The Fight Over Fair Housing Goes to Court (Again)

Suree Barnes needed to get out of Garland, Texas. There were bugs in her home, rowdy neighbors living across the street, and she was worried about the quality of her older daughter’s school.

Barnes, 37, had initially wanted to move to Garland from Richardson, Texas, because it was one of the few places in the Dallas area she could afford using her roughly $1,100-a-month federal housing choice voucher, and one she thought would provide a better neighborhood for her three kids. When Barnes realized she wanted out of Garland, she was able to move again to Royse City, a suburb in Rockwall County that fair housing advocates would call “higher opportunity”: It has better schools and a lower crime rate. Barnes was able to move not because of a radical change in her financial status, but because of a new way of calculating the payments for housing vouchers in the Dallas metropolitan area.