Podcast: Council Member Chad West ‘Our Lack of Housing Is the Crisis of the Future’

When Dallas homeowners hear the words denser zoning, they get nervous. A towering apartment next to their single-family home? But Dallas City Council Member Chad West is asking the hypothetical question, What if we considered selectively denser zoning like Austin today, or interestingly, looked back to Highland Park’s solution to affordable housing in the 1920s and 1930s? Duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes on the end blocks of Park Cities’ single-family streets were zoned and built to accommodate service staff a century ago, and they remain today. This denser zoning can accommodate students, teachers, and senior citizens today, West suggests.

On this episode of Dallas Dirt, West joins CandyDirt.com City Hall Editor April Towery for a frank discussion on the lack of affordable housing in Dallas. West gives a primer on the “minimum lot size” memorandum that caused a firestorm, calls out a “shady” meeting, and discusses priorities for an upcoming city bond — a hot topic being debated among the council right now.

“If we don’t address the lack of housing, workforce housing, housing for rent, and housing for sale in the city,” West says. “If we don’t take it seriously, we will end up like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, or New York City, where people are priced out.”

What's New in Affordable Housing: Hi-Fab Modular Homes – Dallas Dirt

Brent Jackson, founder of HiFab Homes, joins the Dallas Dirt podcast to discuss an innovative solution to affordable housing — high-quality, efficient, and well-designed modular homes. Headquartered in Grand Prairie, HiFab Homes has collaborated with Lake | Flato, the San Antonio-based architectural firm known for sustainable and modern design, to create these factory-produced homes. HiFab Homes prioritizes speed and design, with homes being built in 21 days on the line and 45 days in the field. HiFab Homes aims to reduce waste and environmental impact in the construction industry.

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About the podcast: Dallas Dirt is a weekly audio and video podcast hosted by Candy Evans. Listeners and viewers are invited to share their comments and suggestions at [email protected]. Dallas Dirt is accepting pitches for local Dallas and Texas-based podcast guests. PR requests and guest submissions may be emailed to [email protected]. Advertising and episode sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact [email protected] to inquire.

Episode Transcript

Note: these transcripts are auto-generated from the podcast audio and may contain slight transcription errors.

00:01
April Towery. I am the Dallas City Hall Reporter for CandysDirt and I’m your guest host first time ever today for Dallas Dirt and I’m here with Chad West. Honored to be here on your inaugural substitution for for candy today on Candies Dirt. Yeah so glad you’re here. So Chad is the District 1 City Councilman. This is his third term and he’s chairing the Government Performance and Financial

00:30
Nice job. The hardest committee name to say. Well, there’s like a couple more that are pretty difficult, but it’s not an easy one to say. We were basically the audit committee for the city. So anything that involves…

00:43
um, you know, revenue making money or auditing various city departments. That comes to my committee, which is made up of five council members. That’s a big one. It is. It’s the only one that’s enshrined in the charter. Um, it’s, it’s been, I don’t know why, but I know it’s been in there since longer than I’ve been paying attention to city government. I think there was probably some shenanigans back, back in the day that required council members to, to really pay more attention and not just rubber stamp what was going on as city government.

01:13
has survived in the charter through now. And we’ve taken it upon ourselves to dig into real estate issues, permitting, all the fun stuff that matters to me as a homeowner and as a developer and I think to a lot of other folks. You are a member of the Housing and Homeless Solutions Committee, but you’re not the chair of that. That’s correct. But you make sure these housing issues get before the committee that you do, Chair. Yeah, no, I think so.

01:43
Council back in 2019, the mayor, Mayor Johnson, appointed me to chair housing and homelessness solutions. And I took it, it wasn’t the one I wanted. I’ll be honest with you. I was more interested in transportation and economic development, but I got housing and homelessness. And I really took it upon myself to, to dive in and, and, and go deep. Um, mayors since moved on,

02:13
over the last few years that really the

02:18
The, I don’t want to say crisis. I don’t want to use that word, but the crisis of the future, I guess, if we, if we don’t address it for our city is, is the lack of housing, workforce housing, housing for rent, housing for sale in the city. If we don’t take it seriously, we will end up like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, New York city, where people are priced out. You see your homelessness numbers go up. I mean, that’s what all the experts are telling us. It’s not just me making up data. Um, you know, we’re hearing that when we’re getting briefed and.

02:48
And we have to take it seriously as a city. And that means investigating all policies that are available to us that are best practices throughout the country. And that means getting out of our comfort zone occasionally. So what are you going to do about it?

