Supreme Court Rules Dallas Low-Income Housing Program Created De-Facto Segregation

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Photo: Supreme Court of the United States

Photo: Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court made a long-awaited ruling on whether tax subsidies for low-income housing in Dallas created segregated neighborhoods. The Texas Tribune has the most detailed report on the ruling, in which the high court ruled 5 – 4 against the state of Texas.

Under the Low-Income Tax Credit program, run by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the state gives federal incentives to private developers to build or rehabilitate low-cost apartments, essentially engineering parts of a city’s geography.

The Inclusive Communities Project, a nonprofit devoted to fair housing issues, sued the TDHCA in 2009, arguing that the state doled out tax credits in Dallas in a way that packed minorities into poor neighborhoods and spared white neighborhoods from development of low-income housing. The result is that neighborhoods throughout Dallas remain segregated, the project argued.

We’ve talked before about how a massive, concentrated influx of public housing can affect a neighborhood, sometimes dragging down surrounding property values and creating a ghetto environment. One can hope that this will lead to a more inclusive plan to create and sustain economically diverse neighborhoods.

On the flipside, I’m sure that this ruling will have some wide-reaching affects on Dallas housing and the creation of new affordable developments in the city.

We’ll have more details and analysis as it becomes available.

 

 

Joanna England is the Executive Editor at CandysDirt.com and covers the North Texas housing market.

1 Comment

  1. suzy on June 25, 2015 at 1:09 pm

    if you want to work and earn the ability to actually buy a home with your own money, no one is stopping you!

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