2025 Rental Housing Needs Assessment
February 2026
This is the third annual edition of this report. See past reports:
This year’s report is anchored by four core insights:
1) It’s hard to be a renter in Dallas. Of the 304K renter households in Dallas, 59% are low income (≤80% Area Median Income) and 50% are cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their gross income on housing.
2) There is a shortage of affordable rental units for very low-income households. For households that earn at or below 50% AMI ($52K for a family of four), the City of Dallas is short 46K affordable rental units — for every 100 households ≤50% AMI, there are just 60 affordable rental units.
3) Dallas is changing. In the past 10 years, Dallas has realized significant growth in the population of seniors (+33%), one- and two-person households (+23% and +19%, respectively), and high-income households earning more than $150K annually (+130%). This rapid growth, however, is juxtaposed with a slight decline (-0.8%) in the population of children, a small increase in households with three or more people (+2%), and a significant decrease in households earning less than $35K (-32%).
4) There are signs of progress, but progress is uneven. After record-high rent growth during the pandemic, renters have recently felt some relief: year-over-year rent growth was largely flat or down slightly in the City of Dallas in 2024 and 2025. An estimated 8,400 multifamily units were delivered in 2024 — 84% market-rate units and 16% income-restricted units. In the past 10 years, educational attainment and household income have both improved significantly, but long-standing inequities persist, and Dallas is the sixth most segregated large city in the U.S.
To achieve a stronger Dallas, housing must be a central issue. Whether your north star is growing the economy, improving the health and wellbeing of Dallas residents, or breaking the cycle of poverty, housing matters.
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Role of Junk Fees in the Dallas Rental Housing Market
During summer 2024, CPAL began to explore the role of junk fees in the rental housing market in Dallas.
- 56 out of 60 apartment complexes surveyed charged mandatory monthly fees (i.e., “junk fees”), in addition to the base rent.
- These fees cost renters, on average, $756 to $984 per year, further eroding housing affordability.
An Underutilized Housing Affordability Tool: Homestead Exemptions
CPAL examines homestead exemption access in Dallas County — who’s claiming, who isn’t, and how much money eligible homeowners could realize if they claimed this...
- ~57K residential properties in Dallas County may be eligible for the homestead exemption but have not yet claimed it, for an estimated total benefit of ~$310M.
- ~40K properties in low-income and very low-income census tracts in Dallas County may be eligible for the homestead exemption but have not yet claimed it, for an estimated total benefit of ~$200M, or ~$5,000 per household.
- While an estimated 95% of eligible households in high-income census tracts claim their homestead exemption, only 81% of households in very low-income census tracts claim their homestead exemption.
Mayor's Task Force on Safe Communities
This 2019 report provides recommendations on non-law enforcement solutions to crime and violence in Dallas.
- Philadelphia’s blight remediation program reduced firearm assaults by 39%--a relatively low-cost intervention that is backed by empirical evidence that can be implemented in Dallas.
- New York’s targeted lighting pilot reduced nighttime index crimes by 36% and generated a 3x ROI. This can be replicated in Dallas by using tower lighting or expanding LED lighting in micro-geographies with high incidence of crime and low lighting.