Once a powerhouse Dallas builder, Habitat for Humanity almost out of lots for new homes

Not so long ago, Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity was among the most prolific homebuilders in the city. It was so successful in its mission to provide homes for low-income families that Habitat’s international headquarters named it the best big-city affiliate in the nation.
That was 2011. But now, after a string of missteps and leadership changes, the nonprofit is struggling in its stated purpose to help ease one of Dallas’ most daunting challenges. Median home sales prices in Dallas County have skyrocketed from $170,000 in 2014 to $360,000 in 2024, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. The income needed to afford a home priced at the median has more than doubled in the past three years.
At a time when the need for affordable housing has increased, Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity’s production has plummeted. The nonprofit that once provided homes for hundreds of families in neighborhoods such as Bonton, Ideal, Joppa, and Mill City in southern Dallas, and Lakewest and Los Altos in West Dallas, is on pace to put fewer families in homes this year than at any time in the last two decades.
A Dallas Morning News investigation examined the current state of the nonprofit — and how it ended up here. The News reviewed Habitat’s finances and land holdings. We obtained emails from the City of Dallas, examined others provided by Habitat, analyzed public records from the city and Dallas County, researched properties on online real estate listings and reviewed past media coverage and City Council resolutions. In all, we scrutinized more than 170 individual properties.
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Our investigation revealed a number of troubling circumstances that help inform not only the present condition of the nearly 40-year-old organization, but also the challenges that lie ahead. Specifically, our investigation revealed:
The News investigation also found missteps that suggest Habitat didn’t always understand city rules governing development of affordable housing:
The city needs developers such as Habitat to provide affordable housing, said Linda McMahon, president and CEO of The Real Estate Council, a commercial real estate advocacy group.
“They were serving a really, really important need, and they’re just not a factor anymore,” said McMahon, who will soon serve as CEO of the nonprofit City of Dallas Economic Development Corporation. “And we want them to be back.”
Presented with The News’ findings, Steve Westerheide, who will take over as Habitat’s board chair in July, acknowledged the mistakes and said the board needs a firmer grasp of Habitat’s operations going forward.
Ashley Brundage, an affordable housing advocate who took over as Habitat CEO in May, agreed the nonprofit has made errors. Nevertheless, she and Westerheide remain optimistic about Habitat’s future and the role it plays in providing homes for those who might not otherwise be able to afford one.
“I really am confident,” Brundage, a former executive with the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, told The News, “that the organization is going to build its brand back up and become the organization and the brand and the Habitat that it used to be in Dallas.”
Dallas Area Habitat formed in 1986 and says it has built or restored more than 2,100 homes in the area. With almost 50 full-time and 50 part-time employees, the nonprofit serves Dallas and Kaufman counties, and until recently has operated almost exclusively in Dallas County.
At its peak, Habitat maintained a rolling inventory of property that it could build on for the coming three to five years, said Cyndy Lutz, the former Habitat executive vice president in charge of buying land for the nonprofit.
“So we needed no less than 300 lots,” she said, “and wanted no more than 500.”
Lutz said the nonprofit’s robust inventory helped land a significant grant that changed the fortunes of hundreds of low-income residents and solidified the group’s reputation in the community.
In 2010, Habitat International was awarded $137 million from the federal government. Dallas Habitat earned a hefty share of that total — $28 million — which allowed them to build about 300 homes, Lutz said.
At the end of June 2017, Habitat had 429 lots in its inventory, according to a financial statement the nonprofit provided The News. From 2011 through 2018, it steadily built nearly 100 homes a year.
In October 2017, former CEO Bill Hall who led the organization during that robust period, stepped down. While the nonprofit looked for a permanent CEO, former board chair Randy Golden took over in the interim.
Shortly thereafter, Habitat made a change in leadership at its in-house mortgage company, Lutz said. New mortgages closed more slowly, she said, and there were delays in collecting on existing mortgages.
Golden remembers it differently. The mortgage issue, he recalled, was already present when he took over.
Either way, the result was a cash-flow problem. The nonprofit’s response was to sell vacant land that it otherwise would have used to build affordable homes.