03:05
Well, I mean, where do you want to start? I think that the thing that might have gotten your attention was our lot size memorandum, you know, so the memorandum was filed and it simply seeks, if you, if you pull it up, um, it simply seeks to create a discussion, start talking about best practices. It doesn’t, as some people might say incorrectly, it doesn’t say we’re trying to come out and just demolish single family neighborhoods or put up apartments, you know, next to, next to your home.

03:35
completely not what it does. It simply asks to open a discussion, look at best practices nationwide on what other cities are doing on

03:45
Potentially reducing the required lot sizes in the city on the one hand on the other hand Allowing for gentle density in our neighborhoods where it makes sense So it’s a discussion for us to look at best practices. We have been talking about the first item We have a minimum lot size in the city of Dallas of 5,000 square feet. So that’s a 50 by 100 lot you drive into my neighborhood North Oak Cliff, okay

04:15
on the areas, excuse me, I represent. A lot of our neighborhoods there have those lot sizes. Winnetka Heights is a perfect example. Beautiful streets, wonderful homes, 1920s, 1930s architecture, with these perfect Norman Rockwell.

04:35
fences and lots exactly what you see on the cover one of those magazines right but not everybody wants that anymore You know we’re seeing from Millennials. They’re okay with less space. They don’t necessarily want

04:47
big yards. They’re interested in something different, a different kind of product. And these lot sizes that have been in the city of Dallas have existed from the 1950s and 1960s when our city was, was less than half the size it is now. And it was more of a suburban type city. We have changed since the 1950s and 60s. We’re a much different city. Now we’re going to be a much different city 40, 50 years in the future. And we need to at least talk about,

05:17
practices that other cities are looking at. So that’s minimum lot size. The other item is general density and that’s consideration for allowing on vacant lots, very clear about that, two plexes, three plexes, and four plexes to be built in context with the existing neighborhood. I referenced Winnneka Heights. Winnneka Heights is a

05:41
perfect example of a historic neighborhood in our city. And widely trumpeted by people is a great example of preserving the fabric of our city. If you walk down any street in Winnetka Heights, you will find duplexes, three and fourplexes.

05:58
six and eight plexes in some cases at the at the corners built in ways where they look like they belong and you wouldn’t even notice them if you weren’t looking for them. And you know where else you’ll see them? You’ll see them in Highland Park because when the in 1920s, 1910s when Highland Park was built for to service all these mansions on some of the side streets, you’ll have the duplexes, the triplexes, the eight plexes for the workers to live in. And they still survive today in a lot of a lot of parts of Highland Park.

06:28
20s and 30s they can work now and it’s a way to get our workforce, our aging seniors, our college kids who are coming on and starting their first job to provide them places to live in our city and not push them into the suburbs. Okay what’s your what’s your solution to how to implement this? It can it be we’ve heard people say they do not want a blanket citywide approach. Then how?

06:58
So I don’t think there’s a one size fits all for the whole city. I mean, you have neighborhoods in Preston Hollow, for example, that have multiple acre lots. You have, um, smaller lots in East Dallas and North Oak Cliff. Um, and so it putting in a, you know, small lot in, or a duplex zoning in certain, some of these neighborhoods may not make perfect sense. I want to understand how cities like Minneapolis, how Houston, how Austin have actually done this.

07:28
and made this contextually sensitive to the neighborhoods. I need staff to be able to brief us to do that. And that’s all we’re asking for. What happened at that December 19th Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee where…

07:45
You were not there. It was kind of called last minute. And we heard from some folks who were like, well, we can count to eight and see this is not going to happen. Was that kind of a shady setup? Or are there people that do not want that conversation about minimum lot size reduction to take place at all? Both. I think it was both a shady setup, and I think it was stopping the conversation before it even takes place.

08:15
But

08:18
Going back, it’s the fear mongering that is really putting a clamp on these discussions. It’s the neighbors that show up for this meeting that you were talking about, which was set up to fail from the beginning when it was set during a time when myself and another person on the memo were out of town and the chair knew that. And it was set up in a way where people who opposed this from the outright and don’t even want to talk about it were allowed a forum.

08:48
to come up there and complain and to set it up for failure. We’ve got to turn that around in our city. We’re a democracy. We are a place where we should be able to have a healthy discussion, and we may disagree. But we don’t want to shut people down without even having a conversation. That’s what bothers me about the whole process. What is your response to people who say that you are trying to?

09:14
make Dallas like Austin. It’s just not true. I mean, Austin is great in some ways. I don’t live there for a reason. I love Dallas. We’re not trying to emulate Austin, at least in my mind. But I will tell you on this issue, Austin is a little bit more at the forefront than we are. Austin has, is at worst crisis level of housing. Their housing prices are, are very high there. They’ve had a lot of tech companies move.

