a possible 9.5% increase on property taxes<\/a>, would harm corporations that he said were crucial employers. \u201cThose are the types of policy differences that are getting people to look at places like Dallas, where we\u2019re doing the exact opposite,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\nAnd Dallas\u2019s pitches are intensifying, with Johnson sending a 10-person delegation to New York this month to meet and lure Wall Street executives southward. \u201cMy office, certainly, is in touch with folks across the country about relocating their corporate headquarters here, or expanding operations. And we don\u2019t plan to stop any time soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even London, typically worried about losing business to New York, may have a new rival. \u201cWe travel internationally and we talk to international companies,\u201d said Mike Rosa, a senior vice-president of business lobby group the Dallas Regional Chambers. \u201cThe idea of an international bank \u2026 completely moving their headquarters to Dallas, that happens. The idea of establishing Dallas as a hub for that bank so it can be more successful, that\u2019s very real,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve got the makeup, we\u2019ve the ingredients to continue to push and grow our international footprint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of the pitch is being closer to big business clients and major tech firms, that have been increasingly shifting their centre of gravity to the Lone Star state.<\/p>\nSignage at the Boom Belt event hosted by the Texas stock exchange in Miami.<\/span> Photograph: Eva Marie Uzcategui\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOver the course of the 2020s, Texas surpassed California and became host to the largest number of NYSE-listed and Fortune 500 company headquarters of any American state. That includes Oracle, which moved from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2020, and three of Elon Musk\u2019s ventures \u2013 Tesla, X and SpaceX \u2013 all of which moved from California in recent years. ExxonMobil is the most recent win, with the oil company announcing last month it would shift its base to Texas from New Jersey.<\/p>\n
Dallas-Fort Worth\u2019s population has also boomed, growing at the fastest rate among the United States\u2019 385 metro areas since 2010, to 8.5 million people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big story has been people moving from other parts of the United States,\u201d said Cullum Clark, an economist at the George W Bush Presidential Centre at Dallas\u2019s South Methodist University (SMU). It comes as New York, LA, Chicago and San Francisco experienced net outflows. Some of that has been political self-selection, Clark said, noting there was \u201csuggestive data\u201d showing conservative-leaning people are fleeing liberal-leaning states.<\/p>\n
Politics aside, businesses are now finding it easier to recruit staff. The head of Goldman Sachs\u2019s Dallas office, Aasem Khalil, still remembers getting a call from now-chief executive David Solomon in 2016, asking him to move his career and family to a then-900-person office in Dallas. Khalil, a lifelong New Yorker who had known Dallas as a temporary stopover for meetings, said \u201cit was a head-scratcher\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Dallas proved well-connected, becoming a convenient launch pad to serve businesses in Latin America, while a series of non-stop flights to locales as diverse as Fargo, North Dakota, and Seoul helped ferry executives to meetings around the world. Meanwhile, growing demand for bankers eventually meant SMU and the University of Texas started churning out business and finance grads fit for hire at firms like Goldman.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, \u201cnot everyone wants to be in New York\u201d, Khalil said, adding it can be a \u201chard place to live\u201d, even for wealthy bankers. \u201cFor a lot of people, Dallas is more their cup of tea.\u201d<\/p>\nA construction worker at the new Bank of America Tower in Dallas.<\/span> Photograph: Tom Fox\/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut while the boom of high-paid jobs is welcomed across the political spectrum, it is not clear whether the flood of wealthy bankers stands to lift all boats. And some experts are warning that Y\u2019all Street may be putting pressure on poorer families, particularly when it comes to rental prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowth is a good problem to have,\u201d Clark said. \u201cBut that said, nothing comes without side-effects.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA growing population \u2013 and particularly a growing population of highly compensated people \u2013 does impose strains and it puts new stresses on the system,\u201d Clark explained. \u201cAnd somebody winds up the net loser through those changes, unless those people are adequately provided for.\u201d<\/p>\n
A surge in rental prices over the past 15 years has disproportionately hurt lower-income families, for whom rent is now eating up more than half their wages. \u201cThat is a extreme hardship and we\u2019ve had a great many people experiencing that. And that is not just the poorest of the poor; that is several hundred thousand people who are very housing-cost-burdened,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n
Figures collected by Dallas research group Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL) show that while the number of households earning more than $100,000 in the city of Dallas jumped by 87,000 in the decade to 2023, those earning less than $35,000 fell by 61,000. Some of that may be explained by wage growth, but it is more likely that low-income workers are being pushed out of city limits and into more remote suburbs.<\/p>\n
With limited public transport, traffic congestion and commuting times are rising. That has forced some workers to take lower-paying jobs closer to where they can afford to live, putting further pressure on household finances. \u201cFor people who are already living on the financial edge, [the population boom] creates more competition for housing, for resources, and so the salaries that they were making just don\u2019t go as far as they used to,\u201d Ann Baddour, director of the Fair Financial Services Project at advocacy group Texas Appleseed, said.<\/p>\n
That is bearing out in financial statistics, including an 81% surge in debt-collection claims in Dallas between 2022 and 2025. \u201cThat\u2019s always a leading indicator because people will take out debt to try to sustain their life and then at some point it all falls apart,\u201d Baddour said.<\/p>\n
The city has also been grappling with chronic homelessness, which has involved clearing camps from visible areas<\/a> including the former central business district downtown. The non-profit group Housing Forward insisted that Dallas had committed to not just move people from \u201cblock to block\u201d, and had connected 22,939 people to housing since 2021. While it remains a visible problem, including in the downtown core, the group said homeless numbers had been falling for four consecutive years.<\/p>\nA homeless habitation is seen under the Horseshoe highway in Dallas.<\/span> Photograph: Val\u00e9rie Macon\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nStill, Dallas, and its Y\u2019all Street lobbyists, are racing to keep up with growth that they helped spur. \u201cIf you believe you\u2019re gonna be in a high growth environment, you\u2019d better have a plan around housing and be ready to absorb it,\u201d Clark said. \u201cI don\u2019t think, actually, that the city of Dallas has that at present, so therefore, we\u2019re underprepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dallas is now trying to rapidly tackle the problem. Last year, it slashed parking requirements<\/a> for new developments and rewrote building regulations to make it easier to push through smaller-scale developments for multi-family buildings.<\/a><\/p>\nBut even Dallas\u2019s wealthy bankers are facing fierce competition at the top end of the housing market.<\/p>\n
Linda McMahon, a former JP Morgan banker, and head of the Dallas Economic Development Corporation, recalls one private equity boss who recently made a generous private offer for a home in Dallas\u2019s well-to-do Highland Park, before tearing it down to start from scratch. \u201cHe probably spent twice as much, but that\u2019s not unheard of,\u201d McMahon said. \u201cFor people from California, the prices here are so much less, that they can come in and do that. So the high-end real estate market is pretty competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campaigners like Baddour are now warning that, without targeted support, inequality across Dallas, and its sprawling Forth Worth metro area, is likely to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has to be a deliberate choice, and deliberate effort, to ensure that this doesn\u2019t just reinforce some of the dynamics that have created a little bit of a two-tiered economy: those who have access to money, to markets, to resources, and those who don\u2019t.\u201d Baddour said. \u201cThere here has to be a deliberate effort to bridge that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n