What a shit article. No explanation of why they weren’t built, no quotes from anyone involved that seem actually relevant or enlightening. Nothing at all that answers any questions. Piss poor, ABC13.
Well, looks like someone at the City of Houston took 'building affordable housing' a bit too literally and decided not to build any at all! Classic mix-up. Maybe they thought 'affordable' meant 'invisible'? 🤷‍♂️ But hey, at least they're keeping the mystery alive! Who needs answers when you can have a good old treasure hunt for missing millions? 🕵️‍♂️💰
I agree but they at least covered it. What are the super sleuths at the Chronicle up to?
In the good old days the papers drive the news cycle. The Chronicle is horrible.
Because the Chronicle reported on it last year? And in far more detail.
> Bynam said that the $43 million in Harvey recovery funds used to purchase land to build the nearly 700 homes will have to be returned to the GLO.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/large-tract-division-lay-offs-harvey-funds-18362644.php
Your bias against the Chronicle is cracking me up. A quick Google search would have shown you when they covered this, and how they provided much more detailed info.
It is a bias based on experience. Here is what Google produced as I did the search for city of houston affordable housing
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=8dd3a61b30900631&hl=en-us&q=city+of+houston+affordable+housing&tbm=nws&source=lnms&prmd=nisvmbtz&sa=X&biw=390&bih=654&dpr=3&tbs=sbd:1&tbo=u&ved=2ahUKEwiL8uPQpamFAxXJle4BHauGD4YQ9bwJKAB6BAgOEAM
You don't Google well.
Here's their story from September. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/large-tract-division-lay-offs-harvey-funds-18362644.php
Article is very light on details. Not to absolve the city, but the GLO does not have a great track record administering COVID or disaster refunds, and many times has been outright hostile to Houston/Harris County (see Harvey relief dollars). You can’t really assume the GLO is a good faith actor.
But I also don’t have a hard time buying that the city fumbled the bag.
>the GLO
>has been outright hostile to Houston
This, purposely omitting details, and citing that the GLO states Houston failed to meet their guidelines, comes off as disingenuous.
Worse, they've got Whitmire echoing the BS. Whitmire has been shit hurling since the debates, can't trust anything that comes out of that guy's mouth.
To be fair, we need Whitmire because he has good state connections and can get the ball rolling. We need an ass kisser and the folks in Austin seem to like him. Sadly, this return of the money was due to the prior administration. They fumbled the bag and this is what we get. The GLO called out CoH way back then due to the slow progress....something like 3 years after Hurricane Harvey and only 1.8% of homes were complete. That's ridiculous. Even the HUD called it out. There were also disagreements between the GLO and CoH about number of bedrooms, square footage, affordability period, etc. For example, the CoH thought every home should be rebuilt to original square footage; The GLO thought it would be more equitable to give everyone a standard square footage and thus more homes would be built.
Case in point, my buddy who had his home flooded. He waited years and never got a response from CoH. In less than 1 year of application, he received a new home from the GLO the moment they took over City of Houston's program.
I might have some insight into this. The city uses these funds to buy distressed lots. Then they will offer them to home builders to build for a nominal price. When the city contracts with a builder to build "affordable" housing on these lots, there is a cap on the sale price.
Recently, as cost of labor and materials rose, the cap did not rise to compensate. If the builder would break even or lose money on the project, no reason for them to take it. And margins were already low on them. A regular house, margins would be about 40%, but when these affordable houses were actually being built (maybe up until 2019), margins were around 10% to 15%.
But on the bright side, the money isn't gone or wasted. Land is a good container of money. The city owns empty plots of land which they could eventually resume building on once they revise the price caps. These lots are in areas close to downtown.
There ya go, more details than a fucking news article.
Surely all of the money wasn’t spent on land. I hope some was set aside for the actual development of the land.
I hope we find out exactly what happened to all this missing money.
