Elizabeth J. Mueller and Tommi L. Ferguson

Introduction

State governments shape the priority placed locally on meeting affordable housing needs through the resources they provide to cities and through the laws guiding local planning that they enact. State law provides a central legal framework for urban planning that can facilitate or constrain local efforts to address affordable housing needs and enact local solutions. State comprehensive planning laws that mandate local housing needs assessments, concordance between needs and zoning practices, or laws that require communities to shoulder their “fair share” of affordable housing all provide a strong basis for local advocacy.¹ Local advocates can rely on the reporting requirements that come with such mandates for information on housing needs and agency performance.² Conversely, states lacking such requirements, or legally barring the use of specifi c housing remedies, give local advocates little to work with. Local advocates in such states will need to compile their own information on needs and how local policies respond to them to push for creation of local goals in the absence of statewide ones. Yet only fi ve states require housing plans as part of a broader comprehensive planning requirement (Pendall, 2006).

More common is the experience of states like Texas, where no state planning mandates exist, and signifi cant impediments to planning for affordable housing are found in state law. The state lacks any growth management or land development program at the state level (Parmenter and Oden, 2004). In terms of specifi c tools often used in housing policy, the overall picture is especially bleak. The Texas legislature is well known for intervening on behalf of developers to overturn local ordinances regulating development or acting to preempt progressive local initiatives. In the last regular legislative session, in response merely to early discussions of policy changes in the city of Austin, a law was enacted that effectively prohibited mandatory inclusionary zoning.³ Advocates have been most successful in creating pilot programs for use in one city, in the hopes that they can build on evidence of success in future, broader legislation. To date, such pilot programs have included a land bank in Dallas (successfully implemented and later replicated in Houston), and a “homestead preservation district” designed for Austin.

This specific planning framework leads us to ask how local housing advocates can effectively operate. How will they institutionalize progress absent state requirements for housing planning? In this article we examine one strategy for action in the absence of state mandates for housing planning. We chronicle the progress of a participatory action research project⁴ aimed at providing local advocates with information on housing needs and tracking progress on measures linked to underlying theories about points of leverage in local housing politics.  Texas City Housing Report Cards were designed to do what comprehensive planning mandates do elsewhere—provide information on citywide housing needs and focus attention on city policy and progress. We begin with a discussion of what we know about local politics, particularly the factors that have facilitated the rise of local housing movements in cities around the country. Drawing upon the lessons of these past experiences, we present our starting hypotheses about housing politics in Texas cities and the role that report cards might play in facilitating public discussion of housing needs and strategies. Finally, we describe the political context for housing policy and our experience partnering with local housing advocates in San Antonio and Dallas.

The Problem: Building Support for affordable housing at the City Level

Urban political theories Contemporary urban political theorists have focused on explaining the dominance of specific groups within the local political arena, why particular coalitions or regimes remain dominant for long periods of time and on the different paths to influence across cities (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Stone, 1989; Ferman, 1996; Stone, Orr, and Imbroscio, 1991). To a lesser extent, theorists have focused on examining cases where progressive coalitions, with interests counter to the dominant regime, are able to take power and pursue an alternative agenda (Ferman, 1996; Turner, 1992). In this section, we outline the main lessons of this literature for local housing politics, consider the rise of housing movements in two cities in light of this literature, and present our own approach to stimulating housing movements in Texas cities.

Emphasis on identifying the particular interests of different groups within cities builds on observations made by sociologist Harvey Molotch in his seminal article “The City as a Growth Machine,” on the central role of growth as a motivator for local politics: I speculate that the political and economic essence of virtually any given locality, in the present American context, is growth. I further argue that the desire for growth provides the key operative motivation toward consensus for members of politically mobilized local elites, however split they might be on other issues, and that a common interest in growth is the overriding commonality among important people in a given locale—at least insofar as they have any important local goals at all. Further, this growth imperative is the most important constraint upon available options for local initiative in social and economic reform. It is thus that I argue that the very essence of a locality is its operation as a growth machine. (Molotch, 1976, 309–310)

In Urban Fortunes, Molotch and coauthor John Logan develop this into a fuller argument, emphasizing the central role of local actors whose interests are tied to local land prices. The growth machine includes within it developers, real estate interests, builders, bankers, and organized labor (particularly the building trades). Backing them up were auxiliary actors, with interests tied to place but less directly to particular places within cities: politicians, local media, utilities, local universities, sports teams, and local cultural institutions (Logan and Molotch, 1987).

Building and expanding upon Logan and Molotch’s framework, the dominant approach to describing and explaining urban politics for the past twenty-five years has been “regime” theory. Clarence Stone, whose work on Atlanta pioneered the concept of regimes, defined a regime as “an informal yet relatively stable group with access to institutional resources that enable it to have a sustained role in making governing decisions” (Stone, 1989, 4). Regimes bridge the public and private realms, bringing together formal and informal actors and groups in order to build or maintain support for a specific policy agenda. Neither governmental institutions nor private business interests have the ability to carry out major policy objectives alone, thus “regimes” are necessary to assemble the support and resources necessary to accomplish change. This means that groups without either organized constituents or valued resources will find it difficult to be included in governing regimes. Case study research on regimes has emphasized the power of development interests and other business organizations in local politics (Logan, Whaley, and Crowder, 1997). In a few cases, groups interested in redistributive policies have been able to gain control of decision making for periods, enabling them to follow very different local agendas (Orr, 1992; Stoker, 1987; Turner, 1992). Typically, however, these groups do not solidify into “regimes” as defined in the literature, as they are not able to maintain their agenda across elections.

