A growing number of renters in Dallas and Fort Worth are cost-burdened and struggling to get by, according to a report released last month by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Roughly 608,000 renter households in Dallas-Fort Worth—more than half of total renter households in the region—are spending more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities, and about a quarter are spending at least 50%, the report found.
Although rents have stabilized as of late, they’re still considerably higher than they were before the pandemic began. According to the Harvard report, the median renter monthly housing costs in Dallas-Fort Worth is $1,472 per month, a significant increase from before the pandemic.
Data from ApartmentList.com shows that rents in Dallas and Fort Worth are up by over 20% since March 2020.
Faced with a growing housing crisis, the Dallas City Council is beginning to take steps to address the cost of rent and the lack of affordable housing. Last week, council members received a staff briefing on ways the city could increase the supply of affordable homes.
Potential zoning reforms could make it easier for developers to build homes by reducing minimum lot sizes and allowing multiplexes in single-family neighborhoods. The city also appears set to earmark nearly $61 million of a $1.25 billion bond package to affordable housing–the highest amount to ever be allocated to the issue–but housing advocates say that it’s still less than what is needed to solve Dallas’ housing crisis. They campaigned for months to try and convince council members to allocate $200 million.
“Housing costs will continue to increase in Dallas in a more dramatic rate, and our families who are bigger, our families who are working one job might have to get a second job to not be overburdened by what they’re paying for housing,” Bryan Tony, one of the Dallas Housing Coalition’s lead organizers, said at the council meeting last Wednesday.
In October, Fort Worth’s Neighborhood Services department adopted a five-year roadmap to address the growing housing crisis in the area, as well as to help families find affordable housing and eventually achieve home ownership.
Some of the ideas in the plan include expanding programs to help residents afford their homes, creating community land trusts to ensure some homes always remain affordable, and establishing a land bank to acquire foreclosed properties so new housing can be built.
The report also calls for continued investment in underserved neighborhoods in the area.
“[We’re] right at the doorstep of an affordable housing crisis so we want to be proactive in addressing that and we think this gives us a roadmap to address those concerns,” Victor Turner, director of Fort Worth’s Neighborhood Services, said in August.
Soaring rent prices aren’t just affecting those in Dallas-Fort Worth. According to the Harvard study, more than half of Texas’ 4.2 million renter households spend more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. Of that figure, 1.1 million are considered “severely cost-burdened,” meaning that they spend at least half of their income on rent and utilities.
Rent prices are hitting low-income households the hardest. Nearly 90% of the state’s renter households making $29,999 or less annually were considered cost-burdened, according to the report. These pressures also fall disproportionately on Black and Hispanic households, who are more likely than their white and Asian counterparts to be overly burdened by the cost of living.
“Housing instability and housing insecurity is higher than it’s ever been,” Ben Martin, research director for Texas Housers, a research and advocacy group, said. “Even as rents have stabilized, they’ve stabilized at this level that’s just completely unsustainable and unmanageable for low-income households.”
Rent trends in Texas are in line with trends across the United States. Mortgage rates are nearing 8% and with steadily rising home prices and the lowest inventory of homes for sale in over a decade, the housing market is increasingly pricing out working and middle-class families.