Buying the land is kind of like subsidizing the development. For example, a lot that's worth $30,000. Sell it to a builder for $100, on the stipulation that the single family home of reasonable size and quality built there can be only sold for max $250,000. Completely made up numbers but you get the idea.
Yep, it's just stealing tax money to give to the land seller and the home buyer. The land seller gets a bigger profit and the home buyer makes a bigger profit. Poor people are not buying $250k homes if you want to go that route, and anyone would sell it for $400k the first chance they got. Now guess what. All the other private developed homes are now more expensive, because there is less, more expensive land. How about we take that tax money and use it to help people that cannot afford a house at all and don't own any land, instead of fucking up the housing market.
The project where turner was trying to fill his former law partners pockets—Barry Barnes? This project was not even recommended by the housing officials and cost four times the cost per affordable unit. Which when brought to the city and medias attention, he fired the housing director. This was his last ditch effort to get some more money in his pockets….sorry, forgot about his book he tried to get the city to pay for.
Turner was nothing more than a snake oil salesman in a city office. People should be wary of him and anyone affiliated with his office that is still involved with this city.
Edit:
I saw a lot of people posting about the lack of information in the link above. Here is a link to when the housing director brought these issues to the attention of the city/media https://abc13.com/houston-housing-director-fired-tom-mccasland-mayor-turner-fires-affordable/11035800/
That’s insane, as Houston is already one of the most affordable major metros in the country.
Shouldn’t have taken the money in the first place. But they could just point to (a thousand different apartment complexes) and be like - that’s affordable - no?
It has nothing to do with the director and more to do with GLO and their ridiculous deadlines, clawbacks, red tape and inexperience with managing the draw process. Inflation caused building prices to skyrocket, supply chains strained, permitting held things back for months on end per atrempt. The only fault i see was the inexperienced project managers not familiar with construction that didn't utilize the experience of others in key departments.
You can't build affordable housing. Affordable in a market characteristic, not something intrinsic to a dwelling. You can build housing, and market conditions will determine how affordable it is. But then, the private sector does a much better job of building housing than any government.
I agree, but the term "affordable housing" is a political term for politicians to make statements like:
"We need more affordable housing"
"I voted for affordable housing"
"My opponent voted against affordable housing"
It's a political tool. The actual meaning is lost on the typical voter because the typical voter doesn't think too deeply about the details of things.
The truth is, the most any city and State can do is get out of the way as much as possible, population movement being the primary driver of housing affordability and there is nothing States and Cities can do about that.
The city and state can do many things lol. Lot size restrictions, issue building permits, tax non owner occupied homes higher, etc etc. Your viewpoint is naĂŻve or disingenuous.
You can absolutely build affordable housing.
Affordable housing is a combination of a physical dwelling and a policy attached to that dwelling. The policy typically being a maximum rent. That rent is, of course, related to market conditions.
Also, private sector is usually still building the housing! A private company will accept grant money or large breaks in taxes when building, and in exchange some percentage of the units built must be rent controlled.
I'm not sure what the plan was in Houston, but that's a common model.
There is nothing intrinsic to that dwelling that allows you to apply that policy. You could have applied that policy to any other random dwelling. The dwelling isnt affordable, you just have other people paying for you, directly or indirectly.
This feels like a useless semantic argument to me. A combination of incentives resulted in new housing that will have lower rental costs for the eligible renters. That's affordable housing.
How "intrinsic" any of those incentives or processes are seems, to me, irrelevant to the statement. If you'd rather I say that the hypothetical affordable housing was "established" rather than "built", I'm happy to. But the larger point stands: one can create affordable housing.
> The dwelling isnt affordable, you just have other people paying for you, directly or indirectly.
It seems like you want to make a rhetorical point about how "affordable housing" has hidden costs (costs carried by either the builder or the taxpayer, depending on how it gets built). That's a fine point, but a roundabout semantic argument about how "affordable housing is impossible" is a very strange and confusing way to go about that.
