Dallas for quite a long time has battled with a deficiency of reasonable lodging/affordable housing. Dallas City Council part Chad West, who seats the chamber’s Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, has asked the Housing Policy Task Force to begin considering charges for designers who don’t meet the city’s moderate lodging prerequisites. It would add greater adaptability to the city’s inclusionary drafting law — which boosts new private structures. Urban areas that have executed the expenses regularly charge per square foot of new advancement without moderate lodging dependent available rate esteem. The designer expenses would then go into a trust reserve, which the city can use to construct moderate lodging/ affordable housing.

Chairman of the city’s Housing Policy Task Force, said fees like West is proposing can be successful, but only if cities set the right amount. Set the price too low, and all developers would take advantage of it and won’t build more affordable units. Set the fees too high, and they could restrict residential development altogether. Some Dallas elected officials are also skeptical about the role local government should play in development decisions. Kleinman said he believes a downside to the fees would be having the city determine which projects get the dollars from the trust fund, which can be “very subjective.”