LDG Development Plans Southeast Dallas Affordable Housing

An affordable housing injection is coming to a far southeast corner of Dallas.

Louisville, Kentucky–based LDG Development is planning a 330-unit affordable housing complex near the Great Trinity Forest Gateway and Horse Trails, part of the firm’s growing presence in Texas and beyond, the Dallas Business Journal reported.

The $100 million project, dubbed Gateway at Trinity Forest, will rise at 2200 Dowdy Ferry Road and is slated to begin construction in January. All units will be reserved for households earning 60 percent or less of the area median income, according to city filings. Construction is expected to wrap by December 2027.

Dallas City Council approved low-income housing tax credits for the development earlier this year, along with LDG’s two other Texas projects: the 180-unit Legacy on Belt Line and 204-unit Heights at UNT Station. The firm, founded in 1994, has delivered more than 22,800 units across Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, Georgia and Tennessee.

Gateway at Trinity Forest adds to a wave of subsidized and income-restricted development on the city’s southern edge, where land is more available and prices are lower than in the urban core. The location sits just off Interstate 20 near Pemberton Hill and is surrounded by wooded land, floodplain and a patchwork of residential subdivisions.

LDG is also advancing plans for a conversion project in northwest Dallas, where it’s transforming a former call center at 9999 West Technology Boulevard into a mixed-income residential complex.

North Texas faces steep demand for below-market housing. A 2023 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated a deficit of almost 270,000 affordable rental homes across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, a shortfall that’s only widened as more residents flock to the region and construction costs are high.

City leaders have made boosting supply a core part of Dallas’ housing policy. But critics have pushed for deeper affordability and better geographic dispersion of the projects.

Developers like LDG say the economics of land and construction often dictate location.

— Judah Duke