Communities Foundation of Texas Launches $50M Initiative to Tackle Dallas’ Housing Crisis » Dallas Innovates

As part of its strategic priority to build “a thriving community,” Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) has announced a new five-year, $50 million commitment to investing in neighborhoods and housing. The announcement was made Thursday before a large audience of city of Dallas, nonprofit, and foundation partner supporters—amid hopes that future matching grants could create “a $100 million Housing Impact Fund dedicated to lasting change.”

“As part of CFT’s five-year strategic plan, we’re taking on a new initiative to increase our investments in housing, in alignment with our focus on health, wealth, living, and learning,” CFT Board Chair Connie Blass O’Neill said in a statement. “Housing is a central challenge impacting each of these focus areas, and if we can’t address our local housing crisis, we can’t effectively meet our community’s needs.”   

O’Neill said CFT is aligning its efforts around expanding housing access with the city of Dallas and other key partners. “We know when we work together, we’ll see better outcomes,” she said.

CFT President and CEO Wayne White discussing the Housing Impact Fund before a large audience last Thursday. [Photo: CFT]

One of the reasons the prices of houses and apartments have outpaced incomes, CFT said, is because the North Texas region isn’t producing enough housing to meet demand. As a result, the average home in DFW costs more than four times the median household income and the region loses thousands of affordable rental units each year, the organization noted.

‘A troubling trend’

“We’re on a troubling trend. We didn’t build fast enough to keep up with North Texas’ rapid growth and the demand to live here,” said Cullum Clark, director of the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative. “We have a number of our residents living in, by modern standards, homes and units that aren’t fit for human habitation, and in other cases just not nearly as good as we might hope for in our city.”

Speaking at the announcement, Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said, “When we talk about attracting investment, growing our workforce, improving public safety, and building stronger families—it all comes back to this question: Can people afford to live in the city they serve, the city they love, and the city they call home?”

“Right now, too many Dallas residents are being priced out or pushed out—locked out of ownership, stability, and opportunity,” Tolbert added. “This isn’t just a housing crisis. It’s an economic, health, and opportunity challenge. That’s why housing affordability and production are top priorities for the city of Dallas.”

Nadine Dechausay, chief strategy and insights officer at CFT, is spearheading CFT’s strategy.

“Communities thrive when residents at every income level have secure housing, a strong education, a voice in their community, a sense of safety, and access to resources that improve their health and wellbeing,” Dechausay said in a statement. “This is our North Star for building and growing sustainable communities. We have organizations and initiatives working across multiple different segments of housing. What has been asked of CFT is to address the issue of fragmentation, to take the lead in coordinating and aligning efforts, building a bigger platform for community-driven impact.”

Among the attendees at CFT’s Housing Impact Fund announcement were, foreground left to right, Councilmember Paul Ridley, Councilmember Gay Donnell Willis, Dallas City Manager Kim Bizor Tolbert, and DPD Chief Daniel C. Comeaux. [Photo: CFT]

‘Room to be bold’

Wayne White, president and CEO at Communities Foundation of Texas, called the foundation’s commitment extraordinary.

“We recognize that as the largest community foundation in Texas with a nearly 75-year history in North Texas, we have room to be bold,” White said. “Our board of trustees have committed an extraordinary $50 million of CFT funds over the next five years to help address our city’s housing challenges. We believe, with the partnership of other foundations, fundholders, corporations, banks, policymakers, and community leaders, that we will match that investment, creating a $100 million Housing Impact Fund dedicated to lasting change.”

White emphasized the importance of strategy.

“Our role as a community foundation will be threefold: to collaborate, to convene, and to co-invest,” he said. “Through ‘patient capital,’ we aim to strengthen the housing ecosystem—advancing policy, production, and preservation.”

CFT said its initial housing strategy centers around three pillars: partnership and policy, production, and preservation. The foundation said this combination of strategies has proven effective in other cities.

‘Partnerships and policy’ pillar

The “partnerships and policy” pillar centers around convening the public-private sector to collaborate and improve systems. CFT said one of the first elements has been establishing HouseDTX, a new network of funders, advocates, planners, and community leaders that will elevate housing ecosystem work throughout the city. HouseDTX will work to advance housing policy and practices, and the alliance intends to release a housing scorecard next year that will track progress towards filling housing gaps and stabilizing housing stock.

