Urban Edge

A new book, “In Too Deep” tells the story of Bayou Oaks, and its repetitive flooding, from the perspective of 36 mothers who are raising young children there. It follows the families across the course of more than a year, starting right after Hurricane Harvey flooded their homes, and tracking them across the recovery year and beyond as they work to restore their community for the third time in three years. 

Journalism is, at its core, a public service — and Houston could use more of it.

Do property taxpayers inside the City of Houston subsidize Harris County services? It’s a question that comes up a lot, given the fact that city residents—like their counterparts in the county—pay separate property taxes to the county, but the county provides many services only to the unincorporated areas.

When COVID-19 struck in early 2020, public health experts in Houston swung into action. But, unlike in other major Texas cities, two different agencies swung into action: the City of Houston Health Department and the Harris County Public Health Department. Although they worked well together in a crisis, the pandemic gave new currency to the question of how public services are delivered in the Houston area.

In 20 years, the population center of Harris County moved 2 miles, taking it from the heart of the historic Heights area and outside the Loop for the first time. It’s yet another sign of the suburban surge underway in the Houston area. 

There is a lot to like about accessory dwelling units—garage apartments, in-law cottages, granny flats—as a form of housing. Done well, ADUs can help meet the needs for multigenerational families, workers and students, and they offer a gentler form of infill density in urban neighborhoods. They can also provide a source of income and build wealth for the homeowners who choose to build them. What will it take to spark a “backyard revolution” in Houston?

One of our Community Bridges alumni shares how his experience inspired a data-driven pursuit for environmental justice in Houston. 

The urban population centers in Texas are losing their competitive edge in terms of housing costs, and it's becoming more expensive to build houses everywhere. Could 3D-printed housing help cities keep pace with demand and keep costs under control? One of the largest tests of the technology will soon be underway.

Houston has made considerable progress in reducing homelessness in the past decade. We know exactly what it will take to become the first major city to effectively end homelessness—including how many affordable housing units we’ll need to build.

This year might be the first Thanksgiving in Texas for thousands of new residents who flocked here for lower housing prices and job opportunities. While we'll take that vote of confidence, the Urban Edge revisits its occasional series on city rankings with an eye toward how Houston and Texas stacks up to some of its Californian counterparts.

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. 

Amid all the high-profile constitutional amendments in this year’s Texas election (no COVID restrictions for religious services, property tax breaks for families of veterans and the disabled), one seemingly nerdy amendment stood out as important for urban and suburban areas such as unincorporated Harris County. That was Proposition 2, which allows counties to issue tax-increment bonds for transportation and other infrastructure.

Many houses of worship own empty and underused buildings and land. Cities and counties need properties for affordable housing. Seems like a match made in, well, heaven.

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).

Houston, Boise, and Seattle share a strong-mayor form of government, and its voters tend to favor progressive-leaning candidates. But these two majority-White cities have lifted Hispanic candidates into office in recent years, while representation has dwindled in Houston.  

In November 1979, Houston City Council went from being almost exclusively male and white to being dramatically more diverse, literally overnight, as voters elected the council’s first two women and its first Mexican-American, and tripled the representation of African-Americans. The new council was also on average 10 years younger. It was a new day in city politics—thanks to federally required reforms that led to single-member districting—and Houston never looked back.