Billy Lane found a seat inside the crowded Dallas City Council chambers and reminded himself that the vote on his proposed townhomes was mostly a formality. But the pastor and social justice activist couldn’t relax, not about the affordable housing project his team had been trying to build in the Mill City neighborhood of South Dallas since 2018.
Lane, executive director of the South Dallas Fair Park Innercity Community Development Corporation, better known as ICDC, thought the council vote he had witnessed three months earlier was the final OK. Only at the last minute — and only because of a city staffer’s casual remark — did Lane learn the project was back on the agenda, this time at the city attorney’s request to clean up some administrative language.
After years of delays, Lane knew better than to take anything for granted. When the townhomes item was read aloud, a single thought ran through his mind: “We have for so long been so close, only for another dadgum wave to sweep us back out to sea. Don’t let it happen again.”
Finally, on June 24, the vote on the eight Mill City homes on the southeastern edge of Fair Park went South Dallas’ way. With construction of the alley and improvements to sidewalks and Brashear Street already completed, ICDC expects to start building by mid-September.
The project is the latest hard-won battle in the often overlooked neighborhood-building that ICDC has accomplished since Diane Ragsdale founded the organization 40 years ago. While this local civil rights icon, community organizer, and former City Council member has long been celebrated for her activism, her construction successes have received far less attention.
In a dogged and workmanlike way, ICDC has built or rehabbed about 300 homes in South Dallas, provided homeowner education, and partnered to bring healthcare and workforce training to the area. Other community development corporations and partners stepped up over the years, but ICDC has been at it the longest and shown the most staying power.
“ICDC has weathered all of the storms,” including deficient infrastructure, political squabbles, and public safety challenges, said Scottie Smith II, a South Dallas resident and real estate broker, investor, and developer focused on this part of the city. “For decades, they’ve been able to see projects through and make progress despite all those storms.”
Smith, who led this area’s recent community-driven zoning changes, said ICDC’s consistency and unwavering focus on South Dallas make the nonprofit among its most impactful organizations. “Too many folks want to be part of a shiny thing,” he said. “ICDC isn’t about that. They have a heart posture that says, ‘I’m here to bring about change from within.’’’
Ragsdale moved into the role of ICDC director emerita in late 2022, and Lane, whom she had hired the previous year, took her place as executive director. While Ragsdale remains involved in everything South Dallas related, she trusts Lane to carry forward ICDC’s commitment to improving the standard of living for its residents.
Most recently, Ragsdale devoted time to the effort to update South Dallas Planned Development District No. 595, the formal name for the zoning code that dictates what can be built, where, and how it must look. (She had helped write the original PD 595, which won City Council approval in 2001.) The code amendments, approved June 10, are designed to support businesses serving the neighborhoods, improve commercial corridors, and encourage compatible housing development while protecting the neighborhood’s identity.
ICDC’s second-floor offices on Spring Avenue look out over some of its biggest accomplishments in the Mill City neighborhood. On the other side of Spring, and along the quiet streets behind the thoroughfare, sits a development of 51 affordable single-family homes built by the nonprofit, many in partnership with Habitat for Humanity. Adjacent to its offices, ICDC provides space for Prism Health North Texas to operate the South Dallas Health Center and a pharmacy. It also leases another nearby building to Dallas College for a workforce training center.
The last piece of ICDC’s revitalization plan for this neighborhood is the 1.27 acres just beyond the nonprofit’s parking lot. With the help of city bond funds, ICDC began in 2012 acquiring the parcels and clearing away the several dozen uninhabitable dwellings and dilapidated storefronts.
ICDC originally envisioned a retail development for the property, but after a key commercial tenant had a change of heart, the nonprofit pivoted to housing. The Mill City Townhomes are expected to be completed before the end of 2027. The nonprofit Texas Trees Foundation will concurrently build a community park as part of its South Dallas Greening Initiative along two sides of the long block.
“It’s not about squeezing units into every nook and cranny of the space,” Lane said. “Much of what we do is to elevate the standard of living, and the park, which is for everyone, will do that.”
ICDC is focused on prospective homebuyers making 60 to 80 percent of the area median income — between about $50,000 and $68,000 for a single earner or $70,000 and $97,000 for a family of four. The nonprofit provides education and support that assistant director India Stewart describes as “prepare, purchase, and protect.” That includes informational housing events, pre-approval and subsidy assistance, and help with title and property tax paperwork.
While Lane is relieved the Mill City Townhome frame-out can finally begin, he knows the purchase price will be out of reach for many of the residents ICDC wants to help. Even with subsidies that could drop the $300,000 units to $250,000, qualifying for loans will be almost impossible for those making $40,000 to $50,000 a year, Lane said.
Shifting market conditions, complex financing structures, and rising property values make building affordable housing a formidable challenge for ICDC and other community development corporations working in South Dallas.
The ICDC homes across Spring Avenue are a similar size to the townhomes. At about 1,450 square feet, the two-story houses have three bedrooms, two baths, and a one-car garage. Built between 2008 and 2012, they sold for between $95,000 and $105,000 — one-third of the price of the townhomes.