Hardly useless, when you consider these policies you speak of have been proven over a century ago to be horribly detrimental to housing affordability, the worse the longer they are applied.
"affordable housing" is deliberately misnaming things. As another redditor said, its to allow politicians to pretend they are helping, while actively making things worse.
They dont create affordable housing, they just make a majority of the population subsidize a random minority, to the global detriment.
So I think we probably agree on how less-than-effective affordable housing has often been. (Though we might differ on what to do about it)
For example, I disagree with your last sentence in the sense that I think making housing a publicly supported utility is good* actually. The asterisk there representing a whole slew of caveats, specifics, and desired changes to tax and public policy that go far beyond the scope of what I want to get into in a reddit comment.
But before this, I felt like you were playing weird buzzword "gotcha" games (not too uncommon on the internet) rather than saying: "what people call affordable housing is bad because it relocates costs to others without benefiting the people it's supposed to help enough."
They should replace affordable with subsidized to be fair, but by doing son they make it affordable to those buying /renting the homes because the builder is able to sell/rent at a fraction of market cost.
COH Leadership: "We already gave it to some people though."
State: "Ah, okay. Just take another $45m from your tax payers and give that to us."
I think all of us need to get into politics. Seems like money rains down from everywhere if you stand in the right places. There's also zero repercussions for thievery, I'm sorry, I mean awarding your friends contracts to do shit jobs or nothing at all.
Hmmm. I still see the vast majority of homes within 610 being out of reach for most locals, 1 bedroom apartments going for $1800-2200 all around the city. All up tenfold since the start of COVID. New construction for homes outside city limits, absolutely (like in Magnolia, Conroe, Willis, parts of Spring and the Woodlands). But that has nothing to do with a City budget and concern.
I guess I am misunderstanding the point of your sentence, in relation to Houston.
Because you have to examine the counterfactual (what would have happened to rates if new housing had not been built).
In any case [Houston rent rates have been dropping](https://houstonagentmagazine.com/2024/03/26/rent-prices-are-cooling-off-in-houston/#:~:text=According%20to%20recent%20data%2C%20Houston's,supply%2Dand%2Ddemand%20issue.)
you are not entitled to live inside of 610 for cheap.
That said there are tons of rentals under 1800 inside of the loop
https://www.har.com/search/dosearch?map_tools_nwlat=29.77765844751049&map_tools_nwlng=-95.4493620181843&map_tools_selat=29.706941711420313&map_tools_selng=-95.33569151750427&map_tools_polygon=POLYGON%20((-95.445925%2029.803086,%20-95.449675%2029.790068,%20-95.4478%2029.717624,%20-95.450613%2029.706224,%20-95.453426%2029.676088,%20-95.427173%2029.667127,%20-95.403734%2029.667127,%20-95.38967%2029.668756,%20-95.374669%2029.672829,%20-95.349354%2029.676902,%20-95.337165%2029.683419,%20-95.319351%2029.689935,%20-95.313726%2029.694007,%20-95.294974%2029.709481,%20-95.292161%2029.710295,%20-95.282786%2029.719253,%20-95.28091%2029.719253,%20-95.279973%2029.72251,%20-95.278098%2029.72251,%20-95.27716%2029.724952,%20-95.26966%2029.729837,%20-95.262159%2029.75019,%20-95.261221%2029.764027,%20-95.259346%2029.765654,%20-95.252783%2029.786813,%20-95.250908%2029.787627,%20-95.249033%2029.796577,%20-95.250908%2029.799018,%20-95.250908%2029.803086,%20-95.254658%2029.808781,%20-95.266847%2029.811221,%20-95.292161%2029.812848,%20-95.414985%2029.813662,%20-95.427173%2029.807967,%20-95.445925%2029.803086,%20-95.445925%2029.803086))&for_sale=0&lease_price_max=1750&sort=listdate%20desc&view=map
Homes in the desirable areas inside 610 are expensive because single family housing is an inefficient use of space and constrains the number of housing units. There is a shitload of demand to live in those neighborhoods. A single family home in close proximity to downtown and the most sought after urban amenities *should* be expensive because it’s an inefficient use of the most valuable land in the city. And despite this, Houston remains one of not the most affordable of America’s largest cities because it has a much more permissive environment for building housing compared to most of that peer group.
