Urban Edge

Stories, perspectives and insights from the Kinder Institute

New research highlights potential responses to student homelessness caused by natural disasters

Hurricane Harvey rendered some 24,000 students in Houston Independent School District to be listed as homeless. The storm brought the district's overall total to more than 29,000 homeless students in the subsequent year, according to new research from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Houston Education Research Consortium.

Repairing a Houston home can lift a neighborhood, but help is needed amid limited funds

Regardless of natural disasters, homes fall into needing repair — be it because of the age of a dwelling, ability of its residents to perform maintenance, or even disuse. According to a Kinder Institute for Urban Research report, 60% of residents in the Houston area have needed a home repair in the past year.

A Houston initiative helped 2,000 people of color become homeowners — but there’s more work to do

After renting for the majority of her adult life, Tonia Macklin recently became a homeowner for the first time. The native of southeast Houston achieved this goal with the assistance of the Harris County Homeownership Collaborative’s Own the HOU initiative, a multiorganization effort that seeks to bridge the homeownership gap for people of color.

Houston’s rising homeowner insurance rates aren’t helping a widening affordability gap

Homeowners looking for a break from rising costs will probably not get any as recent disasters are pushing insurance rates higher.

How Houston is trying to make philanthropy work smarter in disaster recovery

A national report last year by the Center for Disaster Philanthropy indicated an imbalance between how philanthropic disaster funds are spent.

Q&A: Helping bridge the gaps in maternal health care in Houston

The Community Bridges program continues to seek better outcomes for those in need in the Greater Houston area.

Master-planned community in northeast Houston puts affordable housing within reach

Last year, Nura Jemal, her husband and two sons lived in a two-bedroom apartment in southwest Houston. But with a third son on the way, they began to reconsider their living arrangement.

How Houston, the world’s energy capital, is embracing the transition to cleaner sources

Eighty-seven percent of all respondents in the 43rd Kinder Houston Area Survey felt that Houston should take a leading role in forging a new energy future.

Beryl, derecho, power outages amplify Houstonians’ concerns about climate, resilience

Climate change and its impacts weighed heavily on the minds of residents in the 43rd Kinder Houston Area Survey. Those concerns have been repeatedly validated in recent months.

About half of Harris County residents unable to pay an unexpected $400 bill

An increasing number of Harris County residents are unable to readily come up with $400 to cover an unexpected expense — such as replacing tires worn out from crumbling roads, replacing a refrigerator full of food after the electricity is knocked out for a couple of days, or having a kid get sick or injured and needing to make a visit to an urgent care facility.