HouseDTX is led by Dechausay, Clark, Ashley Brundage of Habitat for Humanity, Ashley Fores of Child Poverty Action Lab, Bryan Tony of the Dallas Housing Coalition, and Ruben Landa, Brian Keith, and Shane Phillips of the Greater Dallas Planning Council.

‘Preservation pillar’

CFT said the “preservation” pillar centers around ensuring that existing housing units can remain affordable, safe, and well-maintained. It said one of the first elements has been partnering with The Real Estate Council (TREC) and JP Morgan Chase to establish the Dallas Community Land Trust. It said a community land trust model has been helpful in many other regions, including in other areas in Texas.

“The Community Land Trust is a new form of ownership that allows access to more people. It opens that door and unlocks the dream of home ownership for more families,” Stephanie Champion, board chair of the Dallas Community Land Trust, said in a statement.

CFT said that Frazier Revitalization recently contributed the first two homes to the Dallas Community Land Trust.

‘Production pillar’

The “production” pillar centers around increasing the supply of homes that are accessible to more people.

The foundation said that includes partnerships with mission-aligned community developers and builders, incubating innovative construction methods, and providing access to low-cost capital through new loan funds, including the use of program-related investments or “PRIs.”

PRIs serve as recyclable philanthropic capital, expected to be paid back by a certain time, usually at a below-market interest rate, the foundation said.

Funding organizations and initiatives

CFT said its Housing Impact Fund was created to deliver low-cost, recyclable capital to the local housing sector, enabling developers to build more.

“This fund allows us to have an immediate impact on housing production, while learning alongside others. It allows us to work with and co-fund alongside partners who’ve already been making housing-related investments such as the Muse Foundation, Meadows Foundation, and Rees-Jones Foundation,” Dechausay said.

In the past several months, CFT has granted more than $4 million in aligned grant funding:

Community Investments:

Dallas Economic Development Corp.: $1.5 million grant for operating support over three years
Downtown Dallas Inc.: $1.5 million over two years for implementation of the Safe in the City initiative

 
Partnerships & Policy:

Greater Dallas Planning Council: $50,000 grant to build consensus-based housing recommendations
Dallas Housing Coalition: $25,000 grant for operating support

 
Production:

Dallas Housing Opportunity Fund – $500,000 grant to Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) for a recyclable capital grant that will produce units of rental housing. In response to the DFW’s severe housing shortage, LISC, one of the nation’s largest Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI), was invited to come to Dallas to provide access to capital to build affordable homes and has been partnering with The Real Estate Council (TREC) since 2021. Through this partnership, 249 units have been created and are occupied, and another 424 units have received financing. The fund managers expect to have a total of 2,944 units constructed in the city of Dallas by 2028.
buildingcommunitiesWORKSHOP [bc] – $250,000 grant to support the DreamBUILD housing system startup, which utilizes modular construction to reduce costs and build homes faster and more efficiently.
Texas Education Opportunity Fund (TEOF) – $200,000 program-related investment (PRI) loan to the LoMaX to help build units of housing using innovative shipping container construction methods on S. Malcolm X Boulevard across from The Stewpot. LoMaX, a 21-unit residential project currently under construction, is the first of its kind in Texas to re-purpose shipping containers using off-site fabrication combined with conventional financing and social impact investment.
Additionally, CFT has created a $5 million PRI loan and grant fund led by CFT’s Housing Strategy committee that will allow for early investments while CFT is fundraising for the much larger investment fund it has created.

Preservation:

Dallas Community Land Trust – $10,000 grant to enable Frazier Revitalization to contribute the first two homes to the Trust.

“Our goal is to support development that leads to economic mobility and shared prosperity. We understand that it will take more than five years to achieve our goals. This is the beginning of a long-term effort to address a challenge that impacts our neighbors, our future economic growth, and our city as a whole,” White said.

CFT said it professionally manages more than 1,300 charitable funds and has awarded more than $3 billion in grants since its founding in 1953.

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