A story in the Observer this morning says District 3 Council member David Neumann had known about a plan to move homeless people into the Cliff Manor apartments since April and did virtually nothing to warn his constituents. And then he acted surprised by a DMN story about the plan months later.
Here’s the money paragraph from Jim Schutze:
“They said it couldn’t be done. No one could actually make the homeless issue worse than it is already. But, by gosh, with a combination of general weakness, chicken-heartedness, feckless opportunism and utter absence of integrity, Mr. Dave Neumann of District 3 was able to pull it off. He has actually managed to make the homeless issue in his district a worse mess than it was already.”
Neumann didn’t comment for the story — he rarely talks to reporters — but Schutze wrote that it could be Neumann was surprised by the Dallas Housing Authority’s plan because he thought, somehow, that he had prevented it from going forward.
At any rate, the story accuses Neumann of purposely getting neighbors riled up over the issue. That resulted in a fever-pitched public meeting in June, where people said a lot of insensitive stuff about homelessness.
The story does a good job of explaining what permanent supportive housing is, and it left me with this question: Who is going to run against Dave Neumann?
