Dallas appears set to earmark nearly $61 million of its $1.25 billion bond package to affordable housing. It’s less than advocates say is needed to meet the city’s growing housing crisis, but it would be more money than the city’s ever put toward affordable housing.
As the deadline approaches for the city to finalize the bond package for a May vote, the city council took a “straw vote” on Wednesday to decide how the bond package would be divided up. The $1.25 billion will be split across several categories of capital projects, including streets, parks, arts facilities, police and fire departments and other brick-and-mortar needs.
A broad coalition of housing advocates campaigned for months to convince council members to put $200 million into affordable housing. The Dallas Housing Coalition organized dozens of people to testify at bond task force and city council meetings. They held rallies outside of City Hall, organized webinars and community meetings, and met with council members privately to push the issue.
“I thought we made a strong case and we continued to show up every step of the way and that’s why it’s disappointing,” said Bryan Tony, one of the group’s lead organizers.
Council Member Cara Mendelsohn introduced the amended bond allocation plan that nine of the 15 members approved. She said Council Member Tennell Atkins came up with the plan. It increased funding for other infrastructure needs in the city, including public safety and parks facilities.
“We have more than a dozen ways to fund affordable housing in the city, and taking out debt to do it is just bad a fiscal policy,” she said.
Advocates point out that those programs are insufficient to meet the scale of the problem. The city is short an estimated 33,600 rental homes that lower-income people can afford, and that deficit is expected to more than double by the end of the decade, with more middle-income people priced out.
Homeownership is also increasingly out of reach, with the city facing a shortage of roughly 60,000 for-sale homesin the price range teachers, bus drivers and other middle-income earners can afford.
Tony said $61 million in bond funds for affordable housing will certainly help, but will prove insufficient.
“Housing costs will continue to increase in Dallas in a more dramatic rate, and our families who are bigger, our families who are working one job might have to get a second job to not be overburdened by what they’re paying for housing,” Tony said.
The city council voted earlier this month to increase the bond package from $1.1 billion to $1.25 billion.
“We increased the capacity by $150 million and none of that increased funding is going to affordable housing,” Tony pointed out.
The housing coalition also hoped to secure $35 million in bond investments to help people experiencing homelessness, which would’ve expanded shelter facilities and longer-term supportive housing units. The final council allocations Wednesday put $8.5 million toward addressing the needs of unhoused people.
Mendelsohn said previous bond funds earmarked for homeless solutions hadn’t been utilized quickly enough. And she said the already owns three facilities bought during the pandemic to convert into facilities to serve unhoused people which are delayed and mired in controversy.
“We have dollars for homelessness, we have greatly increased our commitment to homelessness,” Mendelsohn said.
Council Member Adam Bazaldua proposed a package that would have put $100 million toward affordable housing and $20 million for homelessness, which he framed as a compromise. Other council members voiced support for the proposal, including Chad West and Paula Blackmon, but the proposal failed to win support in the end.
Council members will each have about $5 million they can steer to projects in any of the bond categories, so Tony said he hopes to see some of them put that discretionary allocation into addressing housing or homelessness.
West, who has been a staunch supporter of going big on affordable housing, suggested council members could also push to use other bond projects to get more affordable housing built out of bond funds. For example, he said he’d back a project using library bond funds in his North Oak Cliff district that build a library with apartments on upper floors.
Next, city staffers will come up with a plan that identifies which specific projects will be included under those top-line numbers. The city council will have final sign-off for the final bond package and all the projects it’d pay for. After that, voters will have the choice to greenlight the bond package, voting category by category, in May.
Got a tip? Christopher Connelly is KERA's One Crisis Away Reporter, exploring life on the financial edge. Email Christopher at cconnelly@kera.org.You can follow Christopher on Twitter @hithisischris.
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