How regimes are formed and remain influential is tied to the structure and culture of local politics. Barbara Ferman’s concept of political “arenas” provides a framework for thinking about how and where decisions are made and how those outside the regime might achieve influence. Arenas are “spheres of activity that are distinguished by particular institutional frameworks and underlying political cultures” (Ferman, 1996, 4). They shape the relationships that develop, the form of political mobilization and organization, the types of conflicts that get aired, opportunities for leadership, and the range of likely policy options. Arenas have internal logics, institutional frameworks, and political cultures that create/deny opportunities for participation. Strategies for action will vary according to the main arena where politics takes place: in electoral arenas, the key link between citizens and government is institutions interested in political power, such as ward organizations, political clubs, interest groups, reform organizations. In civic arenas, private, nonprofit institutions, voluntary organizations, and informal clubs dominate, producing an associational politics based on the density of local networks. Civic organizations tend to cluster by function, ethnicity, and geography and are strongly influenced by philanthropic organizations that distribute resources to groups and foster cooperative culture. Business arenas tend to be dominated by a handful of powerful businesses that benefit from cooperation in large projects. They are linked to government through campaign contributions, major development and service contracts, land use decisions, and board appointments. They will vary according to the strength and diversity of local businesses. Intergovernmental arenas are dominated by bureaucrats, with vertical lines of authority based on regulations. For example, under devolution, ties between state and local governments may strengthen and those between federal and local organizations may decline.

According to Ferman, for neighborhoods and others interested in quality of life or distributional issues, the most viable arenas for action and influence are civic and electoral. Business arenas tend to be closed to neighborhoods, and intergovernmental arenas distance them from participation. Political cultures most favorable to quality of life or equity concerns emphasize communalism, collective enterprise, trust, reciprocity, and social networking. Those working against it emphasize cynicism, mistrust, competitiveness, and strong individualism (Ferman, 1996). This framework provides a useful starting point for discussion of local housing politics.

Local housing politics Pushing for local housing goals means entering the local political fray. Despite the general tendency of those with a direct interest in land development to influence local government priorities, case study research in several cities has documented periods when a local “regime” focused on redistributive policies was able to take hold (Krumholz and Forrester, 1990). Research conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s documented the rise of local housing movements in several cities in response to cuts in federal funding for housing (Goetz, 1993; Yin, 1998). As housing affordability problems creep upward into the middle classes, the politics of general residential development and affordable housing development increasingly intersect. In this context, making the case for the ongoing needs of extremely low-income households is likely to become even more challenging. An external (e.g., state) mandate to address specific housing needs provides advocates a foot in the door to the discussion. Conversely, where mandates are absent, advocates must build local support for housing as a priority issue, in the context of local development-dominated politics.

Scholars have chronicled the rise of local housing movements in cities around the country, arguing that contrary to expectations, these movements were able to counteract the decline in federal funds by pushing for local support. We review two cases from this literature here with particular attention to how these local efforts initially formed. Specifi cally, our research questions included: Was there a catalyzing event? What allowed them to consolidate their gains over time? How do conditions in Dallas and San Antonio, our study cities, differ from those described below, which were able to promote successful organizing for housing?

Los Angeles In 1980, the city of Los Angeles did not have a coherent local housing policy. There were no explicit programs in place to address affordability, no effective organized advocacy coalition, and “no local resources devoted to affordable housing except for a state-mandated tax increment set- aside” (Goetz, 1993, 161). Within little more than a decade, housing advocacy groups became organized and vocal, the mayor created key policy positions focused on housing, and an ambitious dedicated trust fund was created.

Goetz (1993) attributes the almost complete turnaround to several factors, but one stands out as catalytic in his account: the redevelopment of Bunker Hill. This one project resulted in the displacement of 6,000 people and elimination of more than 2,200 single room occupancy (SRO) units, thereby exacerbating the city’s homeless problem. This came on top of the growth of low-wage employment and helped drive public awareness of housing issues and mobilize local housing advocates. Subsequently, the mayor became more responsive to Housing LA, the umbrella organization formed to push forward the advocates’ agenda.

Also important was the election of new council members, willing to push the mayor on new priorities. The mayor responded to pressures by appointing a longtime advocate as “housing coordinator” and formed a panel to study and make recommendations for local housing policy. Subsequent debates over proposed policy solutions solidifi ed the position of the housing coalition as the forum for discussion among advocates. Advocates were able to push for creation of a separate housing agency, further strengthening their position. The culmination of their work was the formation of a hundred-million-dollar local housing trust fund (Briedenbach, 2002).

