The Houston Housing Authority (HHA) serves about 19,000 households with housing choice vouchers. The Harris County Housing Authority (whose service area excludes Houston, Pasadena and Baytown) supports another 4,500 households with vouchers. Collectively, that is nearly 10 times as many households as are served by public housing, making the voucher program an important — if imperfect — way of providing affordable housing.
In September, the Houston Housing Authority announced it is ending public housing, following a national trend, as cities such as Chicago and Atlanta have also done so, with previously government-run developments being converted to federally subsidized but privately owned mixed-income communities with fewer affordable units.
In late 2023, the Houston Housing Authority received a $5 million federal grant to help move some of its families to so-called “opportunity neighborhoods,” areas with low poverty, high-quality schools and other amenities.
In 2023, Harris County saw a record number of new homes sold — nearly 10,000 — highlighting the region’s growing housing supply amid a broader affordability crisis.
Buying a home continues to be a good investment: It has a better rate of return than most other investments, and unlike stocks, a home provides shelter, a fundamental human need. Unfortunately, it is an investment that far exceeds the grasp of many Houston-area residents.
This year’s State of Housing in Harris County and Houston focuses on renters and renting. A majority of Houston households rent, as does a soon-to-be majority of the county’s households. This means renting and rental policy play an increasingly important role in determining the region’s quality of life.
The 2022 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston analyzed foreclosures countywide from 2005 to 2020. But what happens to a neighborhood after a foreclosure crisis?
Zillow’s recent high-profile offloading of its properties drew attention to the relatively new “iBuyer” sector of the housing economy. In this blog post, I explain this sector and map the location of Zillow and other iBuyer properties within Harris County. My analysis suggests that while urbanists often mull over gentrification, and this Institute often researches the subject, it doesn’t seem to apply to what’s happening to the communities where speculative investors operate.
Roughly one and a half years after George Floyd’s murder and the global protests that followed, local votes affecting local police forces came to the ballot box last week. In Austin, Proposition A would have mandated higher police staffing levels, but it failed by a very large margin, with 69% of voters rejecting the measure. Farther north in Minneapolis, a more narrow but still decisive vote rejected the disbandment of the Minneapolis police department (56% opposed).
A lot of the rent houses owned by real estate investment trusts — or REITs — are located in unincorporated parts of Harris County and municipal utility districts (MUDs) that have been hit hardest by foreclosures and flooding. Many of them are connected to local and national homebuilders.
COVID-19 killed Black and Brown people at a far higher rate than white or Asian people, and in this year’s State of Housing report, we suggest home overcrowding and labor conditions played a role.
In the 10 months since the killing of George Floyd, has policing in America changed at all? We need to rethink what it means to protect and serve the well-being of citizens.
Mayor Sylvester Turner’s Task Force on Policing Reform has started its work, drawing on a very broad set of local leaders, activists and citizens. A series of similar task forces were launched in Los Angeles in the 1990s, all of which arose from controversies and scandals within the LAPD. What can Houston learn from LA’s “blue ribbon” police task forces?
Investments, institutions and decriminalization all are strategies that can reduce the mandate of police and be more effective in addressing certain “offenses” than the criminal justice solution. This post explores police alternatives for cities, dividing them into three groups: health, relationships and community patrol.
While not all Americans support dismantling or defunding the police, recent surveys show the overwhelming majority do agree that changes in police training are needed. Most also think police officers shouldn’t be protected from being sued by “qualified immunity.” Part 2 of our reading list on policing brings together a collection of works on the culture within police organizations.
