Houston has long been hailed as one of the country’s most affordable big cities, bucking national trends. But as the Kinder Institute and others have found, our affordability — and the economic opportunity that comes with it — could be slipping away.
In an April 2014 Houstonia Magazine article, “Where to Live Now: The 25 Hottest Neighborhoods of 2014,” the authors claimed that gentrification had “leapt beyond the Heights and into Lindale Park and Brooke Smith,” which meant that “Northside Village” was the “the next play for urban pioneers.”
Next week, over 400 volunteers with the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County will conduct the annual point-in-time count to determine if homelessness is increasing or decreasing in the area.
Over the last several years, we have come to understand that Houston is no longer as affordable as it once was. At the same time, relatively little has been learned about the quality of the places and spaces people call “home.” That’s why the Kinder Institute’s Housing Quality Registry is so urgently needed.
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.