Cleveland The Cleveland story, as told by Yin, is quite different. In this case, in the context of long-term population and economic decline, civic elites saw an overlap between their interests in bringing middle-class residents back to the city and the housing and neighborhood improvement work of community development corporations (CDCs). A dramatic increase in support and funding for CDCs, and the creation of a “community development industry system” has resulted from this partnership (Yin, 1998). Yet that support has also arguably meant a shift in direction for CDCs, away from advocacy and from serving primarily low-income residents.

Under Mayor George Voinovich, elected in 1979 with support from a business coalition attracted by his focus on downtown redevelopment and “a new image for the city,” corporate interests became increasingly involved in CDC housing activity, primarily as funders, and the housing efforts of Cleveland CDCs began to shift (Yin, 1998, 141). Made possible by changes in federal tax law in 1986, Cleveland’s British Petroleum “developed the groundwork for an innovative tax syndication program” using tax credits as an investment for housing development through nonprofi ts (Yin, 1998, 143). During the mid- to late 1980s, the use of corporate tax credits resulted in greatly increased production numbers, to the tune of four hundred housing units rehabilitated in roughly a fi ve-year period.

Success built upon itself, as national community development intermediaries Local Initiatives Support Coalition and the Enterprise Foundation established local branch offices and began work to “facilitate the increasing productivity of the city’s CDCs” (Yin, 1998, 143). By the mid-1980s, national foundations5 had become major funders of the Cleveland Neighborhood Partnership Program. Funders’ development interests were focused on commercial and market-rate housing activity as a “strategy . . . to enhance the city’s image as a place for the location of business firms, attract middle-class households to live in the city in hopes of enhancing the city’s income and property tax bases, and stimulate consumer expenditures within the city” (Yin, 1998, 144).

Increasingly, Cleveland CDCs were encouraged to take on a more professionalized structure and market-oriented approach to housing activity. Funders institutionalized their goals through the creation of a new organization, Neighborhood Progress Incorporated, which oversaw “corporate efforts directed toward neighborhood development” (Yin, 1998, 144). While the city’s well-known Cleveland Housing Partnership, originator of the lease-purchase home ownership model for low-income households, continues to receive support, the balance has shifted away from advocacy on behalf of low-income residents and neighborhoods. Increased funding for CDCs has come at the cost of a weakened voice for low-income residents.

From the two cases outlined above, we draw several lessons. First, as the LA story shows, it is possible to overcome an apparently weak position and move forward. Advocates were able to capitalize on a series of events and a change in the political fortunes, or a change of mayor, to push for real changes and get them institutionalized. Once opportunities arose, they were able to overcome their own internal divisions to work together to set priorities and affi x policy goals to them. In contrast, Cleveland shows us the trade-offs associated with joining forces with civic elites. Where goals are well aligned, it is a win-win situation. Where they diverge, community coalitions are poorly positioned to push back. The challenge becomes building a coalition with enough strength to command attention and access, while maintaining enough autonomy to uphold community priorities. The two cases also show the importance of the arena driving local politics. LA’s electoral focus gave advocates a venue to push for change. Cleveland’s more civic business–driven politics kept advocates out of the center of discussions.

Coalition building Herbert Rubin draws several lessons regarding the ability of community development organizations to infl uence policy from his extensive multiyear study (Rubin, 2000). First, he describes the way in which community-based development organizations (CBDOs) can work through umbrella organizations or coalitions to advocate, despite their individual ties to city coffers. Such coalitions, he argues, can be effective vehicles for building a social movement around community development goals. Second, he emphasizes the many dimensions that go into building the fabric of effective coalitions and movements. His description sounds a lot like Ferman’s description of civic arenas—with overlapping memberships, personnel, dense social networks, and relationships solidifying ties and trust among members. Finally, he describes the elements of a successful movement, emphasizing the importance of developing a shared framework across coalition/movement members based on a common diagnosis of problems, prognoses for how to respond, and a rationale for action.

The process he describes for achieving this common vision and thus laying the foundation for a local social movement involves refl ecting on the work of CBDOs, drawing lessons regarding what works, and developing a way to talk about this, a story to tell. Such stories become common across movement leaders and become the way that the whole community development “industry” (e.g., funders, trade associations, CBDOs, etc.) talks about its work and larger goals. Gradually, these ideas become part of the collective memory of the broader group.

Strategy: Housing Report Cards for Texas Cities

Our approach: telling a new story about housing in Texas cities In the current context, Texas cities are pushed to address their affordable housing needs neither by state law nor by proactive federal oversight of planning requirements that come with block grant funds. Instead, housing advocates must push for attention to housing in the context of the local political arena. In most cases, the context is heavily weighted toward the concerns of the real estate and development community. In some cases, broader economic interests are also a part of the governing regime (Parmenter and Oden, 2004; Elkin, 1987). In this context, we developed an approach for stimulating local discussion of affordable housing in Texas cities. In this paper, in order to contrast different political contexts, we focus on our experience in Dallas and San Antonio.

