A throughline of Dallas’ population growth has been the tension between single-family neighborhoods and multifamily construction, and the stakes are high as limited housing stock makes living in the city a challenge for many.
While it’s no secret that dense projects near single-family homes tend to draw opposition, officials are looking to use zoning reform to make it easier to build duplexes, triplexes, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in such neighborhoods — a “gentle density” approach, as it’s been called.
Last Friday at the Dallas Housing Coalition’s second annual Housing Summit, a number of panelists showcased their efforts to deliver creative “missing middle” projects that fit the gentle density bill.
Benje Feehan, executive director of the Dallas-based nonprofit buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, touted the group’s experiment with duplex construction, testing whether building for an on-site landlord could open the door to affordable homeownership and a workable gentle density model.
The nonprofit built a roughly 1,600-square-foot duplex on a cluster housing lot, designing a three-bedroom main unit and a smaller one-bedroom. bcWORKSHOP’s objective was to see if they could design and build the project at a price point where an 80% AMI homebuyer could afford it after offsetting their mortgage by renting the smaller unit to someone earning around 30% AMI.
Benje Feehan, Stephanie Behring, Paul Carden, Monte Anderson (from left to right)
“We’ve got a lot of relationships in and around the city and a really important one with the UT Arlington School of Architecture, so we partnered with them a couple of years ago and just ran a really great little community design process,” he said.
bcWORKSHOP pulled it off, being able to list the home for $285,000. They declined investor offers and screened for income to make sure the buyer was in the bracket they wanted. A young woman who moved to Dallas from rural Mississippi ended up buying the house. She told Feehan she was going to live in the smaller unit and rent out the main.
“Market rent for the large unit is $1,600 a month. The underwriters at the bank recognized forward income for her in underwriting, which was a really big win and some good precedent for us all,” Feehan said. “So running the math on this … we think we just developed a home ownership option for less than $950 a month through this model.”
On the for-profit side of things, developers Paul Carden and Monte Anderson offered their perspectives and shared their respective approaches to housing delivery.
Carden’s Venture Commercial managed to execute on an all-townhome project totaling 38 units in East Oak Cliff’s Brentwood neighborhood after an initial proposal for a medium-density, 60-plus-unit development garnered community opposition. The design focused on matching the scale of the neighborhood’s historic homes.
He pointed out how the neighborhood has been undergoing significant gentrification, with teardown after teardown being replaced with significantly bigger builds.
“One thing we need to consider is just looking at the overall function of the neighborhood prior to gentrification and figuring out how to make sure that the function of being a middle-income or moderate-income neighborhood is still able to exist, even if the form may sometimes need to adjust a bit,” Carden said.
Venture Commercial managed to deliver for households earning 90-160% AMI.
For his part, Anderson showcased how he’s been simultaneously helping entrepreneurs with wealth creation while penciling in some housing units where they can fit. He pointed to a building in downtown Duncanville he outfitted to accommodate retail with a bit of housing on the side.
“We turned that little building into two retail spaces — one’s a barbershop and one’s a fruitstand — and then in the back are two real small units, little flats, and they face the residential neighborhood,” he said.
A longtime commercial broker turned developer, Anderson said his mission pairs profitability with doing good, centering on helping entrepreneurs gain ownership rather than simply providing cheaper housing. “Affordable housing is a symptom,” he said. “The real problem is not having enough money.”
Monte Anderson, Benje Feehan, Stephanie Behring, and Paul Carden (from left to right)
He also showcased what he calls a “roommate house,” a 3,000-square-foot single-family home he retrofitted into multiple, flexible living suites while staying within single-family zoning rules. Since you can have up to four non-relative roommates in Dallas, he brainstormed a design based on flex spaces and high-powered wet bars instead of kitchens.
Stephanie Behring, architect and design partner at Re Studio Architecture & Real Estate, posited that the issue of missing middle housing options is in many ways already settled.
“When I hear the question can multifamily and single-family housing coexist, it’s sort of predicated on the fact that it’s not already,” she said. “There are quite a few neighborhoods throughout the Metroplex where they coexist naturally and beautifully.”
She pointed to Kidd Springs in North Oak Cliff, where there are a lot of three- and four-unit buildings tucked among single-family homes, some nearly a century old. Many of them date back to the 1920s through the 1940s, a time when zoning rules allowed a greater variety of homes to be built on small lots.
Despite fears that apartments bring significant density, the average number of housing units per lot in the area is just 1.65, Behring said — a gentle level of density that has existed for generations.
“They can coexist. They’ve always coexisted. Let’s allow them to coexist again,” she said.