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Let’s Make Dallas Even Better News Coronavirus Food Things To Do Home Living Business Weddings Magazines Directories Subscribe FrontBurner A Daily Conversation About Dallas R.I.P. Wick Allison Politics Urbanism History Features Local News Leading Off (2/2/21) By Tim Rogers | 3 hours ago SMS COVID Update. Dallas County reported 1,427 new cases yesterday and 40 deaths, the latter number matching a single-day record (set just last week) for deaths in the county. In Collin County, the state added 875 coronavirus cases and three deaths. Meanwhile Mayor Eric Johnson apologized for the city’s shambolic vaccination effort at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. People have tried to game the system, and the city overestimated the volume of vaccinations it could distribute. Mask up, wash your hands, keep your distance. Jason Witten Lands New Job. The former Cowboys great will be the head football coach at Argyle Liberty Christian. Attack Ad Targets Beth Van Duyne. The new congresswoman and former mayor of Irving is taking heat for supporting Trump and voting against certifying Pennsylvania’s election results. Here’s an interesting question: if the ad starts airing on a Tuesday, and if you publish a story at 7 a.m. on that Tuesday, pretty clearly demonstrating that the story was written in advance and held until the day the ad started, have you not collaborated with the ad’s creators? Mavs Lose to Suns. The lede from the Arizona Republic that desperately needs a copy editor: “Devin Booker started slow, that didn’t matter when it mattered most. The All-Star guard splashed a 3-pointer with 1.5 seconds with left under to stun Dallas, 109-108, Monday night at American Airlines Arena.” Read More Real Estate Why Is It So Hard For Dallas to Address Affordable Housing? By Tyler Hicks | 17 hours ago SMS When he was in college, Michael Geblein wrote “Rent” on a piece of tape and stuck it on a jar where he put his loose change. It was a joke until it wasn’t. Early last year, he had to dip into it. Geblein, 26, earns a salary of $48,000 at his marketing gig in Dallas. Rent for his Uptown apartment is more than $1,800, over half his monthly income after taxes. Before the pandemic, he drove Uber to make extra cash, but he stopped in March. By May, he cashed in his change to pay rent. Shortly after, he created an account with DoorDash. “I had to do something,” he says, “and delivering food seems safer than driving strangers.” Geblein is planning to move north of Dallas, knowing it will extend his commute. He says he’s struggled to find other housing options he can afford in the city. He is hardly alone. The Nelson family has already moved. Mark, a 32-year-old EMT, and Sarah, a 31-year-old social worker, work in Dallas and commute about 45 miles from their home in Farmersville, where they live with their two children. “We just couldn’t find a big enough home in our price range,” Mark says. “The drive can be tough, but it’s what we have to do.” Stories like these are part and parcel to Dallas’ ongoing struggle with affordable housing. Since acknowledging a shortage of 20,000 units in 2018, the city’s varied efforts to address that deficit haven’t worked. Plans to deliver as many as 6,000 units per year over the last three years were stymied in part by audits, corruption, controversy, and market forces the city has struggled to control. Dallas is low on land, and affordable options for middle-income residents are becoming harder to find. The future looks bleak for the Gebleins and Nelsons of Dallas: people who earn a decent living yet can’t afford housing in the city where they work. “People on council and people I talk to in my district are realizing that the middle group is the one we need to be focusing on,” says Chad West, the North Oak Cliff representative who was until recently the chair of the Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee. “They’ve seen the numbers, and quite frankly, they’ve seen how scary the future looks. They know we need a change.” Several developers and city employees interviewed for this story say there are steps Dallas can take to incentivize development for the middle class. But doing so requires willpower, creativity, the reining in of city council influence, and bringing in lots and lots of money. “Our housing department has a $20 million budget,” says David Noguera, the city’s director of Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization. “$20 million doesn’t get you very far.” Read More Sports & Leisure Listen Up: Mark Aguirre on His Time With the Dallas Mavericks By Zac Crain | 24 hours ago SMS I am on record as being strongly in favor of the Mavericks retiring Mark Aguirre’s No. 24. It’s sort of moot now, since the team has said no player will ever wear it again—but in honor of Kobe Bryant. So I listened with great interest to this episode of Open Run , the podcast featuring Mavericks broadcasters Jeff “Skin” Wade and Derek Harper, which features Harp’s former teammate. He goes into what happened to break apart a team that was threatening the Lakers for Western Conference supremacy, and what caused the former model franchise to run aground in the 1990s. We got to feeling ourselves—as an entire organization. We ran into landmines, which people, you know, unconsciously planted in our organization. And then it whittled down into a basketball team. We were divided because—as I learned playing and listening to the Boston Celtics, because I was playing them a lot in Detroit, listening to those people—and what I saw was, even though you are part of the franchise, one of the biggest things is that locker room has to be complete, tight . Really tight. That means, even if you’re my brother playing basketball, even though there are some things that aren’t right about you, that we have to discuss and hammer out, you don’t let that out of the locker room. It’s the easiest way to divide you. And our Maverick team was so divided. It was extremely divided. It hammered us. We didn’t know it. We were young. It is a fascinating listen. Among other things, Aguirre regrets the way he “destroyed” Detlef Schrempf, ruining the young German’s confidence to the point that Schrempf had to start over with another team. (They got tight before Detlef left, though.) I also did not realize that Roy Tarpley lived with Aguirre until the latter was traded to the Detroit Pistons, and the late Tarpley’s big problems with drugs and alcohol took over after that. Anyway, check it out. I really do think it will change your perception of the divisive Mavericks great. Read More Local News Leading Off (02/01/2021) By Zac Crain | 1 day ago SMS Rough Sports Weekend. The Mavs kicked off things by losing their second game in a row to the Utah Jazz, which featured one of the most dispiriting quarters I have ever suffered through in my many years as a Mavs fan, maybe second only to the game against the Lakers when they scored just two points. Then, they bounced back against the Suns Saturday night, looking strong for most of the game, only to fall apart in the fourth quarter, especially over the last few minutes, largely thanks to Chris Paul . Meanwhile, the Stars lost back-to-back games against the Carolina Hurricanes, including a backbreaker yesterday, giving up a late goal and then falling in a shootout . Also, not that you care, but I got up at 6:30 Saturday morning to watch Everton lose to a pretty terrible (or at least in pretty terrible form) Newcastle squad. So, pretty dope, overall. COVID. Dallas County reported 1,617 cases and 12 coronavirus-related deaths Sunday. Dallas’ Vaccine Rollout Continues to Struggle. The city sent out 10,000 invites for the doses it had last week; 7,000 people who weren’t invited got the link anyway. That meant on Thursday 40 percent of the people who showed up for a shot were sent home because they had an invalid appointment, and on Saturday the same thing happened to 30 percent of the attendees. Councilman Chad West put the communication problems at...