Flooding, mold plague renovated Dallas homeless shelter after city delays response

Quiara McQueen’s face lights up when she talks about the possibility of getting a food service job she recently interviewed for.
The job would be from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., pay $15 an hour and could help McQueen, her partner, and their two kids move out of Family Gateway, a Far North Dallas shelter they’ve been living in since July. But McQueen, who has been out of work for months, is scared of being offered the job.
Her family can’t afford child care, and the children’s father works at night. They were getting free child care at the shelter until the group shut the service down because the rooms have mold.
“I’m afraid of having to turn [the job] down because I have to watch my sons,” said McQueen, 28. “It’s a great opportunity, but there’s not much we can do right now.”
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It may not be until October until Family Gateway reopens the child care center, said Ellen Magnis, the nonprofit’s CEO. The group runs a 50-room emergency shelter for families experiencing homelessness homeless out of a city-owned former hotel since 2021. The city kicked in $500,000 of an around $3 million renovation of the three-story building, which includes a dedicated early childhood center and after-school learning center run by Vogel Alcove, another Dallas-based nonprofit. The renovations were completed late last year.
But a monthslong delay in fixing a leaky roof led to water damage and mold in the homeless shelter, forcing Family Gateway to close the child care center and move three families staying in rooms that can’t be occupied into hotels, Magnis said. As of Thursday, the nonprofit had closed all four of its child care rooms, three residential rooms, two offices and its security office. She said the shelter has roughly 160 people.
It wasn’t until Sept. 6 — three months after the shelter requested help from the city about the roof — that Magnis said city officials gave a company permission to move forward with replacing the roof. Work on the roof is planned to start Tuesday.
“We expect not to reopen those (rooms) until the end of October as they won’t redo the interior work until the new roof is on,” Magnis told The Dallas Morning News.
City officials told council members last month the delays were caused in part by uncertainty over whether Family Gateway or the city was responsible for repairing building damages. A “miscommunication internally” also delayed crews from responding to the shelter’s June 3 report of damage for a month, city spokesman Rick Ericson, told The News.
But a separate city official acknowledged to council members last month that the repair work done in July was “stopgap measures” until the roof could be replaced.
“The repairs we did on July 3rd and July 5th were basically stopgap measures to wait until we could get to the replacement of the roof, which had been recommended,” Brian Thompson, an assistant director of facilities and real estate management told council members during an Aug. 26 government performance and financial management committee meeting.
Magnis says there never should have been any confusion.
“Our contract is very clear,” she said. “The city is responsible for all infrastructure repairs and we’re responsible for day-to-day repairs.”
Council members expressed concern about the repair delays during a meeting about the issues last month. Council member Cara Mendelsohn, who represents the area where Family Gateway is located, said she thought “the entire thing was irresponsible.”
“We have caused more damage to a brand new, beautiful building because of our inaction,” she said, “and I’m super frustrated.”
Zeronda Smith, director of the city’s office of risk management, told council members the city was waiting for its insurance adjuster to approve the roof repairs and a full site inspection was done on Aug. 21. She also said the city was working to remove the mold from the building.
In the meantime, the room closures are having a ripple effect.
The nonprofit provides shelter for families until they’re able to find steady employment and move out. But some families need more time because they have to watch their children rather than work.
There is space at the shelter for 50 families, Magnis said, and the nonprofit pays for extended-stay hotel rooms for others. Family Gateway is paying for at least 40 families to stay in hotels due to the temporary housing gridlock. She estimates each room averages around $100 a night.
The City Council approved Dallas buying the more than 30,000-square-foot Collin County former hotel in December 2020 for $6.6 million using federal coronavirus relief money to provide COVID-19 supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. The city awarded management of the hotel to Family Gateway in June 2021 with a two-year, $2.9 million contract that came from a combination of 2017 bond money and COVID relief cash.
The council voted to rezone the site to allow the child care services in January 2022 and approved a 20-year lease with the nonprofit for use of the building in May 2022.
This isn’t the first time the city of Dallas has had issues with buildings it owns. The city plans to sell Family Gateway’s former downtown Dallas shelter after squatters occupied the vacant building. And city officials forced permitting office employees to move out of an 11-story office tower bought last year because it violated city code and couldn’t obtain proper permits.
Dallas is in the midst of building a new estimated $3 billion downtown convention center after racking up more than $600 million in maintenance needs for the current structure, including needs for a new roof.
Ericson told The News the city is working on coming up with ways to improve procedures and accountability for managing and maintaining city-owned buildings. He said city officials plan to brief council members in the coming weeks about their progress.
Magnis said her group has reported problems caused by the roof since last summer and the issues were exacerbated by the May 28 storm that toppled trees and power lines around North Texas.
“The building flooded,” she said. “There was water damage everywhere.”
Family Gateway reported issues with the city and the roof over the next few days and reported that the roof was so damaged by June 3 that it likely needed to be replaced.
It took around three weeks for the city to get a contractor to examine the roof, according to Magnis and an August city memo on the property damage.
The city said repairs were made on July 3 and July 5 that the company that did the work recommended the roof be replaced.
“During that month, it rained multiple times,” she said. “And then we started noticing mold.”
Magnis said in late July, they noticed mold in the four rooms that cover the child care center on the first floor and two residential rooms on the second floor. Tests confirmed mold in the rooms on Aug. 1 and Family Gateway closed all six rooms, according to Magnis.
She said the nonprofit did additional testing last week and found mold in a third residential room as well as the three offices.
They still remain closed as of this week. Furniture and toys were stacked and wrapped in plastic in one room. Some of the walls on the first floor have been stripped, exposing bricks underneath.
Family Gateway was considering paying for repairs to the damaged rooms and billing the city to prevent further delays. Magnis said it wasn’t until this month that the city put a tarp on the roof to stop rain from pouring into the shelter.
“They should have done that a long time ago,” she said.