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The shift to 100% online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020 meant school districts around the country needed to quickly develop plans for how to implement distance learning and serve student needs. The Houston Education Research Consortium analyzed the plans of 45 school districts from 15 states for insights into the collective response to the pandemic.
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For Harris County renters, the path to homeownership is becoming harder to see
As housing prices rise, housing affordability is a growing concern for many families, especially for renters. The affordability gap varies by neighborhood, with most inner-city areas far beyond the reach of the median-income renter.
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Four predominantly Black neighborhoods in Houston have been experiencing gentrification in recent years. Data captured by U.S. Census surveys shows these communities are becoming proportionally more Hispanic and more educated, housing prices are accelerating, and residents there are more likely to rent and face cost burdens than others in Harris County.
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How Houston plans to plant 4.6 million new trees by 2030
Trees can cool our cities and make them more resilient. Here’s a look at what is being done to grow and protect the urban forest in the Houston area.
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Who owns the single-family rentals and what do we know about them?
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.
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If remote work survives the pandemic in Houston, it could curb congestion
What for some may be an anticipated return to “normal” is for others an anxiety-filled readjustment to pre-pandemic life. No matter which category you place yourself, there are some aspects of normalcy we’d all prefer to leave in 2019. Chief among them is the daily struggle to get where we need or want to go. Unfortunately, it’s not certain how long we have before traffic in Houston returns and exceeds levels we saw a couple of years ago.
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Disaster preparedness takes more than an infographic
Helping our most vulnerable neighbors weather the toughest storms requires hard work and commitment before, during and after crises strike.
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Move-outs in 2020 may have cost Houston thousands of residents
By the end of 2020, Houston had potentially tens of thousands of fewer residents, data from the U.S. Postal Service suggests. Like other cities, it experienced a surge in migration as people began leaving urban areas amid the pandemic lockdowns. That shift is also continuing to take place well into 2021.
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Houston isn’t the best, but it’s one of the greatest, according to the rankings
Posts about where Houston and other Texas metros are ranked on lists of best and worst places for you-name-it routinely perform well on this blog. These lists range from happiest and safest cities to best cities for staycations, foodies and working from home. Today, we’re kicking off a new feature focused on rankings and Houston’s place on them.
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Here at the Kinder Institute, we do a lot of research on housing—especially in Houston but also in some of the other big Texas metro areas. And all of our research says that Texas is gradually losing its affordability advantage: Home prices are rising faster than incomes, making housing less affordable each year. This is obviously true in Austin, where home prices are skyrocketing, but it’s also true in Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth as well.
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Houston, TX 77005-1892