Uh, rents are not 10x what they were 4-5 years ago. That kind of ridiculous disinformation isn’t even worth engaging.
New construction apartments with all the bells and whistles are more expensive than average, more news at 11. They still promote affordability by adding to overall supply. The renters that fill those buildings don’t just magically vanish if they don’t get built, their dollars instead start competing for and driving up prices on lower tier rentals that are otherwise more affordable, which ultimately drives out lower income households.
That's great information that I understand. I just don't understand the correlation of "which ultimately drives out lower income households" with to the article. Houston still got dinged for not building enough affordable housing. I get that everything you said (which is why I said they built a ton of luxury apartments instead).
So does "affordability" just mean competitive rental rates across an area because of high supply and stagnant demand? I'd argue that a 1 bedroom at $1800-2000 isn't that affordable for most individuals.
I guess I am struggling with what affordability means in these cases (again, Houston still got dinged for not doing so).
The price of something is the result of supply and demand. The cost of producing it doesn't really matter. the only way to reduce the price of a good is to either increase the supply of it or reduce the demand for it. With something like housing (which people essentially have to have) in a market like Houston (where population is increasing) demand is constantly increasing creating constant upward pressure on prices. The only way to counteract that upward pressure on prices is to increase supply, so any increase in supply is better than none. Would it be better for the lower class renters if builders made cheaper, low frills housing options? Yes it would, but an increase in upper class housing still alleviates supply pressure which helps the price of lower class housing. It is just less direct. The people who rent expensive apartments are going to live somewhere. So if they are living in an fancy new apartment, then they aren't living in an old dumpy apartment, freeing that spot up for person of more humble means.
Best thing I can think of is to lower the prices and increase turnaround times on building permits for low cost housing projects. That would lower building costs for those projects to make them more economically viable (As it is, low cost housing really isn't profitable to build). They could also give property tax breaks to certain types of housing projects, but that would be more of a county thing, not a city thing. Builders focus on "luxury" apartments because that offers the best return on investment. There really isn't that much savings on a low frills residence over a luxury one (for a builder), but with better amenities the owner can charge a higher rent, so a builder might as well build it fancy. This is partly due to the high costs of permitting and housing codes that are always increasing their standards making building new residences an ever more costly endeavor.
Yeah thats a good explanation. However, if Texas is giving the city millions to do it, couldn't they somehow mitigate those price losses that comes with low income/affordable living?
I think he was stating that new market homes and apartments coming into a market helps with lowering rent and house pricing for affordable homes.
Basically the more new things built for people to move up into, the more openings for the places they moved out of.
If anyone was that serious about affordable housing we would have row houses like in Philly or in the sunset district in sanfrancisco but for some reason we need grass and all other useless shit
What a shit article. No explanation of why they weren’t built, no quotes from anyone involved that seem actually relevant or enlightening. Nothing at all that answers any questions. Piss poor, ABC13.
Well, looks like someone at the City of Houston took 'building affordable housing' a bit too literally and decided not to build any at all! Classic mix-up. Maybe they thought 'affordable' meant 'invisible'? 🤷‍♂️ But hey, at least they're keeping the mystery alive! Who needs answers when you can have a good old treasure hunt for missing millions? 🕵️‍♂️💰
They should've at least asked our former mayor. :-)
He gone
I agree but they at least covered it. What are the super sleuths at the Chronicle up to? In the good old days the papers drive the news cycle. The Chronicle is horrible.
