Unfair Park from p4 by several years, the pandemic,” Crone said. “That’s just the product of an aging workforce that’s retiring, our country’s in- ability to have a coherent immigration pol- icy to help with it and the inability, although it’s improving on this front a bit, to focus on training of the construction trades that’s needed to get the next genera- tion of our workforce out there and being part of the industry. “When you combine that with the fact that we’ve added a million people or more in the last decade, it creates that perfect storm.” Then, there are supply chain issues. According to 2021 U.S. Census data, the state’s population has grown by 650,000 in the last five years and that growth is expected to continue. With that being the case, Crone said, “I don’t see the situation or the fundamentals improving any. That’s why I’m hoping that, to the extent we can, we can keep building and get that supply out there because there will definitely be the demand for it.” Crone said zoning reform is one of the biggest things that can be done locally to help speed the process along. “I think we have an obligation to look at, especially around here, the exclusionary history of zoning,” he said. “That history is still being written in many cities.” The whole process could be a lot more straightforward, he said. “Most of the time, things have to be negotiated, many times to the nth degree, and that takes a lot of time,” he said. “That adds a lot of expense and there’s a better way to do it. I hope that Dal- las and others will take the lead or even take the cue of other cities that have looked at this issue and applied it here because that sure would help.” But, a speedier zoning process doesn’t mean squat when you don’t have the man- power or materials to build. “I’m still hearing every day from builders who can’t find windows in a timely manner or doors, garage doors. It still feels like we’re playing Whac-A-Mole with whatever issues are happening in the supply chain,” he said. “It’s manifested with different products at different times, but collectively, it’s slowed down the homebuilding timeframe.” It makes for a nerve racking experience for prospective homeowners. “When you put yourself in the shoes of a prospective homeowner, you can’t get your mortgage or your permanent financing until very close to the time that the home is com- plete,” Crone said. “So, you’re sitting here riding the same rollercoaster as your builder trying to figure out when this can get done and hoping it’s going to happen before the next interest rate increase. That’s where there’s consternation on both sides of it, both with the builder trying to find these things and the homeowner hoping they do so they can lock in financing for what they can afford.” Some, including builders, are flocking to 6 the suburbs in search of affordability. It can be just as difficult to build in the suburbs, Crone said, but you can often get more bang for your buck. Sometimes, he said, the only way you can build affordably is when you’re building in the suburbs. “For example, I never thought we were going to be looking at places like Terrell and Forney as quick as we were as growth ar- eas,” Crone said. “But that’s a case just out of necessity because all of these other factors have made housing more expensive. The only thing we can control, especially in this area, is where we build those communities.” Crone said he thinks some things will start to return to their pre-pandemic state, but the industry will still be left with the problems that have been brewing over the last decade and the uncertainties of today’s economy. Even after supply chain issues get resolved, and Crone thinks they will, the in- dustry will still be suffering from a labor shortage. However, as people try to build more af- fordable homes, they’re often up against people who don’t want to see that growth in their backyards. “Another problem that’s kind of lurking on the horizon is just the anti growth atti- tudes that we see,” Crone said. “Those don’t fall on political lines. They’re just as com- mon in progressive jurisdictions as they are in conservative ones, and that can be a real problem too.” He said this comes up often in local zon- ing hearings with residents worried about how certain developments could affect their property values. “That puts real pressure on local elected officials who realize that there’s a very low participation in these elections and that these growth issues can galvanize opposition against them,” Crone said. “Put it another way, I think a lot of people realize and under- stand. Maybe they have children or grand- children that are struggling much more so to get a home than they did a few decades ago. So, they understand there’s a housing short- age and a housing crisis, but then if somebody wants to build a fourplex down the street, they’ll be the first ones to call their council members, go to the meetings and oppose that coming down the street. “So, they’ll acknowledge the problem, but they don’t really want to help be part of the solution. We’re seeing that in the city of Dallas as