Concerns among respondents included cost of child care, housing, infrastructure, and homelessness.
The City of Dallas released its 2024 Community Survey results covering topics such as quality of life, characteristics of the community, and issues the city should focus on, among other things.
The survey is conducted on behalf of the city by the ETC Institute, a market research and survey company based in Olathe, Kansas. Dallas has been sporadically conducting these surveys since 2005. The most recent survey conducted before 2024 was 2023.
In total, the survey sampled 2,118 households, with a minimum of 150 surveys completed in each of Dallas’s city council districts.
Regarding overall quality of life, 58 percent of respondents said that it was excellent or good in Dallas, while 36 percent said that the quality was fair. Only 7 percent said it was poor.
A vast majority of respondents, 76 percent, said that Dallas was an excellent or good place to work. Only 21 percent described it as fair, and just 4 percent as poor.
Dallas also surveyed well in other quality-of-life questions. Two-thirds of respondents said that their neighborhood was a good or excellent place to live, and 63 percent said that of Dallas as a whole, as well as that the city had good or excellent economic development quality.
According to the survey, however, the city struggled with retirement, raising children, and “value received for city property tax dollars and fees.” Forty-seven percent of respondents said that Dallas was a good or excellent place to raise a family, with the rest saying that it was either fair or poor. Only 34 percent said that Dallas was a good or excellent place to retire, and only 24 percent said that they got excellent or good value for the taxes collected by the city.
The majority of respondents said that Dallas had excellent or good opportunities to attend artistic and cultural events, and also that Dallas had a good image as a city.
Dallas struggled with a sense of community and air quality, as most respondents said that Dallas was fair or poor in both categories.
A majority of respondents said that they had good access to quality food, but only had access to fair or poor education, health care, living-wage jobs, child care, and affordable housing. Less than 20 percent of people said that Dallas had good access to quality child care and affordable housing.
A majority of respondents said that affordable housing should be a top priority for the city.
Most respondents also expressed some difficulty with transportation in the city, with a majority saying that, with the exception of air travel, ease of travel was fair or poor.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents said that Dallas’s population is growing too fast, and one-third of those said that the city was growing much too fast. However, a majority of respondents said that retail and job growth were growing at an “about right” rate.
A majority of respondents indicated that Dallas has four major problems: homelessness, infrastructure and street quality, crime, and drugs. Seventy-three percent of respondents said that homelessness was a major problem.
Generally, the majority of respondents feel safe in Dallas. However, 66 percent feel unsafe from property crime and unsafe in downtown Dallas after dark, and 68 percent feel unsafe in the city’s parks after dark.
Infrastructure maintenance was respondents’ top priority regarding city services at 61 percent.
Dallas scored well in response time to fire and medical emergencies, as a majority of respondents said that those services were excellent or good. The city struggled, however, with fire prevention and education, visibility of police in retail areas, effective police efforts at the neighborhood level, traffic enforcement, response time to emergency calls, visibility of police in neighborhoods, and mental health programs. A majority of respondents said these categories were fair or poor.
A majority of respondents said that, with the exception of food safety in restaurants, code enforcement of every other category was fair or poor. A large concern for respondents was the enforcement of multi-family building conditions, with 62 percent saying that that should be the city’s top priority in code enforcement. A majority also said that enforcement of code regarding blighted residential properties should be a top priority.
Outside of traffic lights and signs, a majority of respondents said that every category of street maintenance was fair or poor, with the majority saying that sidewalk and alley maintenance was poor. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said that maintenance and repair of thoroughfares and major streets should be the city’s top priority regarding road conditions.
Compared to the 2023 survey, Dallas performed better in most categories for overall quality of life, only experiencing slight regression in retirement ratings.
For more information about The City of Dallas’ survey results explore the original news release from The Texan, posted July 9th, 2024, by Seth Morehead.