Dispelling Four Myths of Houston's Growth and Affordability

Ryan Holeywell of The Urban Edge looks at a new report produced by Lester King, a Rice researcher and urban planner, where King challenges four common “myths” about the Houston’s gentrification, population growth, affordability, and development in the Inner Loop. Among the findings is that the city's reputation for housing affordability fails to take into account that pay for workers is often lower and transportation costs higher than other large cities around the US.

“When transportation costs are added to housing costs as a percentage of income, many areas along the periphery of the city also become less affordable,” King writes. That means housing is cheaper in Houston, but not necessarily more affordable…

Houston ranks 26th for affordability, according to data King cites from the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The average Houstonian spends 46 percent of his income on housing and transportation costs. “This conflicts with Houston’s marketability as the affordable capital of the country,” King writes in his report.

Lester also finds that the anticipated growth of the city – 3.5 million new residents by 2035 – assumes that all of those people will move inside the city limits, but current trends show that the new residents will be absorbed across the Houston-Galveston metro region (a much larger area). The assumption that Houston will be absorbing all of those people, King’s reports states, “may be indirectly eroding its affordability and middle class wealth base, since land values are increasing to meet the needs of 3.5 million people, who are in fact not moving here at all.”