Fort Worth sells land in southeast to develop affordable homes
Fort Worth officials agreed on Tuesday to sell five city-owned properties in Ash Crescent to a developer constructing “affordable single-family homes” in the neighborhood.
Fort Worth’s Housing Finance Corporation (FWHFC) unanimously approved the $150,000 sale to Fort Worth-based developer Alpha Family Group. City leaders hope the exchange, a comparative trickle in a stream of funds flowing through government home and infrastructure projects, will help ease the home affordability crisis squeezing many of the city’s residents.
The five properties dot a cup-shaped pocket of homes along Colvin Avenue, Ash Crescent Street, and Belsize Terrace. FWHFC purchased the roughly 0.2 acre plots for a few thousand dollars each in 2007 and 2008; it’s now selling them for $30,000 a piece.
“These were all part of our lot-building inventory so that we could provide these for affordable housing,” Leah Brown, an official at the city’s neighborhood services department, told corporation directors during a presentation just before the vote.
Alpha Family Group pledged to sell the future three-bed, two-bath homes to households earning at or below 80% of the city’s median income—roughly $76,550 annually for a family of four, according to the city’s estimates—and cover all closing costs.
Fort Worth created FWHFC in 1979. The body, governed by city councilmembers, focuses its energies on buying up unused land and offloading it to developers to construct affordable residences.
The once reliable promise of inexpensive housing in the Metroplex has all but faded in recent years. Home prices in the city have spiked — a product of regional population booms, the feverish housing demand it fuels, and national financial and construction trends.
The median income Fort Worth family can no longer afford the median priced Fort Worth home. The departure of affordability is especially stark in the city’s poorest neighborhoods — like Ash Crescent and other communities in the city’s southeast— where home values have ballooned as local wealth levels have flat-lined.
The housing finance corporation is one cannon in the city’s policy arsenal leaders have deployed to break down the affordability wall.
Fort Worth Housing Solutions, the city’s public housing authority, doles out federal vouchers to support aspiring low-income homebuyers. The city’s Homebuyer Assistance Program helps cover down-payments and closing costs for purchasers below a certain income threshold.
New home construction is also one prong of city efforts to revitalize Ash Crescent, a 0.56 square mile community packed between Morningside and Cobb Park. The city set aside $2.77 million in 2018 to install street cameras, brighten lighting, and uproot dead trees, among other touch-ups.
This story was originally published March 26, 2024 at 9:07 PM.
