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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NewsTranscript
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