The strategy developed was to produce a “housing report card” in each city, aimed at presenting easily understood information on housing needs, city priorities, and local progress toward meeting needs. We developed our approach based on a few operating assumptions, consistent with our understanding of urban politics. First, we assumed that public awareness of housing as an issue was shaped by local politics and thus interest would likely be skewed toward workforce housing (i.e., housing for households approaching median income), thus de-emphasizing the needs of the poor. This would be consistent with local politics dominated by development concerns since it would allow for more general discussion of impediments facing local residential developers. Second, we assumed that leadership needed to come from civic elites, broadly defined, not agency heads or even elected officials. This would be consistent with our understanding of Texas city politics and with our assessment of the structural position of housing agency heads, who have to serve both federal and local masters, often by cooperating with local housing developers. Affordable housing production is more often done by private developers in Texas than elsewhere, making local agencies particularly sensitive to developers’ concerns. Third, we assumed that local advocates were organized into the sort of coalitions described by Rubin, where a larger vision for the city was the focus of advocacy. We knew that both San Antonio and Dallas had been successful in securing at least one progressive policy and assumed this was, in part, the result of the work of these coalitions. (Dallas had passed bonds to support a homeless housing project downtown, and San Antonio had created a housing trust fund).

Development of framework We developed our framework for the report cards based on a review of three other models. These three models—the San Francisco Bay Area Housing Crisis Report Card, the Greater Boston Housing Report Card, and the Toronto Report Card on Housing and Homelessness—took very different approaches to their task. Through a review of their reports and discussions with some of the authors, we assessed how their report cards were used, the data requirements involved in preparing them, and the audiences they were addressing. Drawing on their experience, we developed an approach that relies on existing data and grading standards that fit Texas.⁶

We identified six key areas to focus on: leadership, resources, production, targeting, fair housing, and transparency. For each area, we identifi ed a set of underlying principles that we wanted to incorporate into a set of measures.

 We put together lists of possible measures for each category and discussed these measures with experts and advocates. In order to make the process as replicable and fair as possible, three criteria were used to select measures. First, we sought to document each item from data that is already reported to or required by HUD or other state or federal agencies or reported publicly on a regular basis. Second, to the extent possible, measures avoided judging the quality or degree of compliance of particular items. Where unavoidable, such qualitative measures followed standards developed and in use elsewhere. Deciding what constituted an A or an F again required discussion with stakeholders. Grading follows traditional standards, where a C is average, an A is exceptional, and an F is utter failure to seriously address the issue at hand. We found it most diffi cult to hold to these rules in judging “leadership.” This made our process of vetting our fi ndings (described in the next section) all the more important.

Politics and Housing in San Antonio and Dallas

While we developed report cards for four cities in Texas, we focus here on Dallas and San Antonio. Both are large cities, with council-manager forms of government and a history of corporatist governance, dominated by white businessmen, where minority representation improved only in the late twentieth century following struggles made possible by passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The contrast between them resides in the strength of their economies, the magnitude of social problems, their different racial and ethnic makeup, and, fi nally, in their political cultures. These differences are in part an outcome of very different histories. In both cities minorities struggled to gain representation and access to power in ways relevant to housing politics. In this section, we briefl y describe our experience presenting our report card work in each city, then step back and review each city’s political culture, emphasizing the access of minority groups to political power, the impact of the voting rights act on local politics, the legacy left by urban renewal, and the dominant arena for political infl uence. We then discuss the historical context for addressing social equity concerns in each city, and whether housing ever made the list. We end with our assessment of the prospects for moving the local housing agenda forward.

Dallas, Texas Our Dallas report card assessed the city’s progress harshly, particularly in terms of matching resources to needs and in ramping up the scale of production to put it on a trajectory likely to lessen the number of households paying half their gross income for housing. We found that resources were overwhelmingly dedicated to home ownership efforts, with virtually no support for the low- to moderate-income renters that their own analysis showed to have the greatest need for assistance. The share of the city’s federal HOME block grant funds allocated to extremely and very low-income renters fell below national averages. Finally, following a controversy over use of federal low-income housing tax credits, the mayor and council imposed severe limitations on the use of this important resource, making it even less likely that renter needs would be addressed. We found particular resistance to any discussion of scattering housing opportunities more broadly throughout the community. When we raised the issue of better economic integration of affordable housing in various venues, invariably discussion shifted, never to return to our question. Overall, we found efforts to be concentrated on revitalization of South Dallas, focused on home ownership and resistant to any discussion of broadening the focus to the city at large.

The groups most directly interested in affordable housing were essentially trade organizations representing, in one case, local nonprofits producing housing in low-income communities and, in the other, a regional network of housing developers and funders. We spoke with leaders of both groups about our findings and both expressed interest and agreement with many of our findings. But neither saw it in their interest to become directly involved in using the report to push for greater attention to housing issues. In essence, they would not oppose such a push, but it would not be in their immediate interest to publicly challenge current priorities. Comments about the role played by council members in projects piqued our interest in understanding the role that the council played in setting the agenda for housing.

We also presented our findings to the city manager and head of the city’s housing department to offer them a chance to correct any misperceptions on our part and engage them in a discussion of our findings. The meeting confirmed our perceptions of the culture of city government, developed as we struggled to collect the information needed for our report card. To our surprise, neither was at all concerned about the city’s poor marks on indicators of “transparency.” In the view of city and housing agency leaders, time spent on ensuring the public could find out how their funds were being spent was time taken away from other, more important tasks. Nor was the housing director troubled by the apparent disconnect between the severe need for affordable rental identified in their HUD-required analysis and their focus on home ownership initiatives. Indeed, the sense we got was of an agency focused on broader housing needs, rather than those of low-income households. Both assured us that no one in the housing community would dare approach them with our findings.

