Phil’s Story: Exploitation in Poorly Regulated Boarding Homes
I feel compelled to write about an experience that, to me, painfully highlights the stark realities of privilege –– particularly how different the world is for those who have it.
Like many other metropolitan areas, Dallas is a tale of two cities. The northern part is home to some of the fastest-growing business sectors in the country, and five of its suburbs are among the wealthiest in the state. Southern Dallas embodies a much different story. Throughout its history, its residents have faced significant obstacles, and because of Jim Crow laws and redlining — the government-backed practice of denying loans, mortgages and other services based on a neighborhood’s demographics — they were cut off from the growth happening elsewhere in the city. What resulted was a systemic lack of resources and entrenched poverty.
In spring 2024, a close family member (let’s call him Phil to protect his identity) left incarceration and began a government-funded re-entry mental health diversion program. As part of this program, he was placed in a licensed boarding home in the southern Dallas community of Oak Cliff. The home was owned by one individual and operated by two others. Phil was not asked to sign a lease or any other agreement that outlined the terms of residency and eviction. He was never told –– either by the agency placing him in the home or the home’s operator –– what his responsibility would be for rent and how it would be paid.
Phil shared a roach-infested room with up to three others; he was given a soiled bed to sleep on and no additional boarding home supports. That meant no meals, no transportation, no grocery shopping, no help with money management, no laundry services and no assistance with self-administration of medication (a requirement of boarding homes per the Dallas City Code’s Boarding Home Definition).
About a week into living in the home, Phil was told by the home operator that they had recently increased monthly rent from $1,000 to $1,200. This was a shock considering that this was 68.5 percent greater than the average room rental rate of $709 in the surrounding Oak Cliff neighborhood. It was an even greater shock that this was for a shared bedroom.
There was no way Phil could afford this. Within days, he was told that he had to leave the home, and he became homeless. In the process, all of his possessions were lost or taken, including his bipolar medications. The home’s operators provided no formal eviction notice as required by state tenant laws. The case manager for the diversion program told him that it would take time to find him a new home. And then he never heard from that case manager again.
Phil spent the next two weeks homeless before walking into a church and stealing a camcorder and $20. He was charged with three felonies and was back in jail.
Four months later, Phil was released into a new re-entry program with a new case manager. He was ultimately placed in a work-to-stay boarding home in southern Dallas. More than 20 people lived in the four-bedroom home that was crawling with roaches and bed bugs. The home’s operator didn’t charge rent. Instead, residents were gathered up in vans and brought to a football stadium where they worked but did not get to keep their earnings. At the home, residents actively engaged in criminal activities and drug use. To his horror, Phil even witnessed a stabbing between two of the residents –– the perpetrator shared a room with Phil.
Needless to say, we were appalled by these stories. When we called the City of Dallas boarding home code enforcement department to dig into this boarding home’s situation, we were told that they couldn’t release information about the date or the findings of the home’s most recent inspection. Complaints couldn’t be made to the department in writing; they had to be made over the phone. During our inquiry, the department representative seemed to be familiar with the boarding home’s operator –– or at least their reputation. “Yeah, I know them. What is your concern about them?” the rep had asked us. After that call, I decided to do some research.
I looked into licensed boarding homes in Dallas and discovered that boarding homes are a lucrative business. A list of them can be found online. Most of them are in low-income sectors of the city. At the time, Phil’s first boarding home’s operators ran eight boarding houses owned by four different owners. With all rooms at double occupancy and the quoted rent of $1,200 per resident, one of these four-bedroom homes could bring in $9,600 monthly. Multiply this by eight homes and the owners have a potential combined monthly revenue of $76,800. Place three or four people in each room and the revenue potential increases exponentially. That is quite the turn of profit for a home with a taxable value of $175,000.
But the potential monthly revenue could be even greater. The re-entry program that placed Phil in that home paid the first month of rent. When he left after only staying two weeks, that operator was free to accept another resident from another nonprofit or government agency at another full month’s rent –– giving the operator the opportunity to resell the same room multiple times within the same month.
When I reached out to the government agency operating the re-entry program, I asked about whether they have formal memorandums of agreement with boarding home operators that outline the terms of service and eviction. What happens to the government funds that are used to pay for a month of rent when the resident is evicted? Is rent returned to the agency or is the boarding home actually incentivized to rotate government- and nonprofit-supported residents in and out of the homes to make the most profit? By the way, that government agency declined to respond to my inquiry.
For our nonprofit clients serving populations experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness, one of the greatest challenges they have is meeting the housing needs of their clients. Because of the significant housing shortage in Dallas, boarding homes are being used by nonprofit and government programs to place individuals. There is such a sense of scarcity and urgency to place individuals in housing that these homes can basically operate in any way that they want. Based on Phil’s experience, the city appears to not be enforcing minimum standards of living while the regulating code doesn’t require the homes to comply with tenant laws.
In walking alongside Phil throughout his journey, and as someone who is well-versed in nonprofits and particularly re-entry programs, I have seen how well-meaning agencies end up utilizing boarding homes that are often unsafe and so poorly regulated that they can be exploited by shady boarding home operators.
If you read this story and dismiss it as a “they” problem, I challenge you to see how it impacts all of us. A city is only as strong as its systems that work to empower or disempower residents in their pursuit of personal agency and success.
As I have helped Phil navigate a system that is not designed for his success, I am reminded about privilege. If we have it, we must recognize the stark realities for those who don’t. We must also recognize our responsibility to use whatever power and access we have to help bring change to broken systems. If we rest on that privilege or even abuse it, we contribute to those broken systems by assuming they are someone else’s problem.
“Privilege isn’t about what you have gone through, it's about what you haven’t had to go through.” –– Janaya Khan, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto
As for me, I will be using the power of my privilege to take this story to representatives of the Texas State Legislature as a member of the South Dallas Employment Project’s next delegation. I will advocate on behalf of the family, friends and neighbors who struggle and are disconnected from the most critically needed resources, like housing that is safe, affordable and fair.