By Patrick Washington
The Dallas Weekly

For decades, conversations about Southern Dallas have centered on what the community lacks.

Southern Dallas Progress Community Development Corporation (CDC) wants to change that conversation by focusing on what residents can build.

From financial education and entrepreneurship to homeownership and neighborhood revitalization, the nonprofit has adopted a simple philosophy: lasting community change begins when residents own a stake in the future of their own neighborhoods.

That philosophy is perhaps best illustrated not in a mission statement, but on the streets of Dallas’ historic Tenth Street Historic District, where the organization is helping bring new and restored homes to market for local families.

“It’s about controlling your own destiny,” said J. RaShad Thomas, a real estate broker, developer and longtime partner of Southern Dallas Progress CDC. “If we invest in our own communities, we can continue to control what they become instead of watching someone else do it for us.”

While many organizations focus on a single issue, Southern Dallas Progress CDC views neighborhood revitalization as an interconnected system.

Each depends on the others.

Program Director Stacy Davis says the organization intentionally works across those areas because strengthening one without the others rarely creates lasting change.

“If you don’t have a home, you don’t have generational wealth,” Davis said. “Property taxes support our schools, our streets, our hospitals—it all connects.”

The organization regularly connects aspiring homeowners and entrepreneurs with lenders, financial institutions and business advisors capable of moving people beyond ideas and into action.

“We don’t just point people toward resources,” Davis said. “We put trusted partners in the room together.”

For Southern Dallas Progress CDC, helping families purchase homes isn’t simply about increasing ownership rates. It’s an economic development strategy.

According to the organization, roughly 42% of people of color in Southern Dallas are not homeowners, limiting opportunities to build generational wealth and long-term financial stability.

Thomas believes many families still view housing primarily as shelter rather than one of the largest investments they’ll ever make.

“When you leave an apartment, you leave with your clothes,” Thomas said. “The landlord keeps the investment. When you own your home, you’re building equity for yourself.”

That equity, he argues, becomes the foundation for everything else—from opening businesses to financing college educations and passing wealth to future generations.

The organization’s work in the Tenth Street Historic District represents that philosophy in action.

One of Dallas’ oldest historically Black neighborhoods and one of the city’s few remaining Freedman’s Towns, Tenth Street has long faced challenges ranging from disinvestment to redevelopment pressure.

Rather than allowing longtime residents to be displaced, Southern Dallas Progress CDC is working to create opportunities for families to purchase homes within the historic neighborhood, helping preserve both its history and its future.

Marketing materials provided by the organization showcase newly constructed and renovated homes currently available in the district, including properties on Church Street and North Cliff Street, demonstrating how the CDC’s work extends beyond advocacy into tangible neighborhood investment.

For Davis, those homes are more than real estate listings.

“They’re proof that revitalization doesn’t have to mean displacement,” she said.

A link to current Tenth St. properties is listed below

Thomas describes the organization’s vision with an unusual phrase.

“We have to compete for the glow up.”

By that, he means Southern Dallas residents should become investors in their own neighborhoods before outside investment makes those communities unaffordable.

“If we participate and invest in our own cities, we can still have control of our city rather than someone else buying it and pricing us out,” he said, pointing to redevelopment in other Dallas neighborhoods as a cautionary example.

The organization also continues working with financial institutions to demonstrate that Southern Dallas is a viable market for investment.

According to Davis, those efforts have helped attract banks including Truist, Frost, Cornerstone and Vista Bank, creating additional opportunities for lending, entrepreneurship and neighborhood growth.

That broader mission will be on display during Southern Dallas Progress CDC’s Homeownership Fair, scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 1, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. The free event will connect prospective buyers with more than 30 lenders and housing professionals while providing education on budgeting, credit, mortgage preparation and down payment assistance programs that can provide qualified buyers with as much as $50,000 toward purchasing a home.

For Southern Dallas Progress CDC, however, the fair is only one piece of a much larger effort.

The real measure of success isn’t attendance.

It’s seeing more families become homeowners, more entrepreneurs open businesses and more longtime residents remain in the neighborhoods they’ve helped build.

As Southern Dallas continues to attract new investment, the organization hopes its work ensures that the people who have long called the community home are not merely witnesses to its transformation—but beneficiaries of it.

TENTH ST. PROPERTIES FOR SALE FROM SOUTHER DALLAS DEVELOPMENT CDC