Following these meetings, we wondered what shaped the climate for these priorities. In particular, how did the city council and other civic leaders define city priorities and how high did the affordable housing needs of low-income residents rank in these priorities?

History, political culture Dallas, the second-largest city in the state, TABLE 2: report card finding – Dallas has a well-developed official mythology about itself and its history. It is presented as a “can-do” place, a city with “no reason to exist,” that invented itself through sheer will and determination (Schutze, 1986). Its business-dominated ruling regime is well documented (Elkin, 1987). Its political culture is focused on efficiency and was embodied for years in the form of its shadow government, the Citizens Council, which effectively ruled the city until the 1960s. This top-down, business-oriented civic elite left little space for direct citizen involvement. As described by political journalist Jim Schutze in his book The Accommodation:

The fact was that by 1950, a system had evolved in Dallas where the political activities of ordinary people were almost automatically suspect and somehow never fully legitimate. Politics itself was suspect, according to this doctrine. The only truly virtuous public activity was civic, not political, and the meaning extended beyond the mere absence of formal partisan labels. The business leaders who sat around the table of the Citizens Council had become the city’s all-powerful unelected board of directors, its true legislature, executive branch and high court . . . there was none of this business of calling up your city councilman and telling him you were going to have his job if he didn’t get your streetlight fixed . . . he wasn’t your city councilman, and he didn’t especially need your vote. He was the Citizens Council’s city councilman, and he needed their vote. (Schutze, 1986, 69)

The idea that a handful of civic elites, businessmen all, were best able to think for the “city as a whole” would prove remarkably resilient (Fairbanks, 1993). In fact, several authors argue it remains the modus operandi for forming the city’s economic development priorities (Morgan, 2004; Hanson, 2003). Nonetheless, the formal dominance of the council by the candidates and agenda of this elite, as represented by the Citizens Council, would change once the city’s at-large system of governance was challenged in 1975, ten years after passage of the Voting Rights Act. Under the at-large system, minority residents were represented through formation of political organizations that allied themselves with the dominant regime party and became a reliable voting block. Yet the city remained highly segregated, a pattern reinforced through the city’s 1948 plan. Limited, token desegregation efforts were carefully controlled by city elites (Graff, 2008).

Finally, a 1975 court order shook up the city’s at-large electoral system. The new system replaced this system with eight councilors elected from fixed geographic districts, along with three elected at-large (Graff, 2008). A 1989 referendum created ten council districts, plus four that each covered one-quarter of the city. Eventually, this plan would also fall to legal challenge, as its districts were too large to enable the election of minority councilors. At the time of its challenge, in 1991, only two of the council’s eleven members were black and none were Hispanic, though the two groups together made up 50 percent of the population (Morgan, 2004, table 6.2, 181; Associated Press, 1990). Subsequently, the city moved to a 14-1 system, where all council members are elected by district, with the mayor elected at large.

The results of the shift to single-member districts for addressing the needs of low-income residents and neighborhoods have been mixed. Morgan argues, in her study of the impact of the Voting Rights Act on Dallas, that the result has been greater attention to the allocation of funds across districts but little attention to whether this results in serving the needs of low-income residents. Rather, she finds evidence that funds controlled by council members are sometimes used for patronage (Morgan, 2004). Similarly, journalist Schutze, in a study of the use of Community Development Block Grant funds, found that $22 million had gone to a series of questionable pork-barrel projects recommended by council appointees to the city’s Community Development Commission. Most troublingly, five hundred thousand dollars in CDBG funds that had been designated for use for housing needs had been siphoned off into council members’ pet projects (Schutze, 1999).

In recent years, high-profi le reports on the city’s future prospects have pointed attention to the importance of addressing racial and economic inequities (DiMambo cited in Graff, 2008; Booz Allen Hamilton, 2004). One result has been increased discussion of strategies for jump-starting development in the long-neglected “southern sector”—a collection of minority, mostly low-income neighborhoods that have presumably been the focus of federal block grant spending for years. The city’s new plan, Forward Dallas!, provides a vision for development in southern neighborhoods. However, realization of this vision will depend on the council backing up these goals through use of the city’s budget, bond funds, and federal resources. This takes us back to the council again. Yet in true Dallas tradition, one of the most high-profi le efforts to focus attention on housing concerns and strategies for addressing them has been led by J. McDonald Williams, former CEO of development company Trammel Crow. Williams has formed his own institute to study the issue and a nonprofit to redevelop a low-income neighborhood.

The picture painted by various authors and commentators is of a city deeply divided by race and income, yet lacking in either public or community institutions capable of competently addressing the needs of low-income and minority communities. While the perceived reasons for inaction vary by race in recent polls, there is general agreement that not much is being done to improve conditions. Finally, battles over public housing redevelopment and environmental conditions in West Dallas and, more recently, a scandal involving a council member and a high-profile affordable housing developer have undermined public confirmed dence in proposed solutions. In this context, it is hard to find an untainted champion for the housing needs of the low-income residents of minority neighborhoods. Despite a high-profile 2007 series on housing needs in the Dallas Morning News, including coverage of our findings, the issue has gotten little traction (Tarrant and Dillon, 2007).