At Golden’s direction, Lutz said she arranged the sale of more than 50 lots in the Mill City neighborhood just southeast of Fair Park and 4 acres in West Dallas.
Still, homebuilding didn’t stop. Under Golden, the nonprofit began to execute a plan to build about 50 houses in East Dallas behind Skyline High School. In the summer of 2017, the nonprofit had bought nearly 9 acres there.
The city of Dallas had awarded the land’s previous owner $450,000 to help pay for new streets, water, sewage and other infrastructure, on the condition that more than half the new homes would eventually be sold to families with limited incomes.
With Habitat as the builder, all the homes in the new subdivision, Chariot Village, would meet that standard. And according to an agreement with the city, the new neighborhood was to be completed by the end of 2019.
But when all was said and done, Chariot Village would exemplify Habitat’s diminished pace of homebuilding. Of the 50 homes it was supposed to build, Habitat built just nine — and drew neighborhood concern along the way.
Under Golden, Habitat applied for building permits in early 2018 on those nine lots and began construction. That spring, Habitat announced it had selected its new permanent CEO, former home warranty executive Dave Crawford.
Under Crawford, the nonprofit didn’t apply for additional permits in Chariot Village, city records show.
Daniel Wood, chair of the Buckner Terrace neighborhood association that watched over the project, said neighbors complained to the city and Habitat about the lack of progress.
As the subdivision sat incomplete, vandals broke windows and Habitat boarded them up with plywood, Wood said.
“We were all excited about them to come in and get these new homes, and then it just dwindled,” Wood said. “It looked like an abandoned development.”
Habitat eventually finished the nine homes but sold the remaining lots and other builders completed the subdivision.
The News spoke to Crawford, who declined to comment for this story. In an interview this month, Brundage told The News Habitat sold lots and canceled contracts there because the deals were not financially viable, but said because of staff turnover, she couldn’t provide additional information.
What followed under Crawford were four years in which inventory declined and fewer homes were being sold.
Crawford told The News in 2018 he would sell assets, such as the nonprofit’s headquarters building, and a year later, said he would scale back production, to make up for two years of deficit spending under his predecessor.
Based on previous News coverage and emails provided by Habitat and obtained from the city through public records requests, The News found some of the nonprofit’s struggles stemmed from a lack of familiarity with rules that govern land the city sells at low cost for the purpose of building affordable homes.
One example was Habitat’s effort to sell a tract of land, originally bought from the city, for 200 times what the nonprofit had paid for it. Putting the land on the market violated the city’s deed restrictions.
Habitat had purchased the large tract of land in West Dallas from the city in 2015 for $6,600. More than an acre large — and about a half-mile from Habitat’s headquarters — the property was meant to hold eight homes.
Instead, Habitat had missed the deadline to build and the lot had sat vacant for five years.
Under Crawford, Habitat tried to sell the land for $1.35 million in 2020. When neighbors found out, The News reported at the time, they noted that Habitat had been able to purchase the property at a discount specifically because of its intent to build needed affordable homes, not to make a windfall from selling it at market rate, paving the way for homes that might further gentrification.
Worse, Habitat had no legal right to sell the property because of the city’s deed restrictions.
Crawford at the time said he was not aware of those restrictions, even though they are recorded in a deed accessible to the public via a county website. Ultimately, the city took back the property.
Four years later, the property still sits empty.
Other oversights continue to reverberate today.
They revolve around about 20 lots, in southern and West Dallas, that Habitat had purchased from the city between 2015 and 2017. Confusion around those deals — on the part of the nonprofit and the city — also stalled homebuilding and recently prevented Habitat from purchasing more property from the city.
The initial misstep was Habitat’s failure to build homes on those lots by the four-year deadlines set by the city. Once those deadlines passed, the city had the right to take back the property.
In 2020, the city took back four lots. Then, inconsistency and confusion ensued.
In at least 13 other instances the city said it would take back lots but didn’t, and then told Habitat to build on some of them. It’s not clear why the city did not take certain lots back, some of which have since been developed by Habitat. When asked why lots were not taken back, assistant housing director Darwin Wade only acknowledged that prior staff did not follow through.
