Will Houston Try To Limit Apartments?

"What does fourth-largest Houston have in common with the nation's other three biggest cities? More people here rent than own. [And] more than 40 percent of [residents] live in apartments."

Yet many are upset with the large apartment complexes building built throughout the city.

" "We're over-built in apartments," City Councilman Peter Brown said...Brown is backing new guidelines for neighborhood planning that would lack the teeth of actual zoning laws but might have some impact on apartment development."

"In the Long Point Woods neighborhood in West Houston, rising up next to decades-old homes and big old oaks is a brand-new four-story complex.

"There's 498 units," homeowner Craig Adams said.

"It's a terrible place to build an apartment complex that large," homeowner Janet Wilkerson said.

For these homeowners, it symbolizes all that is wrong with letting developers determine how and where the city grows.

"These are our homes," homeowner Craig Adams said. "That's a business entity. It was brought in, not invited. We didn't want it here."

You don't have to go far to find other cities that do things differently.

In Sugar Land, apartment developers are routinely turned away because Sugar Land has set strict limits.

"No more than 200 units in any complex, and no more than 300 units in a square mile," City Manager Allen Bogard said."

"Developers of big complexes say the lack of zoning allows them to quickly respond to market demands, keeps rents lower than many other major cities, and is quickly revitalizing rundown neighborhoods."