San Antonio, Texas Our review of San Antonio’s affordable housing efforts also revealed major challenges. Economic development has led the city’s agenda for some time. Not surprisingly, community efforts have focused on raising attention to job quality and education in the city’s economic development efforts. Housing problems have not made San Antonio’s list of top priorities. Neither the current nor the previous mayor championed housing issues, and housing organizations and advocates have had a hard time bringing attention to the issue. Lack of commitment has undermined the allocation of resources necessary to confront housing problems. The city has not consistently put its own funds toward housing production, nor has it used bonds to raise revenue in order to counter declines in federal housing resources. While it has a handful of effective nonprofit affordable housing producers, their capacity is limited. Thus, in a high-growth, relatively poor city, housing resources and production are lagging far behind the levels needed to address existing needs. City spending priorities are generally in line with housing needs, but more attention needs to be placed on dispersing housing opportunities for low-income households throughout the region. The city’s current fair housing plan, required by HUD, provides no serious assessment of either barriers or solutions. Given the city’s current focus on expansion to the south to accommodate the construction of a heavily wooed Toyota production facility, this represents a lost opportunity. Overall, our findings indicate that the city faces a serious challenge ahead of it—one that will only be met with strong leadership, which is so critical to the development of the bigger pool of resources needed to address the challenge.

As in Dallas, a small group was directly concerned with housing issues. With support from the local office of the Enterprise Foundation (now Enterprise Community Partners), the most successful local affordable housing producers had begun meeting to discuss strategies for increasing local production of affordable housing. This group provided us with valuable feedback as we developed grading criteria and measures. But again, they were reluctant to use our findings to engage city management or council in discussion of housing priorities. They did not disagree with key findings, but they encouraged us to present them ourselves to the council.

Our next step was to meet with the city’s assistant city manager overseeing housing programs. Again, this meeting solidified our perception of the city’s political culture. Following our detailed presentation of findings, the assistant city manager was neither surprised by our findings nor very upset by them. She arranged for a subsequent meeting where we went over findings with the heads of the two departments overseeing various aspects of the city’s housing and community development programs. Both men provided us with additional information to correct errors in our draft and also made changes to their Web site in order to improve their score on “transparency.” Our overall sense was that they saw the issues we raised as ones they could focus on internally, through improved communication with the local housing producers and internal review of past reports to assess progress on ongoing areas of concern. They correctly perceived that there was little danger of local advocates going to the council with our findings. Our most damning critique was of the lack of leadership on housing issues by elected officials in the city.

Again we wondered why there was no sense of urgency attached to housing issues and what role the council might play in responding. History and framework of local politics San Antonio, the nation’s ninth-largest city and the third-largest in Texas, has long lagged behind the nation and the state in indicators of economic development and well-being. It is a poor city relative to TABLE 3: report card finding – San Antonio national norms: in 2000, close to half of city households (46.6 percent) had incomes below $34,000—placing them in the bottom 40 percent of households nationwide (Brookings, 2003, 56). Though a plurality of the city’s population, San Antonio’s Hispanic citizens have historically been underrepresented in local politics and, therefore, lacked the political clout to affect sustained change (Munoz, 1994). A white political machine, reliant on patronage, ran the city until the 1940s. As with blacks in Dallas, Mexican-Americans participated in this system by voting for the machine in exchange for low-paying jobs (Munoz, 1994, 107). Henry Cisneros was only the second mayor in 150 years with a Spanish surname (Rosales, 2000). Only one Hispanic—Ed Garza—has been elected mayor since Cisneros left office in 1989.

Until the 1970s, the city’s agenda was controlled by the Good Government League (GGL). The GGL was a “nonpartisan party” formed in 1954 by a group of conservative, mostly Anglo businessmen that recruited and elected candidates to city council. Between 1955 and 1972, the league ran and elected seventy-five of eighty-one members (Sanders, 1997, 38). For decades there was tacit acceptance of a system holding one council seat for a West Side Hispanic and one for an East Side African-American, while the GGL engineered continuing control of the other seven seats and maintained Anglo overrepresentation. Among the results of the group’s influence were two major elements of the city’s economic development strategy for the period: the development of the convention center for Hemisfair ’68 downtown through urban renewal and the state’s decision to locate a branch of the University of Texas Medical School in San Antonio (Wolff, 1997, 4–5).

As in Dallas, minority representation did not advance until well after passage of the Voting Rights Act. San Antonio’s at-large city council election scheme came under scrutiny when the Justice Department retroactively reviewed the 1972 annexation of sixty-six square miles and 51,400 (predominantly Anglo) people; the annexation was ruled to have “diluted minority voting strength” (Wolff, 1977, 9). San Antonio was left with the choice of undoing the annexation or adopting single-member districts for electing city council members. In 1977, the city passed the charter amendment altering the council structure to eleven seats: ten single-member districts and the mayor (still elected at-large). Unlike in Dallas, change was swift: in the May 1977 election, Anglos lost majority control of the council, retaining just four seats and the mayor’s. “For the fi rst time since 1837, the year after Texas won independence from Mexico, Mexican-Americans held real power on the council” (Wolff, 1997, 9).

