Dallas Mayor: Only Way For Long-Term Housing Affordability Is To Have 'Build, Baby, Build Attitude'

8 hours ago

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing Wednesday, Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) asked Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson (R-TX) about ways to ensure long-term housing affordability.

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Transcript

00:00Chairman, thank you to the four of you for coming on out. Mayor Johnson. I wanted to just start with you

00:06in between fiscal year 2023 2024 your city received more than 31 million in federal funding through four

00:14Grant programs one of them was the home investment partnership

00:18I'm not too sure how much you're aware of how all that was used

00:22but I wanted to see whether or not you're able to speak to whether or not that was helpful and important for your city in

00:28terms of understand how to address the issue of

00:32Household a lot of building of homes. So over to you so I can't speak specifically to you know exactly

00:41What those funds went to in terms of directly contributing to the number of housing starts that you know

00:47Or attributable that over that period of time, but what I will say is this

00:51in a more general sense, I think there's a whole long list of

00:59federal housing programs

01:02That we've used over the years

01:06Mostly focused on the construction of multi-family and rental housing units that I

01:13think we've sort of

01:16Learned over the years that they're they're just not that efficient at delivering at the end of the day

01:23The number of housing units that we we need to move the needle on affordability

01:28So I don't want to say these programs don't work. I want to say that depends on how you define working. I

01:36Think when we look at you know, creating housing year-over-year in Dallas using some of these programs in the you know

01:4534,000 unit type of range when you have the need for maybe

01:4950,000 60,000 or so units

01:51It's just not enough

01:53and so I think what I want to emphasize to the committee and I definitely appreciate the opportunity to be here to speak to

02:00this is

02:02It's not about the fact that these existing programs

02:05are

02:07Unable to create a housing start

02:09It's about the fact that they are they will never be as

02:12Effective at creating the housing at scale that we need to actually move affordability in the right in the right direction

02:18But then then actually

02:20Impacting the supply side. I agree with you

02:23And I think there's unanimity here in this room that you know

02:25We need to make sure that we're sending those signals and and trying to address the supply side

02:30I guess what I'm trying to think through is

02:32How do we make sure that as we spurred building and development that we're?

02:38spurring

02:40Diversity of types of homes that are being built because you know, we struggled with that here in New Jersey in my home

02:46State where a lot of the incentives for building is to build

02:50Very large houses and very expensive condos and not as much on the affordability side

02:55So I was just trying to get a sense from you like what are the tools that help can make sure that that affordable homes?

03:00Are being built and not just you know, some of the most expensive stock, right?

03:05well again, I think this is where I have a philosophical difference with some with some folks about

03:11Whether or not you can just set out to build an affordable home without

03:16Getting involved in the market in ways that are counterproductive. I do think that the affordability of homes is related to

03:24the supply and demand issue and

03:27What I would say in a city like Dallas, which is almost 400 square miles, which has some

03:32more vacant land in it to build on and most American cities have available to it is that

03:38We are not

03:40Utilizing to the full extent that we can just building. I'd say let's start with single-family

03:45We could be building a lot more single-family that would drive down the cost of housing for for everyone

03:51Without going without setting out from the outset and trying to artificially cap the cost of it and saying, you know

03:55This will only be we only let someone charge someone X amount of dollars to to pay for a house like this

04:03I

04:04Don't think that those types of programs work

04:07Long-term at some point the house turns over and it stops being an affordable house

04:10Even if you set out from the outset for it to be one

04:13The only thing that works long term. I truly believe at this point having lived this now

04:18Is to to have a build baby build attitude towards housing in your town. We're being

04:26inundated by Californians and Chicagoans in Dallas people who are coming because we're being economically successful and

04:33It looks like a bargain to them all of our housing stock

04:35but it's driving up the median cost for people who are not used to paying that and I think that the the approach we need

04:42to take is

04:44One that is more market-based and that unleashes the potential of the private sector to build more on our unused land

04:50Which is there's a lot of great. Thank you mayor. Are you back?

04:56Thank you, sir, next will be senator realms

Dallas Mayor: Only Way For Long-Term Housing Affordability Is To Have 'Build, Baby, Build Attitude'

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