Rosa Lopez

Dallas City Council voted unanimously for an honorary sign topper to remember Rosa Lopez.

This is the first sign topper for a Latina and the first for a lesbian. Earlier this year, a sign topper was dedicated to Don Maison, the longtime CEO of AIDS Services Dallas.

Lopez was a West Dallas community housing advocate. She moved to Dallas in 1991 with experience in housing. By the next year, she had founded and became executive director of Vecinos Unidos, a community housing development corporation that developed 57 brick homes in the Los Altos neighborhood in West Dallas. The project was completed in 2001.

She co-founded Lesbianas Latinas de Dallas, the first lesbian organization for Latinas in Texas, and was a founder of Rainbow LULAC 4871, the first LGBTQ LULAC organization in the country. That group started a scholarship in her name.

Lopez served on the boards of the West Dallas Chamber of Commerce, the North Dallas Housing Coalition and more.

She died at the age of 63 in February 2017.

For more on her legacy, see a story written for Dallas Voice by Jesus Chairez at the time of her death.

— David Taffet