Affluent areas may see more low-cost housing

A federal judge approved plans Tuesday to revamp the way Texas awards millions of dollars in housing subsidies in the Dallas area, after a ruling earlier this year found the state pushes affordable apartments away from affluent Anglo neighborhoods.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater ordered the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs to boost incentives for affordable-housing developments located in areas with good schools and low poverty rates.

The reforms will allow the agency to challenge opposition to low-cost housing from neighborhood groups, which wield more power in Texas than in other states and often force subsidized apartments away from desirable areas.

Such opposition has blocked proposed developments in middle-class neighborhoods of San Antonio, which has one of the worst patterns of housing segregation in Texas.

Since the subsidies began more than 20 years ago, none has been awarded for projects in affluent areas of the city.

Although Fitzwater's ruling applies specifically to the Dallas region, housing officials said they intend to implement many of the reforms statewide.

“To the greatest extent that we can — that is our goal,” said Gordon Anderson, the department spokesman. “There may be slight variations between urban and rural areas. But that's certainly what we're striving to accomplish.”

The order marks the end of a costly and contentious legal case that raised questions about how Texas manages the federal housing tax-credit program, which has provided almost $10 billion in credits since 1990 and is by far the largest subsidy to create affordable housing statewide.

In March, Fitzwater ruled the housing department unintentionally violated the Fair Housing Act by denying participants in the program the right to live in neighborhoods that are racially and economically diverse.

In response to Fitzwater's ruling, the housing department, which spent more than $1.6 million to defend the lawsuit, proposed a plan in May to fix the disparity. Many of those changes were approved by the judge.

“We are obviously pleased that the court has approved a remedial plan that is very much in line with what we had proposed,” a department statement said.

The Dallas nonprofit that filed the lawsuit, the Inclusive Communities Project, also expressed satisfaction with the plan, which requires the housing department to submit an annual report for the next five years on the location of the developments.

Mike Daniel, an attorney with Inclusive Communities, said the annual analysis was “a key feature” that would help to ensure the development of more apartments in so-called “high opportunity” areas.

Daniel also praised the judge for including a provision that gives the housing department authority to challenge claims from neighborhood groups that low-cost apartments will damage property values and spur crime.

“The ability to require opponents of tax credits to put up or shut up with the facts of justifying the opposition could level the playing field for developments in high-opportunity areas,” Daniel said.

The fair-housing group found that, in Dallas, less than 3 percent of all housing built by the program was located in areas where at least 70 percent of residents are Anglo.

An analysis by the San Antonio Express-News showed disparities were evident statewide, with 78 percent of apartments funded in areas where most residents are minorities.

The pattern was particularly stark in San Antonio, where not one of the 91 subsidized properties was located in a neighborhood with a population that's at least 40 percent Anglo.

The concentration of projects in blighted areas contradicts federal policy that aims to disperse pockets of poverty and provide housing that gives residents access to jobs, good schools and safe streets.

Housing advocates in San Antonio said they had hoped for statewide reforms, but some remain skeptical the remedial plan will be sufficient to reverse a long and entrenched pattern of building low-cost apartments in blighted neighborhoods.

“There needs to be a statewide legislative approach to this,” said Jennifer Gonzalez, executive director of the Alamo Area Mutual Housing Association. “We've seen over time the mess that has been created.”

John Henneberger, an advocate for low-income housing in Austin, had called for more aggressive reforms, including a statewide set-aside for projects in middle-class areas.

He said Fitzwater's conservative approach raises the possibility that there will be little progress in the next annual round of funding, forcing housing officials and advocates to return to the same painful questions next year.

“Something has to change and whether this incremental approach is going to do it or not that just remains to be seen,” he said.

kking@express-news.net