Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Dallas Fort Worth Regional Housing Consortium is a coalition of practitioners that advocates for housing policy, research and education. <\/p>\n
The Dallas Housing Coalition has been successful at grassroots advocacy and broadening the range of voices included in this conversation.<\/p>\n
The Greater Dallas Planning Council announced its housing initiative in August and will seek to build a coalition of industry professionals that can offer their expertise. <\/p>\n
City of Dallas leadership announced a restructuring of the housing department that aims to deliver efficiency and streamline service. <\/p>\n
Even suburban cities such as Farmers Branch are expanding innovative workforce housing strategies using city-owned land. <\/p>\n
Philanthropy is stepping up to the plate with the Communities Foundation of Texas announcing its plan to increase investment in housing at the end of October. <\/p>\n
This positive momentum from diverse players addressing the supply, stability and subsidy of housing gives me hope that we can move the needle in a significant way. Our ecosystem must be as diverse as our scorecard because it\u2019s impossible for one group to make a perfect score. Each individual stakeholder playing their part with an understanding of the importance of other players is the winning synergy. <\/p>\n
Need for neighborhoods<\/p>\n
While the ecosystem is building out, it\u2019s important that practitioners model holistic perspectives. The housing umbrella is big enough to shelter disagreements on approaches, but there can never be discord over the need for diversity of housing.<\/p>\n
Some of this contention was seen in the fight over the Forward Dallas plan. Neighborhood groups teamed up against housing practitioners. The debate became about density versus neighborhoods. But in reality, they should both be on the same team.<\/p>\n
One aspect of a comprehensive approach to housing is taking advantage of the stability of current supply. This includes extending the life of naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH). That may mean, for instance, repairing the roof of the home of a senior citizen who wishes to age in place. We must prioritize existing neighborhoods, even above new construction, since they are typically an efficient use of subsidy. <\/p>\n
Good density in the wrong place is as much of a loss for our city as missing out on density in the right place. Housing solutions are interdependent and need each other to be successful. <\/p>\n
When you approach solutions to drive housing success from a holistic perspective it guarantees neighborhoods are protected and grow. Any imbalance of equilibrium to that rule will cause one side to feel threatened.<\/p>\n
Excellent examples<\/p>\n
The Resource Center\u2019s Oak Lawn Place is a $31 million, 84-unit fully affordable development and a perfect example of a balanced scorecard of housing success. CeCe Cox, the peerless nonprofit veteran and CEO of the Resource Center, knocked it out of the park. The project is directly behind the Resource Center\u2019s health clinic and across the street from a DART rail stop. Multiple sources of capital from public and private players delivered new housing supply as well as community stability. <\/p>\n
CeCe is not the only nonprofit leader proving up this model. Randy Bowman\u2019s AT LAST! occupies the intersection of educational outcomes and housing stability for youth. <\/p>\n
Other service-oriented nonprofits and religious groups in our city are exploring ways to use their land holdings.<\/p>\n
This is how you win, with individual communities addressing their own unique housing needs, more targeted resources, fewer roadblocks, a plan that approaches the problem from many different angles. <\/p>\n
My good friend and national nonprofit expert Suzanne Smith and I regularly grab dinner before attending SMU\u2019s Tate lectures. We are both Type A personalities who get a high from solving problems, so our dinner discussions are passionate, in-depth and aspirational.<\/p>\n
Last week, we talked about housing, and Suzanne delivered such an eloquent synopsis, I asked if I could quote her. <\/p>\n
\u201cDallas loves a silver bullet,\u201d she said. \u201cBut when it comes to affordable housing \u2014 or any community issue \u2014 there isn\u2019t one. These problems are complicated and complex. The only real solution is a systems approach: cross-sector coordination, long-term commitment and radical accountability. Until we do that, we\u2019ll keep falling short.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how we should score housing success in our city, because that\u2019s how everyone wins. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his book The Affordable City, Shane Phillips suggests a three-prong approach to solving a city\u2019s housing crisis:…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":295194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,11890,64684,1596,2556,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-295193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-commentary","10":"tag-contributing-columnists","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-development","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115356705251475806","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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