In 1973, the dominance of the GGL was challenged from several quarters. Charles Becker, a prodevelopment businessman, defi ed his GGL colleagues by running for Place 2 (the seat tacitly reserved for the next mayor) without the GGL’s endorsement (Wolff, 1997, 3–5). He won. That same year, Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) formed. Under the leadership of Ernie Cortes Jr., COPS began as a group composed of primarily Central West Side

Hispanics advocating for equity in the city’s provision and maintenance of infrastructure-related projects. It drew its membership from a network of Catholic parishes in central-west and south side neighborhoods. As Wolff (1997) notes, the COPS “agenda did not include civil rights or social welfare issues. Members wanted hard goods delivered to their neighborhoods in the form of streets, drainage and good city services” (p. 8). They were successful in shifting priorities for use of Community Development Block Grant funds toward these goals. COPS was also instrumental in helping secure ten million dollars from the sale of the city-owned cable station to establish the city’s Housing Trust Fund in 1989. Yet no additional funding has been added to this fund since its establishment twenty years ago. During the 1990s, COPS and partner Metro Alliance increasingly focused on the creation and funding of Project QUEST, an effort focused on job development, training, and preparedness.

In 1990, shortly after the creation of the Housing Trust Fund brought the prospect of significant local support for housing, the power of electoral politics as a vehicle for advancing housing needs was undermined when term limits were passed by referendum. Under the new limits (the most restrictive in the country), the mayor and city council members were limited to no more than two two-year terms. Voter participation rates fell steadily, from a high of 43 percent in 1981, to a nadir of 7 percent in 1999. Drop-off was highest in inner-city, heavily minority council districts (Vega and Bretting, 2002). Even as groups made inroads with elected officials or advanced their own policy champions to positions of political influence, they were often unable to sustain or achieve any continuity of support strong enough to produce significant change. In our interviews, this was the main issue raised by local housing stakeholders.

However, recent elections and changes in term limits suggest that opportunities for advancement of housing issues may have better prospects in the future. In November 2008, San Antonio passed a ballot measure to extend term limits from two two-year terms to a maximum of four two-year terms (Idell Hamilton and Allen, 2008).⁷ Mayor Phil Hardberger spearheaded the initiative, which was supported by COPS and Metro Alliance. In addition, at least four current council members profess support for housing and community development activities (San Antonio City Council, 2009). The combination of longer tenure for city council members and a group of potentially more sympathetic elected officials could create opportunities for advocates to garner support for affordable housing and sustain that support long enough to affect real change. Yet in the context of the city’s ongoing struggle for economic development, the prospects for moving housing needs higher on the list of priorities remain daunting. Advocates have been unable to effectively link housing to broader economic development concerns. As Wilson et al. predicted in 1997, the future success of community-based housing advocates will be “dependent on constant political involvement and bargaining, with few certainties” (p. 31).

Lessons: Getting Housing on the Agenda

In the absence of state policies requiring attention to local affordable housing needs, all progress is dependent on local politics. As we conducted our research and began discussing our work with local housing advocates, we came up against a number of challenges that made us reflect on our initial assumptions about the nature of politics in the cities and the role of housing in local politics. On the whole, we found that housing coalitions were extremely weak, if present at all. For the most part, they were narrow in membership, more trade association than coalition, with most member organizations dependent on the city in some way and thus reluctant to be publicly associated with direct criticisms of city policy. Yet we also saw differences between the two cities, differences that seemed rooted in the different arenas driving their politics and the way that housing advocates are able to work in these arenas.

As discussed earlier, the dominant arena for action in local politics effectively defines the strategies that are likely to be most effective in provoking change. In both cities, minority residents have historically faced significant constraints to their participation in local electoral politics. But the power of electoral politics differs in the two cities. Arguably, despite significant changes in the electoral representation of minority communities in Dallas, effective strategies must still work through civic elites. Changing the agenda from below would require tremendous community mobilization. In Dallas, district elections and weak, fragmented community organizations appear to undermine chances for success in effective organizing around housing concerns. The city government’s closed political culture, where requests for information about the use of public funds were treated as highly unusual and suspect, continues to be most compatible with elite-led efforts on behalf of the poor.

In contrast, efforts to respond to the needs of low-income and minority neighborhoods in San Antonio have been successfully tied to electoral politics since the fall of the GGL. COPS was able to demand attention to the needs of poor neighborhoods in the 1970s and 1980s. But the imposition of term limits severely undermined the power of electoral politics as a vehicle for the representation of inner city, minority neighborhoods. In addition, COPS has increasingly focused its attention on improving the quality of jobs resulting from local economic development efforts. Nonetheless, the potential still exists for a return to such a strategy, particularly as term limits are relaxed.

