Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON — Government can best address high housing costs by getting out of the private sector’s way, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson testified Wednesday before a U.S. Senate committee.
“The most effective way to bring down housing prices is to encourage the private sector to increase homebuilding throughout the United States, but particularly in cities like Dallas, where we see unprecedented demand for our existing housing stock because of our economic growth and success,” Johnson said.
Johnson appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs alongside a Harvard University economist who has studied housing markets, an official with a major mortgage lender and the head of a group that advocates for affordable housing for low-income people.
Johnson left the Democratic party for the GOP in 2023, and his testimony fit with Republican efforts to shift the conversation about how to promote affordable housing. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the committee chairman, emphasized the need to cut government regulations to make homebuilding easier.
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U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the committee, said a nationwide shortage of housing is driving up rents and pushing home ownership out of reach for average Americans.
Warren criticized Housing Secretary Scott Turner and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they have frozen affordable housing development projects across the country and proposed deep cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s workforce.
“These actions will make it harder, not easier, for families to access housing, and they will raise housing costs,” she said. “If the federal government is going to be a good partner to local communities to address the housing crisis, we need a well resourced and well staffed HUD.”
Johnson downplayed the ability of HUD programs to make a serious dent in housing shortages. He said policymakers have to “get out of this box” of considering housing affordability only in the context of how much money can be poured into government programs.
“What we really need to be looking at are things that are going to substantially increase the amount of housing that’s available throughout the city of Dallas, across income levels,” he said.
He said Dallas has worked to unleash the private sector by streamlining the zoning process and cutting the median time to issue a residential building permit from 68 days in 2022 to eight days in 2024.
Democrats on the committee pointed to tens of millions in HUD funding that has flowed to the Dallas area. They asked Johnson about the role that money has played and what would happen if it was cut or eliminated.
Johnson said he didn’t have specifics on what that funding has done for housing in the Dallas area.
He said those programs have value and increased the availability of housing for low-income populations, but he cast the impact as far below what is needed.
He told the committee affordable housing is a critical component of addressing homelessness but that most chronically homeless people live on the streets because they struggle with mental health disorders or drug addiction.
Dallas has made progress on housing affordability and homelessness, Johnson said, including ensuring any military veteran who becomes homeless can be housed within 90 days.
In an interview after the hearing, Johnson said he and Scott are pushing to change the affordable housing mindset from exclusively focusing on government programs for people on the lowest end of the income spectrum.
“We’ve got to get beyond what we think we can achieve with pass throughs and funds coming from Washington that we spend aimed at a certain end of the income spectrum, thinking that we are going to create the scale of homebuilding that we need to actually push the price of housing down for everyone’s benefit,” he said.
When a reporter asked Warren about Johnson downplaying the impact of federal programs on housing affordability, she pointed to the HUD funding Dallas has received.
“He still wants the money,” Warren said. “He sure hasn’t turned down a single nickel of it.”
Joseph Morton covers the intersection of business and politics in the Washington Bureau. Before joining The News, Joseph worked for CQ Roll Call and the Omaha World-Herald. He graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