much as we’re seeing it out in some of the more traditionally conservative sub- urbs both in this area and around the state.” Whatever the cause, when home prices go up, they’re less attainable for more peo- ple, Crone said, and more attainable homes are what made Dallas what it is today. “That’s what our market has really been known for: being much more attainable than the place that people are here from. So, if we don’t think about it that way, we may see the end of our days as a leading market.” While some may be able to pinch their pennies, cutting back on discretionary spending to accommodate for the increases in recent years, people on fixed incomes, like Hernandez, face a harsher reality. They never had much room for discretionary spending in their budget to begin with, so there isn’t a lot to cut out to make up the dif- ference. According to the National Council on Ag- ing, an organization that advocates for peo- ple 65 and older, the average monthly benefit for SSI is $624 and $1,223 for SSDI as of January. The maximum amount you can get on SSI is between $841 and $1,261 de- pending on marital status and income. You can get as much as $3,345 on SSDI depend- ing on your work history. Hernandez gets about a grand a month from SSDI. Lisa Marshall, the advocate with Fight- ing Homelessness, said the Oakridge Apart- ment residents have had trouble finding new housing. Most options are out of their price range or too far away from family or service that help support them. “Now, these tenants are scattered throughout the city, they’re probably in en- campments or couch-surfing or whatever they’re doing. So, we just added to the total population of homelessness and we don’t have any solutions to remedy that.” ▼ IMMIGRATION FICTION FROM THE FRONTIER sial border crackdown as a state-led effort to do the federal government’s job. With November’s midterm elections get- S ting nearer, the governor is promoting the border operation more and more. As far as policies go, Operation Lone Star has proven popular with many Texans. Ac- cording to a poll published by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler in August, some 51% of Texans back the governor’s migration-related policies on the state’s border with Mexico. Even The News’ editorial board has thrown its weight behind Operation Lone Star, claiming earlier last month that it “isn’t perfect but it’s necessary.” Yet, the nebulous border operation, which is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, isn’t exactly what it seems. Sure, Abbott’s had thousands of National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety offi- cers sent to the state’s border with Mexico, but the results are another question. In part, that’s thanks to the price tag at- tached to Operation Lone Star. The gover- John Moore/Getty Images A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) boat patrols passes a Mexican fisherman on the Rio Grande in March 2021. nor has directed more than $4 billion to fund the effort, a sum critics say could be better spent elsewhere. In a statement to the Observer, the Texas Civil Rights Project’s Laura Peña said that “only a fraction of the resources Gov. Abbott wastes on criminalizing migrants” could in- stead “go a long way towards creating real solutions that protect, not demonize, the welfare of all people as they travel through Texas.” In April, Propublica, the Texas Tribune and The Marshall Project published a list of seven ways Abbott had “misled the public” about Operation Lone Star, including by hyping up arrests and claiming authorities were targeting gangs like MS13. Here are five additional bits of informa- BEHIND THE GOVERNOR’S RHETORIC, THE BORDER CRACKDOWN ISN’T ALL THAT HE’S MADE IT OUT TO BE. BY PATRICK STRICKLAND ince he launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has promoted the controver- tion the Republican governor, who’s made migration a centerpiece of his campaign, has misled the public about throughout Opera- tion Lone Star and the broader border clampdown. Returning migrants? In recent months, Abbott has started to boast of “returning” migrants to the border. The governor seems to imply that Texas au- thorities are pushing migrants back into northern Mexico, which, in many cases, would violate international law’s prohibi- tions on pushbacks. But Texas authorities aren’t pushing back migrants. In fact, as Abbott claims the Biden administration is engaging in a game of “catch and release” with migrants, the gov- ernor has directed DPS and National Guard to merely hand migrants over Border Patrol at official points of entry. On Sept. 20, Abbott posted a pair of pho- tos showing Texas DPS officers and Na- tional Guard detaining a group of migrants. “We put them behind bars, not catch & re- lease,” he wrote, in part. In July, the Observer asked Abbott’s press office for clarification on what the governor meant by saying Texas had been returning migrants to the border. In response, press assistant Haley Crow only sent a portion of a news release that said OCTOBER 6–12, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com