Because the Chronicle reported on it last year? And in far more detail. > Bynam said that the $43 million in Harvey recovery funds used to purchase land to build the nearly 700 homes will have to be returned to the GLO. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/large-tract-division-lay-offs-harvey-funds-18362644.php
& failed to cover that the City Council & the mayor working on it this week.
The chronicle does cover news like this.
Your bias against the Chronicle is cracking me up. A quick Google search would have shown you when they covered this, and how they provided much more detailed info.
It is a bias based on experience. Here is what Google produced as I did the search for city of houston affordable housing https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=8dd3a61b30900631&hl=en-us&q=city+of+houston+affordable+housing&tbm=nws&source=lnms&prmd=nisvmbtz&sa=X&biw=390&bih=654&dpr=3&tbs=sbd:1&tbo=u&ved=2ahUKEwiL8uPQpamFAxXJle4BHauGD4YQ9bwJKAB6BAgOEAM
You don't Google well. Here's their story from September. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/housing/article/large-tract-division-lay-offs-harvey-funds-18362644.php
Isn’t the story that city council & the mayor met on Wednesday?
No. The ABC story is essentially a continuation of what started in September.
Article is very light on details. Not to absolve the city, but the GLO does not have a great track record administering COVID or disaster refunds, and many times has been outright hostile to Houston/Harris County (see Harvey relief dollars). You can’t really assume the GLO is a good faith actor. But I also don’t have a hard time buying that the city fumbled the bag.
>the GLO >has been outright hostile to Houston This, purposely omitting details, and citing that the GLO states Houston failed to meet their guidelines, comes off as disingenuous. Worse, they've got Whitmire echoing the BS. Whitmire has been shit hurling since the debates, can't trust anything that comes out of that guy's mouth.
To be fair, we need Whitmire because he has good state connections and can get the ball rolling. We need an ass kisser and the folks in Austin seem to like him. Sadly, this return of the money was due to the prior administration. They fumbled the bag and this is what we get. The GLO called out CoH way back then due to the slow progress....something like 3 years after Hurricane Harvey and only 1.8% of homes were complete. That's ridiculous. Even the HUD called it out. There were also disagreements between the GLO and CoH about number of bedrooms, square footage, affordability period, etc. For example, the CoH thought every home should be rebuilt to original square footage; The GLO thought it would be more equitable to give everyone a standard square footage and thus more homes would be built. Case in point, my buddy who had his home flooded. He waited years and never got a response from CoH. In less than 1 year of application, he received a new home from the GLO the moment they took over City of Houston's program.
GLO approved me for $30k then cancelled the program. Then called me back and said we are going to pay you. What’s wild ride!
I might have some insight into this. The city uses these funds to buy distressed lots. Then they will offer them to home builders to build for a nominal price. When the city contracts with a builder to build "affordable" housing on these lots, there is a cap on the sale price. Recently, as cost of labor and materials rose, the cap did not rise to compensate. If the builder would break even or lose money on the project, no reason for them to take it. And margins were already low on them. A regular house, margins would be about 40%, but when these affordable houses were actually being built (maybe up until 2019), margins were around 10% to 15%. But on the bright side, the money isn't gone or wasted. Land is a good container of money. The city owns empty plots of land which they could eventually resume building on once they revise the price caps. These lots are in areas close to downtown. There ya go, more details than a fucking news article.
Surely all of the money wasn’t spent on land. I hope some was set aside for the actual development of the land. I hope we find out exactly what happened to all this missing money.
Buying the land is kind of like subsidizing the development. For example, a lot that's worth $30,000. Sell it to a builder for $100, on the stipulation that the single family home of reasonable size and quality built there can be only sold for max $250,000. Completely made up numbers but you get the idea.
I've only heard developers saying that hate this system. They would rather just buy the land, but they cannot outbid the city.
he explained to you why in the OP. Their margins are worse. City has different priorities besides maximizing profits for builders.
