With City Council signalling support for significant reforms in the Dallas rental housing code, Dallas Morning News gave kudos to Dallas Area Interfaith for keeping "these issues on the council's radar and set the stage for many of the most important tweaks in the code." For the first time, the Dallas code would require inspections of the insides of single-family rentals and more frequent inspections of multi-family housing complexes.

Towards that end, the city manager's proposed budget calls for hiring 15 additional code enforcement officers to handle the exapnded responsibilities.

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Bachman Lake residents lined up at the podium with photos depicting bedbugs, mold, leaky windows and malfunctioning air conditioning -- all of which came from a neighborhood inspection of apartments involving 60 resident leaders -- organized by Dallas Area Interfaith. On Monday, resident leaders held a press conference urging the city's Housing Committee to adopt their recommendations in a bid to toughen up Dallas' housing code. One leader, Patricia Vega, has two children with asthma living in an apartment with mold in the bedroom and a broken window that leaks when it rains. Said Dr. Barry Lachman, President of the Asthma Coalition of Texas and leader with Temple Shalom, "no family should ever have to live under the conditions we saw in Bachman Lake."

The housing committee agreed, and city council will vote on the proposal next month.

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"It all started with a group of women," said Dallas Area Interfaith (DAI) organizer Walker Moore, that "wanted to know what their rights were." With the guidance of DAI, the ladies went on to organize several meetings -- at local churches and in apartments -- to formulate a strategy to address mold, dilapidation and crime.

In November, extra chairs had to be hauled out to accommodate 160 people who gathered at San Juan Diego Catholic Church at a meeting in which they brought specific issues with apartment conditions straight to the police chief and City of Dallas elected officials. They and the audience listened with approval as Mayor Pro Tem Monica Alonzo and Roberto Garcia, a Dallas police senior corporal, vowed to help the residents.

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