Dallas: you make it so hard to live here.
I'm not even talking about the rapidly inflating cost of housing or the problems with the school system, or the relatively poor pay and benefits that you dole out to your public safety workers. I'm talking about the day-to-day experience of your average resident, who is forced to reckon with your inability to productively deal with inequality and poverty, house indigent persons, contain loose dogs, maintain your infrastructure, or respond to calls for assistance.
I'm not even talking about the rapidly inflating cost of housing or the problems with the school system, or the relatively poor pay and benefits that you dole out to your public safety workers. I'm talking about the day-to-day experience of your average resident, who is forced to reckon with your inability to productively deal with inequality and poverty, house indigent persons, contain loose dogs, maintain your infrastructure, or respond to calls for assistance.
On my way to work this morning, I dropped my daughter off at
her school. It’s a little charter school that sits just off I-30 in
east Dallas. Once she was out of the car, I noticed
that an old abandoned post office two blocks from the schoolhouse—and smack in
the middle of a residential area--has suddenly attracted a large gathering of
homeless people who are sleeping on its porch. I’m guessing that the pell-mell closure
of Tent City has driven indigent people further into the residential areas that
line the highway, not—as many posited—toward the services and shelters offered
downtown.
I turned right onto Grand Avenue, narrowly avoiding a loose chihuahua
who was tailing a group of children crossing the street to go to the elementary
school at Mount Auburn. As I started to
pull onto 30, two large dogs darted in front of my car and across the entrance
ramp into traffic. I swerved off the ramp and back into the neighborhood,
unable to watch what was most likely about to happen.
On Tuesday, sitting at a traffic light a block from my
daughter’s school, my five-year-old asked me, “Mommy, why is that man giving
himself a shot?” and I glanced out the window to see a man passed out on the
sidewalk with a hypodermic needle sticking out from between his toes. I called 911, because he appeared to be unconscious.
He was mere feet away from the front door of Fire Station 19; the dispatcher was
less concerned with reason for the call and more focused on being a total
asshole and berating me re: why I couldn’t provide a full description of the
man’s clothing and name the cross street at his location. Personally, “man
passed out with a needle in his foot by the front door of Fire Station 19” is a
pretty actionable description as far as I’m concerned, but what do I
know? Apparently nothing, which the
dispatcher was only too happy to point out.
Then there are the comically sized potholes that are less
funny once they’ve destroyed the front end of your car, or the panhandler that—for
years now--routinely parks his wheelchair at the bottom of the highway
off-ramp at the East Grand/Munger exit on eastbound I-30, causing drivers to
slam on their brakes to avoid him while he wheels aside their cars, hand
extended. He’s caused two accidents that I’ve witnessed over the past four years,
plus a near miss in the dark of night that I’m still not sure how he survived. He's part of a group that camps at that spot daily, in a school crosswalk and up against a chain link fence outlining a backyard that's filled with tricycles and trampolines and other trappings of a childhood that shouldn't have to worry about aggressive panhandlers sitting feet from their backdoor.
And here’s what kills me about all of this: I visited a large
city in a third world country several years ago with a public health organization
and the things I saw there aren’t much different than what I see here daily.
Loose dogs everywhere. Cratered roads. Aggressive panhandlers. Addicts and drunks passed out on the streets. Extreme
poverty. Apathy.
The difference? They know they aren’t “world class”. We insist we are, building bridges and trails and parkways and arts districts while ignoring the reality of what it really looks like to live in Dallas. And that reality is this: those who live in and around our poor and working class neighborhoods routinely deal with the very hallmarks of ruin and municipal chaos, having given up on calling for help long ago. And on the off chance that we do call for help, we can't provide cross streets and descriptions because it’s everywhere. It’s all of it. Corner of Dallas and Texas. What does it look like? I dunno, but it’s
The difference? They know they aren’t “world class”. We insist we are, building bridges and trails and parkways and arts districts while ignoring the reality of what it really looks like to live in Dallas. And that reality is this: those who live in and around our poor and working class neighborhoods routinely deal with the very hallmarks of ruin and municipal chaos, having given up on calling for help long ago. And on the off chance that we do call for help, we can't provide cross streets and descriptions because it’s everywhere. It’s all of it. Corner of Dallas and Texas. What does it look like? I dunno, but it’s