Yep, it's just stealing tax money to give to the land seller and the home buyer. The land seller gets a bigger profit and the home buyer makes a bigger profit. Poor people are not buying $250k homes if you want to go that route, and anyone would sell it for $400k the first chance they got. Now guess what. All the other private developed homes are now more expensive, because there is less, more expensive land. How about we take that tax money and use it to help people that cannot afford a house at all and don't own any land, instead of fucking up the housing market.
The project where turner was trying to fill his former law partners pockets—Barry Barnes? This project was not even recommended by the housing officials and cost four times the cost per affordable unit. Which when brought to the city and medias attention, he fired the housing director. This was his last ditch effort to get some more money in his pockets….sorry, forgot about his book he tried to get the city to pay for. Turner was nothing more than a snake oil salesman in a city office. People should be wary of him and anyone affiliated with his office that is still involved with this city. Edit: I saw a lot of people posting about the lack of information in the link above. Here is a link to when the housing director brought these issues to the attention of the city/media https://abc13.com/houston-housing-director-fired-tom-mccasland-mayor-turner-fires-affordable/11035800/
Don’t forget to mention that Rodney Ellis’s wife also benefited heavily from these “affordable housing” projects.
“Affordable” housing - never actually what it says on the tin
And let's remember how long he was a part of city and state govt.
Does anyone have any more information as to why the city was unable to start construction? This article is light on details.
The amount of graft & corruption around the administration of those Harvey funds continues to amaze, even seven years later.
Just think, people voted this corruption back in knowing he was corrupt. So sad…
It’s all a racket, don’t you know?
This place sure is a shit hole sometimes, isn’t it?
That’s insane, as Houston is already one of the most affordable major metros in the country. Shouldn’t have taken the money in the first place. But they could just point to (a thousand different apartment complexes) and be like - that’s affordable - no?
Build publicly owned housing, and rent out at maintenance cost.
It has nothing to do with the director and more to do with GLO and their ridiculous deadlines, clawbacks, red tape and inexperience with managing the draw process. Inflation caused building prices to skyrocket, supply chains strained, permitting held things back for months on end per atrempt. The only fault i see was the inexperienced project managers not familiar with construction that didn't utilize the experience of others in key departments.
The deadlines were in line with what the HUD wanted though.
You can't build affordable housing. Affordable in a market characteristic, not something intrinsic to a dwelling. You can build housing, and market conditions will determine how affordable it is. But then, the private sector does a much better job of building housing than any government.
I agree, but the term "affordable housing" is a political term for politicians to make statements like: "We need more affordable housing" "I voted for affordable housing" "My opponent voted against affordable housing" It's a political tool. The actual meaning is lost on the typical voter because the typical voter doesn't think too deeply about the details of things.
The truth is, the most any city and State can do is get out of the way as much as possible, population movement being the primary driver of housing affordability and there is nothing States and Cities can do about that.
The city and state can do many things lol. Lot size restrictions, issue building permits, tax non owner occupied homes higher, etc etc. Your viewpoint is naĂŻve or disingenuous.
Most of that falls under "get out of the way as much as possible".
You can absolutely build affordable housing. Affordable housing is a combination of a physical dwelling and a policy attached to that dwelling. The policy typically being a maximum rent. That rent is, of course, related to market conditions. Also, private sector is usually still building the housing! A private company will accept grant money or large breaks in taxes when building, and in exchange some percentage of the units built must be rent controlled. I'm not sure what the plan was in Houston, but that's a common model.
There is nothing intrinsic to that dwelling that allows you to apply that policy. You could have applied that policy to any other random dwelling. The dwelling isnt affordable, you just have other people paying for you, directly or indirectly.
This feels like a useless semantic argument to me. A combination of incentives resulted in new housing that will have lower rental costs for the eligible renters. That's affordable housing. How "intrinsic" any of those incentives or processes are seems, to me, irrelevant to the statement. If you'd rather I say that the hypothetical affordable housing was "established" rather than "built", I'm happy to. But the larger point stands: one can create affordable housing. > The dwelling isnt affordable, you just have other people paying for you, directly or indirectly. It seems like you want to make a rhetorical point about how "affordable housing" has hidden costs (costs carried by either the builder or the taxpayer, depending on how it gets built). That's a fine point, but a roundabout semantic argument about how "affordable housing is impossible" is a very strange and confusing way to go about that.
