4 December 21 - 27, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Average, Not Affordable How much space can you rent in Dallas for $1,700 per month? BY SIMONE CARTER M any Dallas residents are feel- ing the pinch in terms of housing. The rent is too damn high, and the square footage is too damn low. Folks living close to the city’s urban center can generally expect to see less bang for their buck, sad to say. A recent analysis of 50 U.S. cities by RentCafe, a nationwide apartment search website, breaks down what a Dallas renter can get with $1,700, around the na- tional average rent. RentCafe examined 75 Dallas ZIP codes and found that 46 of them provide more space for $1,700 when compared with the national average of roughly 950 square feet. Take, for example, Lancaster’s 75134. It boasts the greatest amount of apartment leg- room in the Dallas area: 1,414 square feet. That’s not a mansion by any means, but it’s still more than double what you could get in 10033, “Manhattan’s most generous” ZIP code. “On the flip side, in 75205 (including High- land Park and University Park), the average rent of $1,700 will stretch only as far as 539 square feet — the tightest space you’ll find in Dallas for this price,” RentCafe continued in a news release. “Would you give up some room for a 15-minute commute to downtown in one of Texas’ top-notch neighborhoods?” RentCafe’s analysis comes as Mayor Eric Johnson said during his state of the city ad- dress that funding for parks is his priority in the upcoming bond package, not affordable housing. Yet advocates pushing for more af- fordable homes have blasted Dallas City Council for putting “parks over people.” It makes sense that many renters would feel squeezed out of the housing picture. RentCafe broke down some Dallas-specific findings via email, highlighting several ZIP codes that provide the most and least amount of room. Most Space 1. 75134: 1,414 square feet for $1,700 2. 75233: 1,342 square feet for $1,700 3. 75241: 1,320 square feet for $1,700 Least Space 1. 75205: 539 square feet for $1700 2. 75202: 685 square feet for $1700 3. 75219: 690 square feet for $1700” As for what you can get in 75201, where the Observer’s headquarters are located? A decidedly modest 702 square feet. RentCafe’s info helps lay bare a particular trend in the local rental housing market: Big D is turning “increasingly unaffordable,” said Bryan Tony with the Dallas Housing Coalition. The way he sees it, Dallas needs to invest in housing if it doesn’t want to lose its cost-of-living edge. Otherwise, we could po- tentially start to parallel other pricey urban markets, such as Austin and metros on the West and East coasts. When someone is cost-burdened with housing, it means that they’re paying at least 30% of their income toward keeping a roof over their heads, Tony said. So, a household earning Dallas’ median income of $58,200 would ideally not spend more than $1,455 on monthly rent. “That is why many people from Dallas are moving to neighboring cities,” Tony said via email, adding that Kaufman County saw the state’s largest population boom, 8.9%, from 2021 to 2022. “The City of Dallas has only grown only 0.4% in population since 2020. It is due to a lack of affordable housing.” For most Dallas residents, a $1,700 monthly payment would not be considered affordable housing, he said. Certain renters are especially struggling to get by. Nearly 75% of single par- ents with children in Dallas are considered cost-burdened, and the same is true for more than 50% of senior renters, Tony said. The aforementioned interactive map shows the highest demand for “Dallas’ ur- ban core, ZIP codes located along busy transportation corridors, and zip codes with larger amounts of jobs,” Tony said. A limited amount of multifamily housing is available within these ZIP codes. “Dallas must consider how we can make more housing available across the city of Dallas, so renters can have more options outside the urban core,” he said. “Unfortu- nately, 86% of Dallas’ land is zoned for sin- gle-family, detached housing, making it difficult for households to find rental oppor- tunities when homeownership is so far out of reach. “A family of four would have to earn $135,000 a year to afford the average price of a home in Dallas, $405,000,” he continued. A Rent.com report from earlier this year found that Dallas is the third-priciest metro area in the South, after Nashville and Austin. The median rent at the time for Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington was $145 higher than the national median cost. There’s a large gap between housing sup- ply and demand for Dallas’ lowest-income renters, or households making at or below 50% of area median income, said Ashley Flores, senior director of the Child Poverty Action Lab. By 2030, this disparity is ex- pected to climb by an additional 50,000 rental units to a supply gap of around 83,500. Rent increases started to accelerate once the pandemic began, according to a detailed CPAL report released earlier this year. Wages have grown a bit, but not enough to keep up with rising rents. And higher-in- come folks who would have normally en- tered homeownership by now are instead remaining renters, putting “pressure on the rental market.” Paying $1,700 in rent is still far out of reach for many people, particularly given that the DFW area has a high prevalence of low-wage jobs, Flores said. She also posed a relevant hypothetical: “Yes, this is sort of the average [national] rent, but who is able to af- ford it?” ▼ CITY HALL ARE YOU BLUFFING? DALLAS CONSIDERS ALLOWING POKER HOUSES TO STAY AS ‘PRIVATE GAME CLUBS.’ BY JACOB VAUGHN A fter years of back-and-forth, Dallas is still eyeing a legal path forward for poker clubs. The city granted a certificate of occu- pancy to its first legal poker room, Texas Card House, in 2019. The club operated without a hitch until 2021, when the city re- voked its certificate even though nothing had changed about the business. It did the same thing to another local poker club called Shuffle 214. The clubs appealed to the city’s Board of Adjustment and got their cer- tificates back. This led the city to sue its own Board of Adjustment, claiming it had abused its power when it restored the certificates. District Judge Eric Moyé ruled in the city’s favor in November 2022, deciding that the board had abused its power. Texas Card House appealed, and the litigation is ongo- ing. Dallas has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to resolve the matter. When the City Council moved to approve more spending on the suit in late January, council member Chad West asked staff to look into a legal land use category for poker clubs in the city. City staff finally gave a brief update to the Government Performance and Financial Management Committee on last week. Bertram Vandenberg, interim chief of general counsel for the city attorney, said he didn’t want to get too deep into the sub- stance of the potential change because of pending litigation, but he did offer some de- tails. The attorney’s office and Planning & Urban Design Department are looking into a land use categorization for private game clubs beyond just poker. “A private game club means a private place that is only open to its members that primarily offers competitive gaming facili- ties including games of skill such as ax throwing, darts or shuffle board,” Vanden- berg said. “Any games played with cards, dice, balls or any other gambling device as defined in the Texas Penal Code Chapter 47 are allowed only as a single accessory use.” He said the definition of a private game club is what the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee (ZOAC) will start with when considering how to proceed with the pro- posed land use. West asked if implementing the new land use would eliminate the litiga- tion. Vandenberg said he didn’t want to an- swer the question because of the lawsuit. Council member Cara Mendelsohn asked if ZOAC could consider allowing the clubs only in the city’s Central Business District. Vandenberg replied that the location of these clubs is something ZOAC will be look- ing into. How did the poker clubs get here in the first place if they need a special land use to operate? In 2019, the city’s legal minds had a different interpretation of the state’s gam- bling laws. An exception for gambling was carved out in state law that some say makes poker clubs legal. According to that viewpoint, such clubs are legal as long as the game is be- ing played in a private place, every player has an equal chance of winning and the house doesn’t take a cut of the bets. The lo- cal clubs were considered private places be- cause they charged a membership fee to players. Unsplash Affordable housing advocates say that there’s plenty of work to be done in Dallas. | UNFAIR PARK | >> p6
