“Loose dogs” on Houston’s Northside were roving the streets in small bands, sowing chaos. At least, this was the opinion of the mostly white members of a local civic club near Lindale Park, which has a higher proportion of middle-income whites than the rest of the working-class Latino area.
It was 2013 and—as recounted in a recent academic book, A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio—the club had invited a veterinarian, also white, to discuss possible solutions. The vet recommended “educating” neighbors about the potential dangers of loose dogs, assuming they weren’t already aware, but another issue quickly arose: The club lacked Spanish speakers. Absorbing this, the vet noted that letting dogs wander the neighborhood alone was technically illegal: “You could, I hate to say it, but threaten your neighbors,” the vet said. Northside was no stranger to policing, but perhaps the answer was broadening its presence. If a carrot wouldn’t work, so came the stick.
Meanwhile, other local groups installed cameras to catch illegal trash dumping and surveil neighbors throughout the day. The goal was to squeeze Northside—a neighborhood sprawling from near downtown to just north of Houston’s central 610 loop—into a more attractive investment, largely for homebuyers and business owners who might otherwise be interested in the nearby upscale Heights neighborhood. The barrio, with a population of approximately 25,000, “still has its issues, from crime to a shortage of retail,” Houstonia Magazine noted in 2013, but “to the valiant go the spoils: two-and three-bedroom houses minutes from the heart of Houston for under $200,000.” Development was humming in some of Houston’s other “blighted” neighborhoods, and, despite past broken promises, even some Latino Northsiders were eager for a cut. The future had been all but foretold.
