Zoning Reform Can Reduce Homelessness

In December, the Dallas Morning News reported the story of Diamond Wallace, who—after losing his housing when his grandmother died—experienced years of homelessness before finally finding a one-bedroom apartment with the help of an affordable housing provider. Wallace told the paper that with the stability of a home, he’s now interviewing for jobs and saving up for a car. Expanding housing options for people like Wallace, and preventing homelessness from occurring in the first place, are what we—the executive director of a homelessness nonprofit and a housing researcher—are working toward.

Analysts have consistently found that the supply of housing available relative to need drives housing costs. When policymakers reform zoning to make homes more widely available, there’s less competition for housing, and landlords risk losing tenants if they raise rents. But when the demand for housing outstrips supply, prices go up, and the buyer or renter who can pay the most gets the home—while those who can’t afford the market rate end up having to share housing with others, displaced, or even living on the streets.

Dallas has taken steps to tame homelessness, but the city still has about 4,300 unhoused residents. And thousands of other people in the city are strapped with high housing costs, one setback away from losing their home.

Longtime Dallas residents will tell you that it wasn’t always this way. In 2015, Dallas rents averaged $1,120 per month—a little lower than rents in Houston. But from 2015 to the start of 2023, Dallas’ average monthly rent rose $643 while Houston's only rose by $382—a difference of more than $3,000 per year. Over that same period, homelessness dropped 29% in Houston but rose 35% in Dallas.

How did Dallas’ housing get more expensive than Houston’s? Houston added 10.2% to its housing stock from 2015 to the end of 2022 compared with 6.9% in Dallas. If Dallas had built as much as Houston, it would have nearly 19,000 additional homes today.

Houston reduced its minimum lot size from 5,000 square feet to 1,400 square feet in the central city in 1998—and then citywide in 2013. Meanwhile, Dallas’ minimum lot size remains 7,500 square feet throughout much of the city. Houston’s changes meant that people weren’t forced to buy more land than they wanted or could afford and made the smaller lots viable for townhouses; more than 80,000 such houses have been built, with prices largely within reach for middle-income households. Adding housing has kept Houston affordable compared with other large cities; from 2000 to 2021 the city also added more Hispanic residents than other large U.S. cities and added Black residents while other large U.S. cities have lost them.

In stark contrast, San Francisco and New York City have added little housing over the last decade, consistently permitting housing growth far below 1% per year. The predictable result is that median rents in both cities top $3,000 per month, homeownership is out of reach for most, and homelessness rates are 20 times higher than in Houston.

Dallas is not alone in struggling with housing affordability and homelessness: Policymakers and communities around the U.S. are debating zoning obstacles—such as parking mandates, apartment bans, and lot size minimums—that make housing costly to build. Their choices will determine whether our country’s cities and towns embrace affordability like Houston or instead fail to act and become more like San Francisco—and whether we Americans address our homelessness crisis through zoning reform or instead leave our middle class struggling and our most vulnerable residents slipping through the cracks.

This op-ed was first published in the Dallas Morning News on February 19, 2024.

Lisa Marshall is the executive director of Fighting Homelessness. Alex Horowitz directs The Pew Charitable Trusts’ housing policy initiative.