In his book The Affordable City, Shane Phillips suggests a three-prong approach to solving a city’s housing crisis: supply, stability and subsidy. Phillips argues that though these three often live in tension with one another, each must be pursued simultaneously to ensure a balanced approach.
The production of affordable housing units has always been important, but it has led to a hyperfocus on production that will be detrimental in the long run if we don’t adjust. Yes, production is the driver of solving any affordability issue. However, successful supply is interdependent on its sisters, stability and subsidy. An imbalance of the three will lead to imbalanced results.
The market doesn’t need more units anywhere we can put them. That’s not how you build an affordable city. Only holistic implementation of comprehensive strategies will deliver well-adjusted growth.
Emerging ecosystem
Ten years ago, affordable housing wasn’t a hot topic. Housing cost was somewhat attainable, and Dallas had a lot of naturally occurring affordable housing units. Neighborhoods such as West Dallas and South Dallas were just rebounding from suppressed land values. Subsidies for housing projects in those areas addressed the gap between market value and development cost. There were a faithful few fighting the good fight for housing, with limited resources.
Today housing has taken its rightful place as the keystone in the arch of a decent quality of life. All players are discussing housing and that is a sign of a maturing ecosystem.
Opinion
The Dallas Fort Worth Regional Housing Consortium is a coalition of practitioners that advocates for housing policy, research and education.
The Dallas Housing Coalition has been successful at grassroots advocacy and broadening the range of voices included in this conversation.
The Greater Dallas Planning Council announced its housing initiative in August and will seek to build a coalition of industry professionals that can offer their expertise.
City of Dallas leadership announced a restructuring of the housing department that aims to deliver efficiency and streamline service.
Even suburban cities such as Farmers Branch are expanding innovative workforce housing strategies using city-owned land.
Philanthropy is stepping up to the plate with the Communities Foundation of Texas announcing its plan to increase investment in housing at the end of October.
This positive momentum from diverse players addressing the supply, stability and subsidy of housing gives me hope that we can move the needle in a significant way. Our ecosystem must be as diverse as our scorecard because it’s impossible for one group to make a perfect score. Each individual stakeholder playing their part with an understanding of the importance of other players is the winning synergy.
Need for neighborhoods
While the ecosystem is building out, it’s important that practitioners model holistic perspectives. The housing umbrella is big enough to shelter disagreements on approaches, but there can never be discord over the need for diversity of housing.
Some of this contention was seen in the fight over the Forward Dallas plan. Neighborhood groups teamed up against housing practitioners. The debate became about density versus neighborhoods. But in reality, they should both be on the same team.
One aspect of a comprehensive approach to housing is taking advantage of the stability of current supply. This includes extending the life of naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH). That may mean, for instance, repairing the roof of the home of a senior citizen who wishes to age in place. We must prioritize existing neighborhoods, even above new construction, since they are typically an efficient use of subsidy.
Good density in the wrong place is as much of a loss for our city as missing out on density in the right place. Housing solutions are interdependent and need each other to be successful.
When you approach solutions to drive housing success from a holistic perspective it guarantees neighborhoods are protected and grow. Any imbalance of equilibrium to that rule will cause one side to feel threatened.
Excellent examples
The Resource Center’s Oak Lawn Place is a $31 million, 84-unit fully affordable development and a perfect example of a balanced scorecard of housing success. CeCe Cox, the peerless nonprofit veteran and CEO of the Resource Center, knocked it out of the park. The project is directly behind the Resource Center’s health clinic and across the street from a DART rail stop. Multiple sources of capital from public and private players delivered new housing supply as well as community stability.
CeCe is not the only nonprofit leader proving up this model. Randy Bowman’s AT LAST! occupies the intersection of educational outcomes and housing stability for youth.
Other service-oriented nonprofits and religious groups in our city are exploring ways to use their land holdings.
This is how you win, with individual communities addressing their own unique housing needs, more targeted resources, fewer roadblocks, a plan that approaches the problem from many different angles.
My good friend and national nonprofit expert Suzanne Smith and I regularly grab dinner before attending SMU’s Tate lectures. We are both Type A personalities who get a high from solving problems, so our dinner discussions are passionate, in-depth and aspirational.
Last week, we talked about housing, and Suzanne delivered such an eloquent synopsis, I asked if I could quote her.
“Dallas loves a silver bullet,” she said. “But when it comes to affordable housing — or any community issue — there isn’t one. These problems are complicated and complex. The only real solution is a systems approach: cross-sector coordination, long-term commitment and radical accountability. Until we do that, we’ll keep falling short.”
That’s how we should score housing success in our city, because that’s how everyone wins.