Hardly useless, when you consider these policies you speak of have been proven over a century ago to be horribly detrimental to housing affordability, the worse the longer they are applied. "affordable housing" is deliberately misnaming things. As another redditor said, its to allow politicians to pretend they are helping, while actively making things worse. They dont create affordable housing, they just make a majority of the population subsidize a random minority, to the global detriment.
So I think we probably agree on how less-than-effective affordable housing has often been. (Though we might differ on what to do about it) For example, I disagree with your last sentence in the sense that I think making housing a publicly supported utility is good* actually. The asterisk there representing a whole slew of caveats, specifics, and desired changes to tax and public policy that go far beyond the scope of what I want to get into in a reddit comment. But before this, I felt like you were playing weird buzzword "gotcha" games (not too uncommon on the internet) rather than saying: "what people call affordable housing is bad because it relocates costs to others without benefiting the people it's supposed to help enough."
They should replace affordable with subsidized to be fair, but by doing son they make it affordable to those buying /renting the homes because the builder is able to sell/rent at a fraction of market cost.
Subsidized housing creates more problem that it solves.
COH Leadership: "We already gave it to some people though." State: "Ah, okay. Just take another $45m from your tax payers and give that to us." I think all of us need to get into politics. Seems like money rains down from everywhere if you stand in the right places. There's also zero repercussions for thievery, I'm sorry, I mean awarding your friends contracts to do shit jobs or nothing at all.
They certainly let a lot of fake luxury apartments run rampant in the trendy areas though.
New market rate construction is still good for housing affordability. This is well documented and not debatable.
Exactly. People complaining about market rate housing are annoying
Hmmm. I still see the vast majority of homes within 610 being out of reach for most locals, 1 bedroom apartments going for $1800-2200 all around the city. All up tenfold since the start of COVID. New construction for homes outside city limits, absolutely (like in Magnolia, Conroe, Willis, parts of Spring and the Woodlands). But that has nothing to do with a City budget and concern. I guess I am misunderstanding the point of your sentence, in relation to Houston.
Because you have to examine the counterfactual (what would have happened to rates if new housing had not been built). In any case [Houston rent rates have been dropping](https://houstonagentmagazine.com/2024/03/26/rent-prices-are-cooling-off-in-houston/#:~:text=According%20to%20recent%20data%2C%20Houston's,supply%2Dand%2Ddemand%20issue.)
you are not entitled to live inside of 610 for cheap. That said there are tons of rentals under 1800 inside of the loop https://www.har.com/search/dosearch?map_tools_nwlat=29.77765844751049&map_tools_nwlng=-95.4493620181843&map_tools_selat=29.706941711420313&map_tools_selng=-95.33569151750427&map_tools_polygon=POLYGON%20((-95.445925%2029.803086,%20-95.449675%2029.790068,%20-95.4478%2029.717624,%20-95.450613%2029.706224,%20-95.453426%2029.676088,%20-95.427173%2029.667127,%20-95.403734%2029.667127,%20-95.38967%2029.668756,%20-95.374669%2029.672829,%20-95.349354%2029.676902,%20-95.337165%2029.683419,%20-95.319351%2029.689935,%20-95.313726%2029.694007,%20-95.294974%2029.709481,%20-95.292161%2029.710295,%20-95.282786%2029.719253,%20-95.28091%2029.719253,%20-95.279973%2029.72251,%20-95.278098%2029.72251,%20-95.27716%2029.724952,%20-95.26966%2029.729837,%20-95.262159%2029.75019,%20-95.261221%2029.764027,%20-95.259346%2029.765654,%20-95.252783%2029.786813,%20-95.250908%2029.787627,%20-95.249033%2029.796577,%20-95.250908%2029.799018,%20-95.250908%2029.803086,%20-95.254658%2029.808781,%20-95.266847%2029.811221,%20-95.292161%2029.812848,%20-95.414985%2029.813662,%20-95.427173%2029.807967,%20-95.445925%2029.803086,%20-95.445925%2029.803086))&for_sale=0&lease_price_max=1750&sort=listdate%20desc&view=map
