A new report finds that the Dallas area has the second most severe shortage of affordable housing for poor renters in the country, behind only Las Vegas.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition published the findings this month in The Gap: A Shortage of Available Homes.
“More than 85% of extremely low income renters in Las Vegas, Dallas, Austin, San Diego, and Houston experience severe housing cost burdens,” read the report.
Severely cost-burdened households include those who pay more than half of their income on housing costs each month.
According to the report, there are only 14 affordable and available rental homes per every 100 extremely low renter households in the Dallas metro area — meaning they're at or below the federal poverty level, or 30% below the area median income.
And the gap has worsened: A year before, there were 17. Statewide, there are 25 per 100 households.
“The numbers are alarming across the nation but in Texas, it takes that fire from a three-alarm to a five-alarm fire,” said Michael Depland with Texas Housers, which advocates for low-income housing across the state and is a part of the national coalition.
The report estimates the Dallas metro area would need almost 180,000 more affordable homes to fill the gap for extremely low income renters.
Advocates in Dallas say rapid population growth in Texas’s major cities is one factor contributing to the severe housing shortage. North Texas alone has grown by over half a million people since 2020. The most recent Census data shows that Kaufman County is among the top 10 fastest growing counties in the nation; it grew by 6% between July 2023 and July 2024. Collin County grew by almost 47,000 people in that same timeframe, the fourth-largest gain in the country.
“We're not making Texas any more affordable than we were five years ago,” said Bryan Tony with the Dallas Housing Coalition.
Tony said while the explosive growth has led to more homes being built, many of them are high-end luxury developments that poor renters can’t afford.
“The new apartments that are being built are priced far out of reach for low and increasingly moderate income renters,” said Ashley Flores, chief of housing for the Child Poverty Action Lab and data partner of the Dallas coalition.
Flores added the number of jobs created in the region is outpacing the amount of housing being built.
“We have to think not just about production, but also preservation of the housing stock that folks are in today that is affordable,” she said.
Tony said the coalition is following various bills in the state legislature that could potentially lead to solutions, including Senate Bill 208 authored by Sen. Royce West that would create a revolving loan fund for housing developers.
Depland said Texas Housers is also closely monitoring what’s happening at the federal level after recent firings at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which he calls “deeply alarming.”
“Our goal is to expand the housing, but at this point, we're really trying to just protect what we have,” Depland said.
He said it’s critical that state and local governments step up to support severely cost-burdened households.
“There isn't enough and there will never be enough sort of naturally occurring affordable housing there,” he said. “It just cannot exist in the private market.”
Pablo Arauz Peña is KERA’s growth and infrastructure reporter. Got a tip? Email Pablo at parauzpena@kera.org.
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