The townhomes project reflects the growing tension in ICDC’s mission to lift up the community while preventing residents from being priced out. “On one hand, we’ve improved things, and in this area, it doesn’t look like poverty anymore,” Ragsdale said. “On the other hand, what happens is that it has elevated the price of the land, which elevates the price of the homes.”
This pocket of Spring Avenue is only one example of how ICDC has reshaped housing and land use in partnership with residents. “What sets us apart is that we’re not outsiders coming in and implementing a model,” Lane said as he steered his pickup out of the parking lot for a tour of other ICDC projects. “We are embedded in the heart of our neighborhoods.”
From the front passenger seat, Ragsdale pointed out examples of ICDC’s wood-siding cottages sprinkled into many blocks. “We’ve always wanted something that looked true to the history of the neighborhood,” she said. “Houses that blend in with the existing architecture.”
One of those is a peach cottage with a light blue door and pristine white trim on Metropolitan Avenue. Three blocks southwest is a tan ICDC home with white accents and a long front porch. Both were built in 2022 on lots that had been vacant for more than a decade within an established neighborhood.
Less than a quarter-mile east, Frank Street reflects the change reverberating through Mill City. Industrial-size dumpsters and trucks belonging to remodeling crews crowd the block. Some homes are in the midst of remodels; on other lots, teardowns make way for new moderns.
Amid the occasional old and sagging houses in need of extensive repair are well-maintained cottage-style homes painted gold, teal, or coral. One of the nicest on this block is an ICDC house, light brown with a front porch with timber accents. ICDC homes, many of them 10 or 20 years old, tend to be well maintained and hold their value. “For Sale” signs are rare and appraisal district records show many of the properties remain in the original owner’s hands.
It looks like everyone is building in Mill City and nearby neighborhoods, but ICDC was here first. “That’s what a community-based nonprofit does,” Ragsdale said. “It creates the market. It lets people know it’s OK to develop in the area. Somebody has to take a step up and take the risk.”
Lane slowed his truck on Frank Street in front of an old stone house with broken shutters and trim. “Chief, remember that house I mentioned from the foreclosure list?” he said to Ragsdale. “That’s it.” He had called for more details and learned a private developer had beaten him to it.
“That is the type of naturally occurring affordable housing that investors get before we can even think about it,” Lane said. Developers might demolish the home to build a bigger one or repair it enough to charge $1,500 or more a month in rent.
“That’s the double-edged sword,” he said. “A lot of what you see that makes the neighborhood seem better is all profit motive — flat-out greed.”
In 1997, Lane’s growing passion to join the fight against poverty and its causes led him to leave the computer software industry and become an ordained clergyman. He says his congregation at Warren United Methodist Church on South Malcolm X Boulevard has influenced how he sees the job of leading ICDC — just as his nonprofit work influences how he pastors.
In both roles, Lane’s empathy for his neighbors faced with unjust systems drives his work. “What I have in mind is getting to something much larger than a program or a bucket of funding,” he said. “We’re focused on working people whose wages are nowhere close to putting them in a position to own a home. That’s simply not fair.”
Ragsdale’s road to activism began as a child in South Dallas’ Wheatley Place, a largely residential community about two miles southwest of Mill City. Her mother emphasized that everyone deserves a decent standard of living and encouraged her then 11-year-old daughter to join the NAACP Youth Council, overseen by civil rights leader Juanita Craft, the first Black woman to vote in Dallas County.
Ragsdale’s political career began when council member Elsie Faye Heggins appointed her to the City Plan Commission. She succeeded Heggins on the City Council, where she served from 1984 to 1991.
Ragsdale became the voice of a growing movement of South Dallas and Fair Park residents who organized around concerns about deteriorating properties and incompatible land uses. In 1986, a blueprint for revitalization, written by community members, won city approval. The plan’s recommendations included creating a nonprofit community development corporation to help implement housing, job training, and economic strategies. Later that year, Ragsdale founded ICDC and served as its longtime executive director.
Developing affordable housing is difficult under the best circumstances and today’s reality is hardly that. The Mill City Townhomes is ICDC’s largest building project since it completed 19 homes in Pittman Place, on the edge of Ragsdale’s neighborhood, more than a decade ago.
When Lane joined ICDC in 2021, empty lots were available for $25,000 to $30,000; now those prices have more than doubled. “It’s the same dirt,” he said, “but appraisals and demand from developers are creating a bad perfect storm for building affordable houses on infill lots.”
ICDC has been too busy to think much about its 40-year anniversary, but Lane intends to pause the hard work long enough to celebrate in November. “These are big shoulders I’m standing on every day,” Lane said. He wants to spotlight the nonprofit’s decades of community-building and pay tribute to Ragsdale, the activist developer who started it all.
“She collaborated. She was a partner. But she never wavered in her commitment for justice and equity for the people of South Dallas,” Lane said. “That was never off the table. That was never optional.”
Sharon Grigsby is the co-founder and senior staff writer of The Lab Report. sharon@labreportdallas.com.