The goals of civic elites backing local planning in Dallas are similar to those pursued in Cleveland: in both instances, elites wish to bring middle-class residents back into the city to build its tax base. Yet in Dallas, local housing groups are not viewed as potential partners in this process. They are not seen as having much capacity or competence. As the city shifts focus toward the poorer neighborhoods in its “southern sector,” local housing advocates are virtually voiceless. Instead, a local businessman who has played a leading role in fostering public discussion of affordable housing has initiated and begun implementing a redevelopment plan for a low-income neighborhood, leading to some tensions as he pushes for broader use of eminent domain to further his project. Those advocating for the housing needs of low-income residents and neighborhoods have virtually no leverage.

In other cities, advocates have been able to take advantage of moments of crisis to push for important changes. Both Dallas and San Antonio are pursuing major initiatives that might present an opportunity to advocates. The Dallas city plan, mentioned above, includes a housing element whose goals are being made real as district plans are developed. Yet in an elite-driven system, where local housing organizations typically avoid advocacy, this opportunity is being lost. In San Antonio, the change in term limits presents a real opportunity to engage elected officials. Yet the attention of the strongest community advocates, COPS and Metro Alliance, remains focused on ensuring that the city’s major economic development initiative produces jobs for low-income city residents. Advocates must connect housing and economic development in order to benefit from recent changes in the city’s term limits.

The challenge facing advocates in both cities is the need to build local coalitions with enough strength to commend attention and access, while maintaining enough autonomy to uphold community priorities. Rubin argues that community-based development organizations can work through umbrella organizations or coalitions to advocate, despite their individual ties to city coffers. The basic elements necessary for successful coalition-building are within reach in San Antonio: a community of advocates that trust each other and share common goals. To move to the next step, they need to broaden their networks and work collectively to frame public discussions of the city’s housing needs. The story told by our report card, while regarded as useful, has not yet been translated into local terms, converted into a local story about the housing needs of residents and local priorities and larger goals.

For the many cities where rule by business organizations or civic elites is the dominant arena, advancing distributional issues such as access to affordable housing will be quite difficult. Absent electoral access to agenda-setting, putting the needs of low-income, minority people and neighborhoods on the agenda will require mass mobilization, supported by a network of community-based organizations. In Dallas, such a network is not in place and will be hard to create. In San Antonio, the coalition has the potential to push for greater attention to housing needs, linked to their efforts to improve access to good jobs for residents of low-income communities.

ELIZABETH MUELLER is an Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture at UT Austin. She also holds a faculty appointment in the School of Social Work. She holds masters and doctoral degrees in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She is primarily interested in questions of social equity in cities and regions. She teaches courses on city planning history and planning theory, affordable housing policy, community development, urban politics, qualitative research methods, and research design. Prior to coming to U.T., Dr. Mueller was Assistant Professor of Urban Policy at the Milano Graduate School at New School University where she was also a Senior Research Associate in the Community Development Research Center. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Dr. Mueller is an active researcher. Her work focuses on community development and affordable housing. She is co-author of From Neighborhood to Community: Evidence on the Social Effects of Community Development, the first study to systematically consider residents’ views of the work of community development corporations. Her work has been published in Economic Development Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, The Journal of Migration and Ethnicity, Berkeley Planning Journal and Planning Forum. She is also active in state and local affordable housing policy and advocacy, producing research aimed at advancing the state of current discussions. She is a member of the Texas Housing Forum, a statewide group bringing together stakeholders from a wide range of interests and perspectives to make affordable housing a priority for Texas. She serves on the boards of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service and of LiveableCity and is active in housing issues in Austin. She co-authored the 1999 report Through the Roof: A Report on Affordable Homes, on the barriers to affordable housing in Austin, published by the Community Action Network’s Affordable Housing Task Force.

Notes

1. While cities receiving federal community development block grants and other funds aimed at affordable housing needs are required to assess local needs and prioritize the use of these funds, these efforts are not typically linked to local policy tools such as zoning.
2. For example, the Bay Area Housing Crisis Report Card tracks progress on housing through information reported under the state’s comprehensive planning law, which requires cities to include a housing element with specific information in their comprehensive plan.
3. House Bill 2266, passed in 2005, amends the Local Government Code to prohibit a municipality from adopting a requirement that establishes a maximum sales price for a privately produced housing unit or a residential building lot. The bill did not include rental housing since inclusionary zoning for rental housing is akin to rent control, which is already virtually impossible to enact under state law.
4. In participatory action research, researchers engage in research as active participants in the subject under study, with the goal of contributing to the outcomes sought by the community under study. In this case, the principal investigator was part of a coalition that was working to make attention to affordable housing needs a priority at both the state and local levels in Texas.
5. Funders included the Ford Foundation, Cleveland Foundation, Gund Foundation, British Petroleum, and the city of Cleveland.
6. The Bay Area report card was able to rely on state reporting requirements; Boston aimed at a more academic audience in context of state fair share mandates; Toronto’s housing agency prepared report cards internally for use in raising public understanding of the need for return to production of social housing, especially for the homeless. Data access and requirements were different in each case, and intended audience and purposes were also different. In all three cases, cities had a ready audience of advocates able to use the information to advance their own work and push for policy changes or accountability to make past victories meaningful.
7. The new term limits do not apply to council members in office November of 2008 when the initiative passed.

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