Inside the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas
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Landlords aren’t exactly the most celebrated category of people in the United States, but they occupy a fundamental place in American society and economic life. From commercial operators to apartment managers, you could say capitalism itself (for better or worse) wouldn’t be able to function as it does today without such private interests driving the real estate landscape.
On that front, apartment construction has come to take center stage in Texas amid an ongoing housing crunch as state lawmakers consider various bills to encourage the building of as many new units as possible. Many of these bills face opposition from NIMBY groups who fear encroachment into single-family neighborhoods. A controversial measure that could empower landlords at the expense of tenants has also made headlines and drawn sharp rebuke from housing advocates.
All that’s to say, people representing landlords and folks in the multifamily industry have their work cut out for them this year. CandysDirt.com got a chance to speak with two such figures who advocate on behalf of the industry in the Dallas area to learn more about their efforts.
Repping Landlords, Contractors Big and Small
The Apartment Association of Greater Dallas (AAGD) is a regional trade association that represents the interests of the local rental housing industry as a whole. Spanning 11 counties and repping some 722,000 units in and around Dallas, it engages with municipal authorities on policy issues that could impact its members.
Kin Oldham, AAGD’s executive director, said most of its members are owner-manager operators of apartment properties.
“Our members are also the supplier partners that help support the industry — paint contractors, carpet contractors, construction companies — the list is pretty long, but it’s a very symbiotic relationship between our owner-managers and our product service partners,” he said.
No stranger to the industry, Oldham has an extensive background in real estate, working for high-profile firms like Trammel Crow and Greystar. He previously served in a volunteer capacity as a board member for AAGD before taking on various leadership roles and ultimately assuming his current position with the group.
While AAGD does represent some pretty large companies given the size of the D-FW market, many of the organization’s members are independent rental owners.
“I call them ‘mom and pops.’ They basically kind of parked their retirement, if you will, into either single-family investments to rent or smaller multifamily properties, and that could be 1-4 units, it could be any size,” Oldham said.
‘We Do Our Best To Educate Policymakers’
Another crucial member of AAGD’s team is Jason Simon, vice president of government affairs. His years of experience include working for members of Congress, the Greater Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce, and a global public relations firm, among other stints as a consultant. He’s been with AAGD since 2015.
Simon told CandysDirt.com that a lot of the association’s work is focused on mitigating the unintended consequences of municipal policy decisions. He explained how cities often propose across-the-board regulatory solutions to combat crime or code violation issues that are really only a problem at a handful of apartment properties.
“If you’re going to put additional regulatory burdens or costs on the owner of a small apartment community, they’re going to have to make up for that somewhere,” he said. “Sometimes you may see increased rent or more rigorous background screening or whatever kind of risk management they have to put into place to mitigate the effects of that policy. Certainly at the city level we do our best to educate policymakers, city staff, the city manager on all sides of an issue.”
He pointed out how AAGD’s members are some of the biggest property tax payers to their respective municipalities.
“We want to make sure these elected officials specifically understand the positive impact that our rental housing has in their communities,” he added.
Another facet of the association’s advocacy centers on pushing back against local resistance to multifamily housing in or near single-family-zoned neighborhoods.
“You’ve got these different factions of NIMBYs that don’t want to see any kind of multifamily, any kind of rental housing. So we have to educate council members to push back against those kinds of forces,” Simon said.
Local fights over where or whether to build apartments to alleviate the state’s housing shortage have obviously played out in dramatic fashion in Dallas. From AAGD’s perspective, there’s a real need that has to be met.
“Our members are really at the forefront of providing that housing, affordable housing, attainable housing, workforce housing, the missing middle, so to speak,” Simon said. “We’re actively engaged in lots of different coalitions and groups looking to promote building housing at all price points and working to ensure that these affordability issues are addressed.”
Some 30,000-40,000 housing units are needed each year to keep up with net migration to D-FW, Oldham added.
‘Shelter Is Our Business’
While AAGD provides its for-profit members with lobbying support and other services, it’s also involved in non-profit activity to help those facing homelessness. To that end, the association has partnered with Entryway North Texas to help connect vulnerable individuals with housing and on-site job opportunities at member properties.
“Entryway’s mission is to try and take those that are [situationally homeless] and try to provide an educational platform for them, give them the tools to find a job,” Oldham said. “It can be in or outside of our industry, but the real primary focus is to try and train these folks and give them opportunities, sometimes repopulate them into our industry, which is woefully short of help these days at the apartment site level.”
AAGD’s partnership with Entryway has been going on a little more than a year now, but it’s not the group’s only service effort. Every year, the association’s members participate in a series of community service projects, including Toys for Tots.
“Our run rate probably the last five years has been a little over $100,000 that we raised each year to go out and buy toys, working with Fox 4 and the Marine Corps. to make that a really successful platform,” Oldham said.
AAGD also helps to support homeless shelters, food pantries, women’s shelters, and philanthropic efforts that may have fallen on hard times.
“We try and go and help them with their facilities if they need it to make sure they’ve got an ongoing platform to continue to support those in need,” Oldham said. “Shelter is our business.”
