Insights

Houston and Harris County's rent relief partnership made a difference. It just didn't last.

When officials at Harris County got word that the Treasury Department was appropriating a historic amount of funding for states and local governments to help struggling renters during the pandemic, Leah Barton picked up the phone and called her counterpart at the city of Houston.

Metro seeks to bring inclusive, transit-oriented development to north Houston

After receiving a new federal grant to explore the potential for transit-oriented development at the Tidwell Transit Center in north Houston, Metro is now phasing into an “intense and aggressive public involvement strategy” for the site.

More Houston neighborhoods became majority-renter over the past decade

The share of renter households in the U.S. has doubled in the past 50 years—a trend that is reshaping how housing is built and distributed across cities and communities. In recent years, Houston has seen considerable growth in renters in a few concentrated areas.

New trove of federal data clearly shows a growing racial gap in home appraisals

The government just released millions of records on residential appraisals. A pair of researchers who focus on racial inequity in housing analyzed the data. Here’s what they found.

With hybrid work here to stay, downtown Houston is looking for office conversion candidates

With the rise of a hybrid and remote workforce as a result of COVID-19, developers are looking for ways to be less reliant on office leases to keep people downtown.

A look at Texas in 2021, the postpandemic year, in five charts

The American Community Survey, or ACS, helps track trends between official Census counts. Because it is a more wide-ranging survey than the official Census, it is able to capture an array of details about large populations. The release of some new 2021 data last month provides an opportunity to examine postpandemic shifts in population, housing, transportation and employment.

Federal report calls out civil rights inequities in Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath

In the wake of two historically devastating storms in 2017, financial aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development contributed to an increase in wealth inequality.

Harris County is learning how to put billions in potential assets to better use

Harris County will soon have, for the first time, a full picture of its public wealth—the commercial value of all government-owned assets, from land to buildings to infrastructure—as well as a plan to start putting this wealth to work toward community development and economic growth.

On the surface, Houston’s proposed city council maps barely budge, but the ground is shifting

With 2020 Census data in hand, Houston is moving forward with city council redistricting. The first proposed map was unveiled last week ahead of a public comment phase. For the most part, not much changes in terms of actual boundaries, but the underlying demographics of Houston’s population shifted considerably in the past 10 years.

With new incentives, Harris County hopes to gain buy-in for buyouts

Climate change is propelling more extreme weather events, including more precipitation and flooding, which means the need for more strategies such as buyouts has never been more urgent. As a concept, buyouts are fairly straightforward: the government buys up properties to remove them out of harm’s way, reducing the risk of loss of life, the need for future flood repairs, insurance payouts and other costs.

Pre-K enrollment in Texas is still behind prepandemic levels, which could widen educational disparities

Schools are enrolling now for next year across Houston and the state of Texas, with officials in many districts still hoping to bring their headcounts back up to prepandemic levels, particularly prekindergarten, which has 25,000 fewer students than it did in 2019-20.

Home appraisals have long been a source of racial disparity. A new federal effort could change that.

Racial inequities have long plagued the U.S. housing market. Yet only recently has the federal government moved to address one aspect of the real estate industry that continues to exacerbate the racial wealth gap in housing: appraisals.

Houston, Dallas led metro area growth in 2021 even as their urban cores lost population

Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth were again among the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country last year, according to new statistics released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Houston’s untapped powerhouse: rooftop solar?

More Houston homeowners are embracing solar, but the city is only scratching the surface of its potential.

Houston’s newest housing development is big on neighborly ties

During the February freeze last year, stories of neighbor helping neighbor were easy to find. Residents with electricity offered up extension cords to charge phones, lent out gas generators to keep heaters going, delivered hot cocoa to keep their spirits up, or simply opened their homes for a few hours or a few days to provide shelter. But what if we didn’t wait until the next disaster to really know and help our neighbors?