Homes in the desirable areas inside 610 are expensive because single family housing is an inefficient use of space and constrains the number of housing units. There is a shitload of demand to live in those neighborhoods. A single family home in close proximity to downtown and the most sought after urban amenities *should* be expensive because it’s an inefficient use of the most valuable land in the city. And despite this, Houston remains one of not the most affordable of America’s largest cities because it has a much more permissive environment for building housing compared to most of that peer group. Uh, rents are not 10x what they were 4-5 years ago. That kind of ridiculous disinformation isn’t even worth engaging. New construction apartments with all the bells and whistles are more expensive than average, more news at 11. They still promote affordability by adding to overall supply. The renters that fill those buildings don’t just magically vanish if they don’t get built, their dollars instead start competing for and driving up prices on lower tier rentals that are otherwise more affordable, which ultimately drives out lower income households.
That's great information that I understand. I just don't understand the correlation of "which ultimately drives out lower income households" with to the article. Houston still got dinged for not building enough affordable housing. I get that everything you said (which is why I said they built a ton of luxury apartments instead). So does "affordability" just mean competitive rental rates across an area because of high supply and stagnant demand? I'd argue that a 1 bedroom at $1800-2000 isn't that affordable for most individuals. I guess I am struggling with what affordability means in these cases (again, Houston still got dinged for not doing so).
The price of something is the result of supply and demand. The cost of producing it doesn't really matter. the only way to reduce the price of a good is to either increase the supply of it or reduce the demand for it. With something like housing (which people essentially have to have) in a market like Houston (where population is increasing) demand is constantly increasing creating constant upward pressure on prices. The only way to counteract that upward pressure on prices is to increase supply, so any increase in supply is better than none. Would it be better for the lower class renters if builders made cheaper, low frills housing options? Yes it would, but an increase in upper class housing still alleviates supply pressure which helps the price of lower class housing. It is just less direct. The people who rent expensive apartments are going to live somewhere. So if they are living in an fancy new apartment, then they aren't living in an old dumpy apartment, freeing that spot up for person of more humble means.
Absolutely, so what can Houston do to build affordable housing, as dictated by Texas?
Best thing I can think of is to lower the prices and increase turnaround times on building permits for low cost housing projects. That would lower building costs for those projects to make them more economically viable (As it is, low cost housing really isn't profitable to build). They could also give property tax breaks to certain types of housing projects, but that would be more of a county thing, not a city thing. Builders focus on "luxury" apartments because that offers the best return on investment. There really isn't that much savings on a low frills residence over a luxury one (for a builder), but with better amenities the owner can charge a higher rent, so a builder might as well build it fancy. This is partly due to the high costs of permitting and housing codes that are always increasing their standards making building new residences an ever more costly endeavor.
Yeah thats a good explanation. However, if Texas is giving the city millions to do it, couldn't they somehow mitigate those price losses that comes with low income/affordable living?
I think he was stating that new market homes and apartments coming into a market helps with lowering rent and house pricing for affordable homes. Basically the more new things built for people to move up into, the more openings for the places they moved out of.
I understand, but I am just saying I don't personally see that in the area.
hey they said it's not debatable, now behave yourself!
Please use your brain just a tiny little bit. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all
Why be a dick?
Its common sense.
Strip mall city
If anyone was that serious about affordable housing we would have row houses like in Philly or in the sunset district in sanfrancisco but for some reason we need grass and all other useless shit