Dallas City Council members said the city has a \u201chousing crisis\u201d at a briefing Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Over a nearly four-hour period, council members were briefed on the state of housing in the city and a new plan called Dallas is Home designed to encourage housing accessibility. Dallas residents \u2014 especially renters \u2014 are being squeezed by economic pressures and housing costs as wages remain stagnant, with a February report from the Child Poverty Action Lab finding that half of all renters in the city<\/a> spent more than 30% of their gross income on housing in 2023.<\/p>\n Home prices have also outpaced wage growth<\/a>. Dallas residents are renting in historically high numbers, including higher-end-households. That\u2019s a sign of declining homeownership, Cullum Clark, director of the Bush Institute\u2019s Southern Methodist University Economic Growth Initiative, told council members.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that we have lost a lot of our housing cost advantage relative to places elsewhere in the country also has diminished our competitive advantage in economic terms,\u201d Clark said. \u201cAnd we see that, for example, in very recent census data on people moving around the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Recent data released by the U.S. Census Bureau shows <\/a>that while the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro area gained the second-highest number of residents nationwide in 2025, Dallas County\u2019s population declined slightly.\u00a0<\/p>\n The crux of the crisis in Dallas, Clark told council members, is an issue felt nationwide<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe the evidence is overwhelming that the biggest driver of Dallas\u2019 affordability crisis is ultimately national: our country dramatically underbuilt housing over a number of years,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n Initial proposals for a new housing policy, Dallas is Home, were presented to council members<\/a> Wednesday as the basis for discussions that will lead to the final plan. City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said that Dallas is Home will borrow \u201con the best practices of previous policies while pursuing a multi-pronged approach\u201d to address development, affordability and homelessness.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a housing crisis in Dallas that we need to take seriously. I\u2019ve been trying to sound the alarm with some of you guys for years now, and I feel like today you\u2019ve really brought it to us,\u201d said Council member Chad West at the briefing.<\/p>\n \u2018They\u2019re Barely Making It\u2018<\/p>\n According to the Child Poverty Action Lab report<\/a>, economic constraints hit households earning 50% or less of the area median income the hardest. That\u2019s roughly $52,000 or less for a family of four, and in Dallas, they\u2019re spending close to half of their income on housing on average. The squeeze was felt most by families making less than 30% of the area median income, who, on average, spent nearly four-fifths of their income on housing. Assuming a 78% rent-to-income ratio, a household of four earning roughly $30,000 annually would have $567 left each month for healthcare and groceries.<\/p>\n Rental burdens fall disproportionately on older residents, single-parent households and Black residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most visible sign of cost burdens turning into cost crises came with the eviction statistics presented to the council. Close to 28,000 eviction notices were filed in Dallas in 2025, and filings have doubled since the end of COVID-era rent protections<\/a>.<\/p>\n Higher rates of eviction were seen in southern Dallas, District 10 in northeast Dallas and District 12 in Far North Dallas. The majority of the notices were filed with an attached dollar amount, most likely due to non-payment of rent, according to the presentation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just have so many apartments, and the apartments, to the point of the demographic study, the population are mostly service workers,\u201d Cara Mendelsohn, District 12\u2019s Council member,\u00a0 said. \u201cThey\u2019re barely making it.\u201d<\/p>\n