How The Affordable Housing Crisis Is Playing Out In One Dallas Neighborhood
Khraish Khraish
LAURA SULLIVAN  BYLINE: There are two ways to describe  the man called Khraish Khraish in West Dallas .  He 's either a landlord saving the poor from homelessness  or  he 's one of the city's worst slumlords.
SULLIVAN: Khraish works out of a small West Dallas office where  he  manages about 300 homes  he  and  his  dad own in the neighborhood. They're mostly crumbling 1940s one-story wooden houses  but at 400 or 500 a month  they're some of the cheapest in the city.
SULLIVAN: Neighbors stop by. So does her daughter. Pearline Brown Harper wastes no time when I ask her about  Khraish .
SULLIVAN: Harper is right about at least one thing. The homes have brought in a lot of money. With 300 homes at 400 or 500 a month   Khraish  could be collecting as much as $150 000 a month in rent. But  Khraish  isn't the only one to see the investment potential here. Across the country  mom-and-pop landlords are on the decline  and studies show owners with dozens or hundreds of properties are on the rise. The less a landlord has to spend on repairs  the more money he or she stands to make. In Brown's house  a neighbor pops in to see what's going on.
SULLIVAN: And she's right not just in West Dallas but in cities all across the country. Median rent has increased 70 percent over the past two decades while housing conditions haven't improved. And according to government data  the majority of poor families are spending more than half of their already small incomes just to cover rent. In Dallas two years ago  the city decided it was going to get serious about living conditions in West Dallas. Assistant City Attorney Melissa Miles and others went into dozens of  Khraish 's homes.
SULLIVAN: They sent  Khraish  a binder with hundreds of citations.  He  said it was devastating.
 KHRAISH : It was just bankruptcy. And they want me to bring them to a standard that these houses cannot attain. It's like  how do you make a 1930s engine meet modern-day emission standards? You cannot.
SULLIVAN: But the bigger question looming over all of this is not why the city intervened but why they intervened now. And  Khraish  had a theory.
 KHRAISH : The city of Dallas does not want low-income households in the city.
SULLIVAN:  Khraish 's theory goes like this. The city wants him to renovate his homes because if he renovates  he'll have to charge more to recoup the costs. His tenants can't pay more  so they'll go live somewhere else  somewhere other than revitalized West Dallas or maybe all of Dallas.
 KHRAISH : Their affordable housing policy is not to have one.
SULLIVAN: But the answer  Khraish  came up with was not what anyone was expecting. Last spring   he  decided  he  wasn't going to renovate  his  homes. Instead   he  said  he  was going to tear them down and evict the tenants.
SULLIVAN: As he said this  we stopped in front of a lot where  Khraish  had already demolished the house that was on it. I told him city officials said they were stunned he was tearing houses down.
SULLIVAN: Except in those ashes  he says  only wealthy people get to live  and you don't even need to do code enforcement. And that could have been the end of the story  except  Khraish  had one more coda to add. A few months ago  he announced he was sparing half his tenants from eviction. Instead  he says  he's making them homeowners.
SULLIVAN: He's going to loan the tenants the money to buy the houses from him. Seller-financed deals are often controversial and can sometimes leave buyers with less-than-favorable terms. For example   Khraish's  contract says if buyers miss one payment  he can demand that they pay off the entire house immediately or lose it. Whether or not that happens   Khraish  will collect payments but will no longer have to worry about repairs.
Pearlie Mae Brown signed a similar contract with  Khraish . She can't afford to fix the house  but she told us she has no choice. She has nowhere to go. When we asked Mayor Mike Rawlings about this  he said it was a happy ending. More than a hundred people will get to stay in West Dallas.
LAURA SULLIVAN  BYLINE: There are two ways to describe   [TGT]  .   [TGT]  's either a landlord saving the poor from homelessness  or   [TGT]  's one of the city's worst slumlords.
SULLIVAN: Khraish works out of a small West Dallas office where   [TGT]   manages about 300 homes   [TGT]   and   [TGT]   dad own in the neighborhood. They're mostly crumbling 1940s one-story wooden houses  but at 400 or 500 a month  they're some of the cheapest in the city.
SULLIVAN: Neighbors stop by. So does her daughter. Pearline Brown Harper wastes no time when I ask her about  Khraish .
SULLIVAN: Harper is right about at least one thing. The homes have brought in a lot of money. With 300 homes at 400 or 500 a month   Khraish  could be collecting as much as $150 000 a month in rent. But  Khraish  isn't the only one to see the investment potential here. Across the country  mom-and-pop landlords are on the decline  and studies show owners with dozens or hundreds of properties are on the rise. The less a landlord has to spend on repairs  the more money he or she stands to make. In Brown's house  a neighbor pops in to see what's going on.
SULLIVAN: And she's right not just in West Dallas but in cities all across the country. Median rent has increased 70 percent over the past two decades while housing conditions haven't improved. And according to government data  the majority of poor families are spending more than half of their already small incomes just to cover rent. In Dallas two years ago  the city decided it was going to get serious about living conditions in West Dallas. Assistant City Attorney Melissa Miles and others went into dozens of  Khraish 's homes.
SULLIVAN: They sent  Khraish  a binder with hundreds of citations.  He  said it was devastating.
 KHRAISH : It was just bankruptcy. And they want me to bring them to a standard that these houses cannot attain. It's like  how do you make a 1930s engine meet modern-day emission standards? You cannot.
SULLIVAN: But the bigger question looming over all of this is not why the city intervened but why they intervened now. And  Khraish  had a theory.
 KHRAISH : The city of Dallas does not want low-income households in the city.
SULLIVAN:  Khraish 's theory goes like this. The city wants him to renovate his homes because if he renovates  he'll have to charge more to recoup the costs. His tenants can't pay more  so they'll go live somewhere else  somewhere other than revitalized West Dallas or maybe all of Dallas.
 KHRAISH : Their affordable housing policy is not to have one.
SULLIVAN: But the answer  Khraish  came up with was not what anyone was expecting. Last spring   he  decided  he  wasn't going to renovate  his  homes. Instead   he  said  he  was going to tear them down and evict the tenants.
SULLIVAN: As he said this  we stopped in front of a lot where  Khraish  had already demolished the house that was on it. I told him city officials said they were stunned he was tearing houses down.
SULLIVAN: Except in those ashes  he says  only wealthy people get to live  and you don't even need to do code enforcement. And that could have been the end of the story  except  Khraish  had one more coda to add. A few months ago  he announced he was sparing half his tenants from eviction. Instead  he says  he's making them homeowners.
SULLIVAN: He's going to loan the tenants the money to buy the houses from him. Seller-financed deals are often controversial and can sometimes leave buyers with less-than-favorable terms. For example   Khraish's  contract says if buyers miss one payment  he can demand that they pay off the entire house immediately or lose it. Whether or not that happens   Khraish  will collect payments but will no longer have to worry about repairs.
Pearlie Mae Brown signed a similar contract with  Khraish . She can't afford to fix the house  but she told us she has no choice. She has nowhere to go. When we asked Mayor Mike Rawlings about this  he said it was a happy ending. More than a hundred people will get to stay in West Dallas.