The canary in the coal mine

For thirty years, Paula Deane Traynham’s front porch in Fort Worth’s Frisco Heights looked out on tree-lined streets and rows of 1930s cottages.

She loved her 1939 home and the quiet rhythm of the neighborhood — until the sounds began to change.

Developers started buying nearby properties, tearing down single-story houses and replacing them with larger rentals marketed to TCU students.

In 2014, Traynham told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the peace she enjoyed on her block was slipping away.

“The closer that this development comes toward my house and the more my peaceful porch is encroached on, the more I think about selling,” she said.

A year later, she and her family sold to a developer. 

Since then, Frisco Heights has been extensively developed with apartments and other multi-occupancy dwellings, she said. 

Traynham has described Frisco Heights as the canary in the coal mine.

“When the surrounding neighborhoods saw what was happening, they rallied their residents to actively pursue ways to save their unique character,” she said.

In 2014, Fort Worth officials introduced the TCU Residential Overlay Ordinance, a zoning measure meant to preserve the single-family character of neighborhoods near campus by limiting each home to three unrelated residents. 

Even before the ordinance passed, some residents doubted the city could enforce it.

“Are they going to go door to door and ask for birth certificates?” asked Bethanne Chimbel, another Frisco Heights homeowner, in 2014. “I also wonder if it is too little too late for a lot of the areas that I have seen.”

A decade later, those warnings seem prophetic. The blocks the overlay was meant to protect are now dominated by student rentals, and the law designed to preserve single-family character has proven difficult to enforce and a big challenge to update.

On paper, the TCU Overlay is simple: no more than three unrelated residents in a single-family home. The enforcement piece residents feared most has proven to be the overlay’s weakest point, according to city officials and property owners.

LaShondra Stringfellow, Fort Worth’s assistant director of zoning and design review, said her department still depends almost entirely on neighbor complaints to spot violations.

“We rely on complaints from neighbors,” Stringfellow said. “We can’t just walk into a house and count beds. We need probable cause and legal access, and that can take weeks of coordination with city attorneys.”

Most reports start the same way: too many cars in the driveway, too much trash on pickup days. 

According to the city’s Occupancy Investigation Form, neighbors are encouraged to document suspected violations by logging vehicle activity at an address for at least 30 days: noting license plates, times parked and overnight stays. 

Spotting the stealth dorms

Stringfellow said inspectors look for “telltale signs” of what residents call stealth dorms.

Extra dumpsters, keyed bedroom locks or oversized 'offices' that double as bedrooms often signal stealth dorms disguised as single-family homes.

When complaints reach the city, Code Compliance reviews the case and consults Development Services when needed.

“If inspectors confirm a violation, the landlord gets a notice and up to 60 days to fix it,” Stringfellow said. “Most comply before it ever reaches court.”

But even when enforcement comes in strong, developers have found ways to adapt.

Natalie Weimer, who owns 48 student rental properties around TCU, said the overlay’s limits reshaped some developers’ construction patterns instead of stopping them.

“People are putting in homes that, according to their plans, with code, it's just a three-bedroom, but they'll have a really big third bedroom that they then split later on into two bedrooms or an office that they then put a closet in later on,” Weimer said. “So it’s created some of that underground choice that people make when they’re redeveloping.”

For TCU, whose jurisdiction ends at the campus boundary, the problem sits largely with the city.

“If there’s a zoning violation, that’s the city,” said Gregory Cox, TCU’s Executive Director for Government Relations. “If it’s off-campus noise or behavior, that’s a separate process.”

Ten years later, the web of shared responsibility has left the overlay as a law that many know, but few can enforce. 

The price of proximity

The market pressures around TCU are visible in the price tags attached to the homes within the overlay.

As redevelopment has accelerated, properties once occupied by families have become investments whose value is closely tied to their proximity to campus.

One example is 2704 Lubbock Ave, a lot in Frisco Heights zoned B – Multifamily Residential and owned by Casa Rana LLC, a Dallas-based company with multiple holdings in the neighborhoods surrounding TCU.

According to the Tarrant Appraisal District, the property carries a 2025 notice value of $1.03 million, more than double the $400,000 market value listed on the same record.

That gap reflects both rising land values and redevelopment, especially in areas where the zoning allows more density than the single-family homes the overlay was designed to protect.

The rental market tells a similar story. The duplex, with five bedrooms on each side, is listed for $7,750 per month per side and is marketed to students for its private bathrooms and walkability to campus. The price averages roughly $1,550 per bedroom.

A decade later

For Traynham, the story began on a quiet street lined with 1930s cottages. A decade later, the porch is gone, many of her neighbors have moved and Frisco Heights looks little like the block she once knew.

The overlay that promised protection slowed the redevelopment but never reversed it; overshadowed by rising values, investor ownership and the steady pull of a growing university.

As TCU updates its campus plans and landlords watch what comes next, the question facing these neighborhoods is no longer whether they will change, but whether any of their character will survive.