Amid the confusion, Habitat relied on city assurances instead of property records. For example, a city employee mistakenly told Habitat early in 2022 that a lot in West Dallas still belonged to the nonprofit. Habitat began to plan, and spent $7,000 on a building permit in May 2022. Four months later, the city told Habitat in an email that it had, in fact, previously sent the nonprofit copies of the documents transferring the property back to the city. Property records, available to the public and verified by The News, show the city took ownership in 2020.
Even as the city reminded Habitat it had taken the property back, it said the lot was still for sale and that it might be possible for Habitat to buy it again. But eventually, the city decided that Habitat first had to build homes on other lots it had purchased from the city years ago, emails show. Adding to the confusion, the city had previously told Habitat it was taking some of those lots back, too. But it didn’t.
The West Dallas lot where Habitat bought the permit is still vacant.
The city acknowledged recordkeeping problems and has since told The News that its land inventory program is under new management, and that it has recently installed new computer software to keep track of building deadlines and ownership.
The West Dallas lot was not the only instance in which confusion ultimately led to Habitat not developing property it had purchased from the city.
In 2022, Habitat determined it could not develop three properties bought from the city because they were zoned commercial. Crawford asked the city to take back the lots. The city agreed at the time they were zoned commercial and said it would take them back.
But the lots were zoned residential, The News found. Two of them, in fact, sit between two other homes built by Habitat in the Bonton neighborhood, in southern Dallas. When The News presented this information to the city this month , it agreed the three lots were indeed zoned residential. At this point, it’s not clear when or if homes will be built on the properties.
Sometimes it wasn’t confusion that delayed development but Habitat’s management of its land holdings. Habitat missed a deadline to build on a lot in Mill City, southeast of Fair Park. In 2021, the city of Dallas said it would take the lot back, but didn’t follow through and later asked the nonprofit to build on it.
In 2022, Habitat said it didn’t want to build on it, because the lot was occupied by a homeless encampment and there was no development around it. But the emptiness nearby was at least in part Habitat’s doing. The News reviewed property records and found the nonprofit had owned at least eight nearby lots years earlier but instead of building houses, sold the lots.
The city forced Habitat to build on the lot in question, and a family is moving in — seven years after the lot was purchased.
The confusion Habitat had over deadlines was not exclusive to Dallas. In July 2021, Habitat lost two lots in Balch Springs, when the city reclaimed them for sitting empty too long. Brundage told The News recently that Habitat wasn’t aware of Balch Springs’ deadline.
Amid all of the missed deadlines and confusion over whether properties would be taken back by the cities that sold them, Habitat did continue to build homes, albeit at a much lesser rate than in its heyday.
In 2019, Habitat won more lots from the city and successfully built 25 homes under the city’s deadlines, most near Lincoln High School in southern Dallas.
And it wanted to build more. But to do so it needed to acquire property.
Then-Habitat board member David Fisk sent an email to Habitat volunteers in January 2021 saying as much.
“Our biggest challenge at the moment is land acquisition,” Fisk wrote in an email obtained by The News. “But we have enough inventory for the next two years.”
An opportunity for land soon presented itself, though not in Dallas.
In October 2021, the nonprofit bought 46 side-by-side lots for $1.15 million in Mabank, a town of about 4,700 that sits partly in Kaufman County.
The lots are an hour’s drive from downtown Dallas, just barely in Habitat’s territory, and as far away from Dallas as Habitat had ever built. Westerheide, the incoming board chair, said Crawford convinced the board to buy the land. Brundage said it’s her understanding that Habitat bought the land because it was inexpensive and interest rates were low. Proceeds from the sales would support Habitat’s mission, Brundage said.
Today, more than half of the original 46 lots are still empty. And of the 22 homes that were built and sold, many were deeply discounted — as much as $49,000, from the original listed prices of from $249,000 to $259,000. Brundage said Habitat will clear $775,000 from the homes it built — or $15,000 less per house than expected.
Brundage told The News that after buying the land, higher interest rates and other homes built nearby made selling there more difficult. And although the remaining Mabank properties today represent Habitat’s largest set of buildable lots, the nonprofit has not decided whether to put up more homes there.
Two months before his planned retirement in September 2022, Crawford was still trying to restore the nonprofit’s ability to buy land from the city of Dallas, saying he wanted to give some lots back while asking for extensions on others.
