Report: One-Fifth of Houston Homes in Flood Areas

Over 20 percent of Harris County housing units are located in a major flood area, according to the 2025 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston report. As John Brannen explains in Urban Edge, the report also “found a strong connection between a neighborhood’s share of single-family homes in floodplains and that neighborhood’s poverty rate.”

Many homes in the region are unprepared for climate risk ,with over 100,000 lacking central air conditioning. “The State of Housing report also highlights the poor air quality plaguing the area. In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, every neighborhood in Harris County failed to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for concentration of PM 2.5, which is particulate matter more than 2.5 microns in diameter.”

The lack of housing resilience is likely to affect low-income households most. Elaine Morales-Díaz, the senior director of partnerships and policy at Connective and a panelist in a Kinder Institute panel discussing the report, said “health risks arising from inadequate housing in the face of extreme weather and the compounding effects of disasters are among the area’s top housing challenges.” In coming years, hundreds of thousands of Houston-area housing units could be at risk of flooding.