In a state famous for affordability, people are beginning to ask a question more commonly associated with San Francisco or New York: Is Houston becoming home only to the affluent and the elite?
Monica Rhor provides feature-length, in-depth reporting on the changes occurring in parts of Houston and expected to continue in the future.
Rhor focuses most of the narrative in the article in the neighborhood of Shady Acres:
"Here, as in neighborhoods across Houston, gentrification has edged out longtime residents, lured in people who are younger, more affluent and mostly white, and driven up home values and property taxes. It is making neighborhoods like Shady Acres unaffordable not only for working-class folks but - increasingly - for middle-class families..."
According to Rohr, the city's gentrification is spreading from west to east, threatening "Houston's vaunted identity as an affordable place to live and, if left unchecked, could magnify the economic segregation and income inequality of a city already ranked high in both.
In addition to several interactive maps to illustrate the real estate trends of the city, Rohr also cites data from a report from Rice University's Shell Center for Sustainability, finding that selling prices for homes in the metro area "went up 10.2 percent from 2013 to 2014 and rents "climbed 4.8 percent from last year."
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