Houston is often touted as the apotheosis of the "abundance" agenda, and is revered by anti-government libertarians. Why? Because it has the most minimal zoning possible, specifying only minimum lot sizes and road design. If you live in a single family home and want to open a bar in your living room (and the private subdivision restrictions don't forbid it), you can. It's a libertarian paradise!
One other observation: if you look at cities (and counties) with complex zoning restrictions--e.g., Sacramento City or County--you will see they look almost identical to Houston. Zoning, at least as practiced in parts of California, is completely ineffective, and regularly ignored, especially if someone politically influential wants a zoning change. (I've discussed this before here.)
A new bit of information is that Houston's lack of zoning does not lead to prosperity or more affordable housing.
Notice that three Texas cities populate in this poverty ranking, but only two California cities appear. The ranking is even more one-sided when one compares the availability of affordable rentals.
From replies to the Tweet that is the source of the above:
What's the percentage of the population that is classified as rent burdened?
According to Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research, about 51% of renters in Houston are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income on housing. Additionally, more than 25% of renters spend half of their income on rent.
Any info on the right graph as to what was considered affordable?
AThe National Low Income Housing Coalition's The Gap Report defines affordable housing as "Housing units with rent and utilities that do not exceed 30% of a given income threshold."nlihc.org
Nice, thank you! I think what the “just build more housing!” crowd doesn’t get is that no amount of new housing is ever going to drive prices down to a price affordable to people making 30-40k a year, which is a gigantic chunk of people.
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