In a state the size of Texas you'd think affordable housing wouldn't be an issue. Not so. Housing prices in Dallas-Fort Worth, formerly a beacon of affordability, overtook the national average in 2016.
Yes, the market has cooled recently, but the metro area still suffers from a self-inflicted housing shortage due to zoning laws that violate consumer choice and Texans' principles of property rights.
Even as pro-growth economic policies have drawn millions of new residents to North Texas and other Texas metro areas, anti-growth land-use regulations have kept most urban areas, including residential areas that are close to growing job centers, looking much the same as they did decades ago.
As I document in a new report for the Manhattan Institute, many of the younger professionals who've swarmed to Texas in search of jobs prefer to live in apartment buildings in downtown areas.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Dallas Morning News
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Connor Harris is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute and author of the new report "Lone Star Slowdown?: How Land-Use Regulation Threatens the Future of Texas."
This piece originally appeared in Dallas Morning News