How Houston Keeps Housing Affordable

Writing in Market Urbanism, Emily Hamilton assesses how Houston has maintained its housing affordability relative to peer cities and how city leaders can limit cost increases and provide housing options for its lowest-income residents.

According to Hamilton, Houston’s existing building regulations—many of which mimic other cities’ zoning codes—increase the cost of construction, but the city is a leader in reducing restrictive rules, leading to lower housing costs than in many other regions.

“At the least-well-off end of the income spectrum, Houston has the lowest rate of homelessness among major U.S. cities, due in part to its relative abundance of housing and in part to well-administered public and nonprofit services for formerly homeless residents.” Houston has taken a ‘housing first’ approach that has helped the city dramatically reduce chronic homelessness.

Hamilton points out that “While Houston is a model of relative affordability, its housing market cannot serve its least-well-off residents without aid.” Hamilton writes that the Housing Choice Voucher program can help low-income families access housing and is more cost-effective than subsidizing new construction or ‘inclusionary zoning’ requirements which, according to her research, “provides a very small number of units relative to the number of households that qualify for them” and can raise the median cost of housing.