from neighbors of a downtown building it is remodeling to become housing for formerly homeless people. The agency said it has not received complaints about Destination Home, where participants live alongside other residents in two large apartment complexes. But the stigma of homelessness is such that Mr. James asked that the names of those complexes not be printed.

The housing-first concept follows a national trend. Studies have shown that it costs less to provide the housing than to care for people through shelters, emergency rooms, jails and other services for those on the streets. A recent HUD report found that chronic homelessness has dropped an average of 15 percent nationwide each year since 2005, and federal officials cite permanent supportive housing programs as a major factor.

The Destination Home residents, mostly men, have lived in their cars, on the streets or in shelters, including Dallas' new center, The Bridge. A handful of them left the program, unable to handle living in an apartment after being on the streets, officials said.

Willie Flanders, who moved into his apartment two weeks ago, sat on a new couch delivered Tuesday, looking bewildered at his new surroundings. The 47-year-old veteran, who is battling cancer, previously lived in his car and at the Salvation Army shelter.

"This has got to be a miracle, to take someone who's homeless and give him a bed and a kitchen," Mr. Flanders said. "There's a fireplace. Come on, now. Me, with a fireplace? And a bathroom this huge, and no waiting in line."

Shanele Conyers, one of the few women in the program, said she was so used to sleeping on other people's couches that having her own bed feels strange. But the 25-year-old, a veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said she hopes to stay after being homeless for more than four years.

"I'm really loving it. This is my first apartment ever," she said. "Hopefully, this will be my last stop."

Read the story at The Dallas Morning News' site here:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081808dnmethomesforhomeless.421bda9.html

DMN Columnist James Ragland discusses poverty, Central Dallas Ministries

Thanks to columnist James Ragland of The Dallas Morning News for including Larry James, President & CEO of Central Dallas Ministries, in the story below:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/jragland/stories/DN-ragland_13met.ART.State.Edition1.4dacf76.html

There's an endless supply of poverty.

Even in a nation as prosperous as ours.

Which means that if I ever get around to inking Poor Like Me – the unwritten story of a poor farm boy from East Texas who grew up to be a poor journalist in North Texas – a vast, if restless, audience awaits.

But timing is everything.

And right now, concentrated poverty is resurfacing in the U.S., reversing the fortunes of many cities and neighborhoods that saw steep declines a decade ago, according to a disturbing study released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institute.

In the first half of this decade, the study found, the number of low-wage workers and families living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods "rose by a striking 41 percent."

The report caught my eye because, a scant five years ago, another Brookings-commissioned study gave me faint hope that we were beginning to turn the corner on poverty.

That 2003 study – based on 1999 federal income tax filings – was optimistically titled: "Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems: the Dramatic Decline of Concentrated Poverty in the 1990s."

It found that the number of folks living in high-poverty neighborhoods fell 24 percent nationwide during the '90s, reversing a steep rise in urban poverty from 1970 to 1990. A high-poverty neighborhood is defined as one in which at least 40 percent of the population qualifies for the federal earned income tax credit, or EITC. For a married couple with two kids, the poverty threshold was $19,806 in 2005. The EITC income limit for a family of four was $37,263.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area held its own in that study, with the number of people living in very poor neighborhoods dropping by 45 percent in the '90s.

But the new study – based on 2005 statistics – paints a dramatically different picture. The title alone points up how much ground we've lost in recent years: "Reversal of Fortune: A New Look at Concentrated Poverty in the 2000s."

So what gives?

"Overall, it's all about the economy," said Alan Berube, a Brookings fellow and co-author of the new study. "For those who thought we may have solved the problem of concentrated poverty, the message is, we haven't done that."

That observation hardly surprises those on the front lines of our nation's ill-fated war against poverty.

"Not at all," said Larry James, president and CEO of the faith-based Central Dallas Ministries, which provides a network of hunger relief, health care, housing, legal service, employment training and educational programs. "They're eating us alive in the neighborhoods right now."

The situation in North Texas isn't as bleak as it is in sections of the Midwest and Northeast, where older, industrial cities saw double-digit spikes in concentrated poverty.

Of the 58 large metro areas studied, 34 saw increased rates of concentrated poverty between 1999 and 2005, and 24 showed a decline.

As the study points out, many factors influence how poverty concentrates in a particular area over time, "including changing population and economic dynamics."

The Dallas-Fort Worth area saw a 2.3 percent increase in concentrated poverty.

"In Dallas, we've got about 95 percent of the kids in [public] schools on free or reduced lunch programs," Mr. James said. "It's clear to me that the number of people in economic distress is increasing rapidly."

There are no panaceas. But are there any solutions?

"Robust economic growth, together with smart policies that help reduce economic segregation, remain critical for helping low-income people and places," Mr. Berube said.

Mr. James put it more bluntly. "We've got to rise above the partisan political battles and come to grips with quality-of-life issues that affect us all."

If not, the title on the next study won't be encouraging, either. It may get worse.

Road to Emmaus interviews CDM's Jeremy Gregg

Thanks to Roger Kegg and Robin Yeldell of Road to Emmaus for podcasting their interview with CDM's Director of Development, Jeremy Gregg, here:

http://rd2em.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/r2e-030-jeremy-gregg-%E2%80%93-central-dallas-ministries/

Road to Emmaus
Organic church, simple church, house church and more in Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) area and beyond with your hosts .

Volunteers needed for Back2School health fair!

We need 50 volunteers to help us with our upcoming Back2School Rally & Health Fair on Saturday, August 23, 2008 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church (on 1821 W. Camp Wisdom Road, Dallas, Texas 75232).

If you are interested, please call Rigo Velasquez at 214-823-8710.

Watermark Community Church adopts CDM!

Thanks to our friends at Watermark Community Church for adopting CDM for their upcoming food drive! More info here:

http://www.watermark.org/serve/stuff.asp

PODCAST: CDM's Gerald Britt on KERA: Dr. Caesar Clark - A Remembrance

Thanks to KERA 90.1 FM for publishing the text of "Dr. Caesar Clark - A Remembrance" by Rev. Gerald Britt, CDM's VP of Public Policy and Community Program Development. The text and audio are both available here:
http://publicbroadcasting.net/kera/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1331124§ionID=1