As demand for homes and housing prices surge, a plan to build more affordable apartments in Fort Worth is raising questions.
The roughly 200-unit development would go in by Mark IV Parkway and Western Center in an area surrounded by single-family homes.
"We're going into the development area," said Deborah Pendleton, leading NBC 5 on a tour of her neighborhood.
She and neighbor Kaye Riopelle love their community.
"This was supposed to be my last pit stop before the cemetery," Riopelle said.
"Me too. This is our retirement home," Pendleton added.
But now they're seriously considering selling, worried that a proposal to rezone the field from single-family homes to affordable apartments will disrupt the neighborhood and drive down their property values.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
"I've been here 12 years, and I've seen how this community has gone down and this frightens me," Riopelle said.
The neighbors brought their concerns, and a stack of petitions, to a town hall meeting Thursday night, where developers laid out their plans for high-end housing for workforce families who make roughly $40,000 a year. They're not Section 8, but they can't afford rising rents.
"People need a good quality place to live," said Fort Worth City Councilman Carlos Flores, adding that affordable housing is one of the city's biggest challenges.
"We want to be able not to concentrate it in any one place in the city, but to equitably distribute it to different areas," Flores said.
That means breaking down barriers in areas that never expected a different kind of neighbor.
"We thought that these were going to be single-family homes there, because that's what the future land-use plan is," Pendleton said. "They're trying to change the rules here."
The Eagle-Mountain Saginaw Independent School District has also expressed concern about how the quick burst in population would affect its planning.
The full city council is set to take up the issue next Tuesday.
