Dallas\u2019s housing crisis is not just framed by the steep shortage in housing units, but also a shortage of shared understanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Council members, developers, residents and advocates are all looking at the same problem through completely different lenses. And we are all paying for that confusion with 28,000 eviction filings in Dallas in 2025 (according to the Child Poverty Action Lab<\/a>), an 80% decline in new income-restricted housing units in Dallas from 2017 to 2023, as compared to the six years before that (according to the George W. Bush Institute<\/a>) and a higher first-time home buyer age of 40 nationwide (according to the National Association of Realtors). Honestly, it\u2019s hard for anyone to agree, let alone develop a comprehensive housing policy if the baseline narrative of the problems is too complex to decipher.<\/p>\n The confusion often starts at the foundation:\u00a0Are we considering\u00a0a social good,\u00a0a market transaction,\u00a0a wealth-building\u00a0opportunity,\u00a0a fiscal issue,\u00a0a neighborhood debate\u00a0or\u00a0all of those\u00a0at the same time? Depending on your lens, the same apartment complex can be a lifeline, a tax break, a neighborhood\u00a0eyesore\u00a0or the precipice of gentrification.\u00a0<\/p>\n Proponents of each of these perspectives support their framing with loads of data and terminology that only serve to preserve the logjam.\u00a0Over the years, housing veterans\u00a0get\u00a0frustrated and burned out, while housing newbies\u00a0are\u00a0confused as to why there\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0been progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n This became even more\u00a0evident\u00a0at\u00a0a recent\u00a0Dallas\u00a0City Council\u00a0briefing where,\u00a0for the first time in years,\u00a0the council heard from local to national housing experts on Dallas\u2019 housing crisis. The conversation was welcomed by many council members.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\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\u00a0council member Chad West said.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the same time,\u00a0council\u00a0member Cara Mendelsohn noted,\u00a0\u201cI want to start by thanking the city manager for putting this on a whole council briefing\u00a0\u2026\u00a0because we have a lot of new members both to the council but also to the housing committee. And what was happening is there were some\u00a0very different\u00a0policy ideas being expressed that I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0think the rest of the council understood.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, while there was a collective desire to have the conversation, other council members noted the complexity of the information and the need for more one-on-one\u00a0conversations to discuss the implications for their districts. Council\u00a0member\u00a0Bill\u00a0Roth said\u00a0the presentation was\u00a0\u201creally\u00a0excellent.\u00a0It\u2019s really enlightening to me.\u00a0But\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0also confusing to me because\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0a lot of\u00a0different aspects\u00a0to the issues that\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0bringing up. This is\u00a0a very complicated\u00a0and diverse\u00a0issue-based\u00a0discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n So\u00a0while\u00a0the\u00a0council appreciated the information,\u00a0the complexity of the\u00a0situation made\u00a0navigating strong solutions across a sprawling\u00a0city with diverse topography, infrastructure, investments,\u00a0incomes\u00a0and history feel\u00a0like an overwhelming task.\u00a0<\/p>\n Overwhelming is not impossible, though.\u00a0To\u00a0help Dallas move its\u00a0policy discussion forward,\u00a0I think we\u00a0have to\u00a0take it back to basics\u00a0\u2014 looking at pictures.\u00a0<\/p>\n Housing experts in several other cities have designed visual representations of their housing policies. Minneapolis and Raleigh, N.C., for instance, have resources that are especially helpful. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these\u00a0infographics might be worth a thousand hours of council debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Minneapolis\u2019 graphic<\/a>\u00a0outlines housing types\u00a0mapped to resident incomes, community partners,\u00a0funders and policies. In this format it becomes more evident that multifamily rental and single-family for-sale cross a range of household types but also need a range of partners from nonprofit and for-profit developers to service providers. In Dallas that would mean Housing Forward (addressing homelessness), the city of Dallas\u2019 downpayment assistance program (supporting new homeowners), zoning reform (easing new development) and infrastructure investment (incentivizing new construction) all belong on the same visual even though they cross departments, funding\u00a0strategies\u00a0and timelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n