Fort Worth has recently passed a $845 million bond package, focusing on maintaining and expanding the city’s infrastructure. Included in the package is $10 million dollars in affordable housing bonds. While this is a modest expenditure compared to $350 million and $150 million Austin and San Antonio passed respectively, experts predict the city’s investment is well worth the cost.
In particular, Perryman, CEO of The Perryman Group, provided a strong case for the bonds while he was speaking at the Housing Summit sponsored by Partnership Home on April 29, just a few days before the bond passed.
“If you spend $10 million, you get back $2.1 million every year,” he said. “You’re getting a 21% return on your money perpetually. That’s not bad.”
He had studied those previous bonds in Austin and San Antonio, and found that the returns on affordable housing bonds are significant. Additional affordable housing creates space for more workers. Those workers boost local businesses, both as valuable employees and as new customers. This not only boosts the local economy, but also funnels money back to the city in sales taxes.
“This is based on the actual experience that these communities have had,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of investments out there that can pretty comfortably give you 21% return on your investment. To me, that says it makes sense.”
$10 million may seem like a small investment for a city as large as Fort Worth. With the rise in tariffs and oil costs, building housing, let alone affordable housing, is becoming more expensive. It’s not surprising that Fort Worth is hesitant to invest too much so soon after the markets have changed. That said, Perryman was still optimistic about the future of Fort Worth
“If you look at the big growth industries in the country right now, advanced manufacturing, a lot of the things surrounding AI and data centers, financial services, life sciences, if you look at the industries that are really, really driving things for the future, Fort Worth is very well situated,” he said.
Now that the bonds have passed, it is only a matter of time until we see if Perryman’s predictions come to pass, or if the market has changed too much in recent years. But, if he’s correct, it could prove the value of affordable housing to Fort Worth and cities across the Lone Star State.