09:44
from California into the area and they’re trying to address some of the the affordability issues. Our average home price in the city of Dallas now is over $500,000. That’s up a couple hundred thousand dollars from when I started even on city council. It has skyrocketed in the last few years and you know why? It’s the it’s the COVID moves that have brought everyone here from the west coast and the east coast. We have a favorable economy and one of the reasons for that is we

10:14
have affordable housing. If we don’t have that, we do become like the West Coast or the East Coast. At least that’s what you know data will show. I want to talk about the bond a little bit. Yeah. And I…

10:29
We have some time to get into that. And the timing of it is interesting because I think y’all will be making a decision soon on when that election will be and how the money is gonna be divvied up. And that may have happened by the time this airs. But what are your priorities for the bonds? You’ve got about a billion dollars in change and where would you like to see a lot of that money go?

10:57
Where would your residents like to see a lot of that money go? Yeah, so the city, we have 1.1 billion is what was proposed. I believe the city manager’s got capacity to go up to 1.25. So we have a little bit of room to add a few more things in there. What…

11:14
you probably won’t hear publicly, but you’ll hear if you talk to your city council members is we have got to deliver on some things for our districts. We’ve got, we are expected to bring home a few projects, all of us. It doesn’t matter who it is. Citywide, you know, we’re looking, I mentioned the police academy. We’re desperate need of that. Man, if you haven’t ever visited the police academy, it is in sad shape. It’s terrible. It’s embarrassing that we train our police officers

11:44
We’ve got some major parks projects like the Gateway Deck Park in Oak Cliff, which is a city-wide major project, golf course renovations. And.

11:56
Some of my colleagues, myself included, are pushing for a lot of money for street repairs. And that’s the one thing. If you go really go back to basics, which the mayor has said many times, you’re looking at potholes, you know, police and, and, and property taxes and potholes really references us doing well what a city should do, which is maintaining infrastructure. And if we don’t put four or five, four or 50 to 500 million on our streets.

12:26
We are going to be looking at continued degradation over time of our streets. We’ve got to put that much money in just to maintain current levels. How do you think housing will end up in this bond?

12:38
I will tell you one thing that came out of this that’s so inspiring to see. The bond process is that for the first time since I’ve been on council, I think ever actually, we actually have organized housing advocates that are out there picketing, showing up at meetings in shirts, actually caring about people.

13:02
to be able to live in our city. You know, this is one of the comments that frustrates me the most, or one of the situations is…

13:10
You know, you and I were talking about the daycare ordinance before we came in here. And there were a bunch of NIMBYs that showed up, um, wanted to keep daycares out of single family neighborhoods. It’s the same people showing up, um, not wanting lot size reform, not wanting general density, and these are people who are privileged enough to either not work. Most of them are retired and they’re showing up and you know, they, a lot of them are generally scared. They want to protect their neighborhoods. Um, fed with misinformation.

13:40
a lot of times as well, but the people who really need the housing, who need daycares and single-family neighborhoods, those are the ones they don’t have time to go to City Hall and sit all day. And so to have advocates now like the Dallas Housing Coalition show up and advocate for others who really need them and probably don’t even know they have advocates, that’s just awesome. It’s outstanding. And I like that they’ll say sometimes like I took off work today

14:10
And yeah, it’s, it’s Adam Lamont. He’s great. He’s, he’s, and he’s the leader of one of the groups. And he will literally take a personal day and go sit at city hall all day to advocate. And you know, if they’re the issue that they’re there for comes up later in the day, like you’ll originally see 15 to 50 people in the same shirts and then they’ll peel off over time because they got to go back to work. They can’t sit there. Anything else you want to add? I think we’re good. I just would encourage.

14:40
listeners to keep an open mind to the housing policies that come up. I mean these are so important to our city and we will end up

14:51
If we’re not careful, we are going to end up with a city that’s like Highland Park. It just prices everyone out. Now that helps me. I’ve got a home already and helps a lot of people. But if we want, I want to have a city where my kids can live after college and come back and be able to afford a house. I love Highland Park. I think it’s a beautiful place. I love the homes there, but it’s not affordable for most Dallasites. And we’ve got to be able to have an open discussion.

15:21
without the pitchforks coming out immediately. You can always disagree in the end, but let’s be willing to talk about things and welcome all of you to the table. Awesome, well we will be watching and we will be covering those meetings. Some of them are very long meetings, but I’ll be there. I appreciate you deep diving because very few reporters in the city do it on to the level you do because it’s so complex. Yeah.

15:50
It is. Well, I am. It’s an honor to work with you guys, and I think that is it for us. Thank you for listening to Dallas Dirt and we will be back next week with Candy Evans.