DALLAS — The City of Dallas has released results from its 2023 Community Survey, showing more than half of residents surveyed are happy with the neighborhood they live in, while listing other priorities and concerns.
Of the 1,475 surveys completed with at least 100 responses from each city district, findings showed 66% of residents rated the neighborhood they lived in either an "excellent" or "good" place to live.
Survey results also showed residents overall top three priorities were infrastructure maintenance, police services and traffic management.
“Community feedback is an integral part of engaging residents and ensuring that the City of Dallas is effectively providing services to residents,” said Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland in a statement. “In future years, the Community Survey will be conducted annually, and results will be incorporated into the budget development process, to further identify funding priorities.”
As far as problems, by far the biggest problem perceived into the city, according to the survey results, is homelessness, which 75% of those surveyed listed. Other problems include crime at 61%, drugs at 60%, infrastructure at 55% and aggressive solicitation and panhandling at 45%.
Despite that, about 72% of residents surveyed said they felt either "very safe" or "safe" during the day. About 9% of residents said they felt least safe in Dallas parks after dark.
Looking at quality of life ratings, "Dallas as a place to do business" ranked the highest with 76% of residents surveyed rating it as either good or excellent. However, 75% of residents surveyed said the quality of public schools in Dallas was either fair or poor.
As far as access, access to affordable housing ranked the lowest, with 83% of those surveyed rating the access either fair or poor. And access to affordable, quality child care wasn't far behind, with 82% of those surveyed rating it either fair or poor as well.
Air travel in Dallas rated the highest in the mobility section of the survey, with 79% of respondents rating it as excellent or good, while every other form of travel -- including rail, car, bus, bicycle and walking -- had more than half of the respondents rate them as either fair or poor.
As far as characteristics of the community, surveyed residents overwhelmingly think access to affordable, quality housing should be the top priority for the city, with 53% of respondents selecting it as one of their top three priorities.
In terms of city services, nearly 60% of those surveyed think the maintenance of infrastructure should be the top priority, with 82% of respondents rating the current maintenance of infrastructure as either fair or poor, with most rating it as poor.
Ratings of streets and infrastructure/mobility services were also mostly negative, with the highest ratings going to traffic signs and signal operations. Of surveyed residents, 53% rated them as either excellent or good. But street lighting, bike lanes, street cleaning and sidewalk maintenance were all rated poorly. The lowest rated was alley maintenance, 85% of respondents rated it as either fair or poor.
Services to low-income people, housing services programs and services to homeless people were also rated overwhelmingly negatively, with 69% of people rating services to homeless people as poor and only 3% rating it and housing services programs as excellent.
Click here to view the full survey.