How Dallas’ escalating home prices only add to the city’s homelessness

Note: This article is part of our State of the City project in which The Dallas Morning News examines some of the most critical issues facing our communities. Find more topics in the coming days as we explore homelessness.

***

When prolific home builder DR Horton launched 30 new homes in May, more than 100 people came to Glenn Heights, southern Dallas County, for a lottery chance at the properties.

The homes marked a new phase in the DR Horton housing estate in Arlington. As the largest home builder in the country, DR Horton valued homes in the $ 200,000 to $ 300,000 range – a hard-to-find sweet spot in today’s housing market.

Would-be buyers wrapped themselves around a sales building in Magnolia Meadows for hours, with some getting out along the way and others waiting for all homes to be picked up.

Potential homebuyers competed in a DR Horton lottery in Glenn Heights on May 1st. (Navjot Singh)(File)

Although Dallas-Fort Worth leads the country in home construction with 70,000 new builds last year, these properties are typically not within the budget range of lower-income households.

The demand for affordable homes in Dallas and the surrounding communities has never been higher. And, as in the case of the Glenn Heights homes, the offerings mismatch, putting pressure on everyone from tenants looking to buy a home to sellers who cannot afford to move due to rising house prices.

This is particularly problematic in Dallas, where only 4 in 10 people own a home, according to a study by the Urban Institute based on 2019 census data. Things don’t look much better in Dallas County, where 49.9% are homeowners.

Navjot Singh, Chief Operating Officer of Homes USA Realty, represented buyers who signed up for homes in Magnolia Meadows. When he started his real estate career in 2017, he said first-time home buyers could get a lot for $ 200,000. He helped people fresh out of college find affordable housing.

In the first six months of 2021, property prices in North Texas skyrocketed 18% year-over-year – to a record median of $ 350,000 in June. According to the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, the median price of the house is now 50% more than it was five years ago.

Inability to afford housing is a major cause of homelessness, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. According to data from the city of Dallas, more than 300,000 Dallas residents live in poverty and nearly 600,000 live in households with housing difficulties. Households in need of housing are those households that are about to be foreclosed or already owned by a bank.

Homelessness “lacks the basic security a home provides, and there is a lot of disagreement about where that lies,” said Steve Berg, vice president of programs and policies for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Long range of homelessness

The Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance counted 4,570 people homeless this year, a slight increase from 4,471 in 2020.

But with homeownership, even the average Dallas home rent of $ 950 is prohibitive for the city’s homeless and low-income residents, according to city data.

“There are not enough rental apartments for the lowest-income people,” said Berg.

Cities where residents spend more than 32% of their income on rent can expect an increase in homelessness, according to a 2018 study by Zillow.

There are organizations working to combat the problem. The Dallas Housing Crisis Center, for example, works with veterans and people with disabilities through a landlord-tenant program that aims to move them to permanent housing.

Christina Rosales, associate director of Texas Housers, a nonprofit working to solve critical housing problems, said getting people into their homes was critical.

“It is important that we make big public investments in housing,” said Rosales. “[It’s] Conviction and politics that turn out to be commodities. “

Who is affected?

In Dallas, homelessness cuts off racial and ethnic categories. In February the city counted members of the homeless community and found:

• 1,822 were white.
• 2,523 were black.
• 58 were Asians.
• 51 were American Indians or Native Americans.
• 14 were native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders.
• 102 were several races.

There were 552 people who identified their ethnicity as Hispanic / Latin, with the remaining 4,018 remaining as non-Hispanic / Latin.

Nissy New, chief operating officer of the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, said her organization is working to bring to Dallas a shared vision of how to accommodate the underserved. For example, she said homeless veterans often lose touch with family members or friends and do not give them a place to seek help.

“The most common thing about homelessness is when you lose access to social media,” New said.

Dallas has hundreds of low income properties that can be found on the Housing and Urban Development website.

Ann Lott, executive director of the Inclusive Communities Project, said voucher programs are one way to alleviate the problem, but they often have long waiting lists. The Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly known as Section 8, enables the Dallas Housing Authority to pay landlords a portion of the rent to accommodate the homeless or those in need of financial assistance.

But when housing options open up, says Lott, they are not always what displaced families envision. “The only landlords taking it are in abandoned and neglected areas,” she said.

“It kind of begs the question, ‘Is rental housing a viable model, if that means? [are] so many people who rely on it for their apartment and end up in unstable apartments? ‘”said Berg.

[ad_1]