Invisible City: Poverty, Housing, and New Urbanism

Appendix: Why Cities Need Affordable Housing: A Case Study of Houston (with Roger K. Lewis and Stephen Hornburg, Housing Strategies for Houson Task Force)

ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü ü Appendix Why Cities Need Affordable Housing A Case Study of Houston with Roger k. Lewis and Steven Hornburg, Housing Strategies for Houston Task Force Conservatives frequently argue that Houston—“the free enterprise city”— has no housing crisis. Conservatives note that Houston’s housing miracle is the result of little or no government intervention in the housing market. They argue that other cities facing a housing crisis should do away with zoning , historic preservation, planning, and community development. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Houston has a significant housing crunch. Parts of the city look like a third-world city, with shanties, dilapidated housing, and slums sprinkled throughout the city. Housing affordability for the poor and working class in Houston is a major problem. Houston has one of the lowest homeownership rates of any American cities. Because neighborhood quality is poor relative to other cities, rents are lower but in contrast to other large cities rank around the middle. In many Houston neighborhoods, rising real estate values are reducing housing affordability and forcing moderate-income families to move out to fringe locations remote from employment. Without access to public transit, such families depend completely on private automobiles, incurring burdensome transportation costs and further contributing to sprawl, severe traffic congestion, and air pollution. Houston also faces other serious, persistent challenges, such as chronic flooding, fiscal imbalance, inadequately funded schools, and governmental inefficiency. Conducting business as usual in Houston may not work during the twenty-first century. In the face of dramatic demographic changes, widening income gaps, rising living costs, growing demand for public services, and greater need for enlightened environmental stewardship, Houston has a choice. It can do little or nothing, which would jeopardize its future, or it 204  Appendix can craft a new vision for itself, adopting effective strategies to meet these interrelated challenges so that it remains dynamic, prosperous, and livable for all its citizens. Achieving a new vision for Houston will require new thinking and new attitudes, inspired political leadership, and innovative policies. It also will require changes in government structure. New initiatives will not be effective and sustainable unless Houston eliminates its two-year election cycles and six-year term limits, which disrupt administrative continuity, dampen political creativity, weaken loyalty within city bureaucracies, and too frequently place agency leaders and their jobs in limbo. “Housing Strategies for Houston: Expanding Opportunities” is a first step toward realizing a new vision. During the summer and fall of 2003, the American Institute of Architects and the Houston City Council identified a team of nationally respected professionals, experts in housing development , urban planning, architecture, public policy, housing agency administration , finance, economics, and sociology. The team was invited to Houston as volunteers to examine the city and recommend housing strategies. Focusing on research and reconnaissance during the first visit in November 2003, the team toured several Houston neighborhoods inside and outside the Loop and met with dozens of individuals representing civic and community organizations, the real estate and homebuilding industries, the business community, and city government. The team also heard from Houston-based transportation and demography experts. In January 2004, they returned to Houston to brainstorm and generate strategy options based on the first visit. The final report is available at http://www.aiahouston.org/housinghouston/ downloads.html. The report won an American Institute of Architects Chapter Award and sparked the mayor to nominate a housing czar with a reporting line directly to the mayor. Why Housing Strategies for Houston? Affordable Housing As in most American cities, Houston’s inventory, production, and availability of affordable housing is shrinking and is likely to continue to shrink for many reasons: • Neighborhood gentrification—home prices and property taxes rising when affluent families move into and physically improve older, less affluent neighborhoods Appendix 205 • Rapidly rising land values in certain portions of Houston, particularly inside the 610 Loop and in the vicinity of the new 7.5-mile light rail line along the Main Street corridor • Conversion by property owners of subsidized rental housing to market-rate housing • Obsolescence, abandonment, and demolition of existing dwellings • Limited state and diminishing federal funding for housing subsidies • Lack of adequate economic incentives for investors and developers to build either new affordable units or to rehabilitate existing units Paradoxically, despite the relatively low cost of market-rate housing, Houston has a low rate of homeownership, 44 percent, compared with the national average of 68 percent. In 2003, only about 5,000...