That November, William Eubanks took over as Habitat’s new CEO — a tenure that lasted less than a year. Two weeks into his new job, the director of Dallas’ housing department sent him a letter.
“Over the past several weeks, City staff have held virtual conversations and exchanged emails with Habitat staff to discuss development plans,” David Noguera, then the city’s housing department director, wrote. “These discussions have failed to produce a resolution because Habitat was only interested in developing certain properties, while the City expected a Habitat plan to develop all properties.”
Noguera offered a proposal: The city would take back the three lots both parties still believed were zoned for commercial use, and grant building extensions for others.
“I am committed to regaining our status of being in good standing,” Eubanks replied in an email to Noguera.
As the year went on, Habitat began building on the lots according to the city’s plan.
The nonprofit also tried to expand its supply of buildable land. In the summer of 2023, Habitat attempted to convert a 4.6-acre plot of land it owns in Joppa, a freedman’s town in southern Dallas, to 30 lots, but the city rejected the proposal amid concerns from residents.
Habitat also purchased 7 acres in Pleasant Grove in southeast Dallas, enough to hold more than two dozen homes.
But that deal also ended Eubanks’ tenure with Habitat. After learning that his wife, a real estate agent, earned a $24,000 commission on that deal, the board terminated him in October. Eubanks, through his attorney, has denied wrongdoing.
Around that time, a consultant working for Habitat sent an email to the city asking when the nonprofit would again be eligible to buy lots.
A city official responded last November.
“I’ll have to explain to my Board why we are selling lots to an organization that gave us all of these lots back,” Tyrone Wilson, a manager over the city land inventories, wrote back to Habitat.
After the board terminated Eubanks, The News began probing the nonprofit’s finances, land inventory and home production.
For months, Habitat board members and staff would not discuss the nonprofit’s land inventory or home production with The News, despite multiple verbal and written requests.
In April, after receiving emails between Habitat officials and the city of Dallas through a public records request, The News asked for another interview and sent more questions. By then, Habitat’s board had announced it was hiring Brundage, who agreed to talk to The News.
Brundage and her staff looked through nonprofit records to try to answer The News’ questions and provide some understanding of Habitat’s current state. She said she could not explain many of the nonprofit’s decisions because she wasn’t there at the time.
“I think that there were decisions made by other people that I am not responsible for,” Brundage said. “What I’m going to be doing is picking up the pieces and moving forward.”
Brundage said she needs to fill some roles after one top executive left before she took over and another was let go after.
Incoming board chair Westerheide, who has been on the nonprofit’s board for five years, said the board needs to have a “firmer grasp” than in the past.
“We should have better reporting,” Westerheide said, “and better insight into the overall operations of the organization going forward.”
Help will come, they said, from a surprise $9 million gift Habitat received in 2022 from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
Some of the money went to purchase the vacant land in Pleasant Grove; some on nonprofit day-to-day operations.
Westerheide and Brundage conceded they might still have to spend more on operational expenses, but their hope is to spend the bulk of what’s left — around $7 million — to buy more land and build more houses.
“It’s very hard to meet the mission,” Westerheide said, “when you don’t have the land to build on.”
For now, Habitat has eight homes scheduled for construction, recently acquired one additional buildable lot in southern Dallas, and expects to close soon on two others. The nonprofit needs money to develop the Pleasant Grove land, but that process could take up to two years. Brundage said she plans to speak to Joppa residents and decide the future of the land there.
In January, Habitat applied to buy 34 new lots from the city. But winning them is not certain. The city said its review of the nonprofit’s application will take into account how Habitat follows through on the city lots it’s working on now.
The city, however, acknowledged Habitat has been able to provide much-needed affordable single-family homes to low-income residents that other developers have found difficult.
“Everybody that I know that’s involved with Habitat,” Westerheide said, “wants to see them move forward, get more land, build more homes, put more good people into homes.”
Brundage said she doesn’t have a timetable set, but her goal is to get back to building 60 to 65 homes a year, if not more. Even that target, though, is far short of the nearly 100 per year Habitat used to build.
Staff researcher Jennifer Brancato and Data Editor Kai Teoh contributed to this report.