Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Houston Still #1, And Why Bad Planning Hurts (Elsewhere)

Just a few quick items that have crossed the screen recently, reinforcing some long-held Houston Strategies principles:

Houston: Still Drawing a Crowd

First up, no surprise to those of us living here, but Houston has once again topped Penske's list of America's top moving destinations for 2024. CultureMap highlighted the news, noting this is the fourth consecutive year Houston has held the top spot. People are voting with their feet, and they're choosing Houston. Why? The familiar reasons resonate: job opportunities, a reasonable cost of living (especially compared to those "cool" coastal cities), and the ability to find more space. It seems the fundamentals still matter.

The High Price of "Planning" Utopia

Speaking of that reasonable cost of living, particularly in housing, the just-released 2025 Demographia International Housing Affordability report continues to lay bare the consequences of restrictive land-use planning. Year after year, Wendell Cox over at Demographia points out that a major driver of housing unaffordability globally is policies that try to force density and limit the expansion of housing on the urban fringe. These "smart growth" or "urban containment" strategies, while perhaps well-intentioned in some abstract sense, consistently lead to skyrocketing land costs and, consequently, housing prices that push ordinary families out. They create artificial scarcity. Houston is at a house-price-to-income ratio of 4.3, which is one of the most affordable in the country, especially for a high-growth city.

Pure gold excerpt on Planning and Portland

This brings me to a truly pure gold excerpt I saw recently from Randal O'Toole, The Antiplanner, discussing the failures of Portland's Metro 2040 plan. It's a long piece, but this part cuts to the chase (emphasis mine):

"The 1995 Future Vision called for “housing affordable for all,” “accessible employment centers throughout the region,” “equitable economic progress,” “public safety,” and reductions in poverty. By all of these measures, the region is worse today than it was in 1997, and this decline is almost entirely due to Metro’s 2040 plan. ....

The real problem is that planners can’t accurately foresee the future, so instead of planning for the future they plan for the past. Instead of helping people obtain the future they want, planners become so enamored with their plans that they persuade themselves that coercive tools such as restrictions on things that people want and subsidies for things that people don’t want are all good ideas.

This is why I am an Antiplanner. Planners get so caught up in their fantasies that they completely ignore reality when it is staring them in the face. Even when it is clear that their plans have failed — that “growing up not out” hasn’t made housing affordable, that building more light rail hasn’t gotten people out of their cars — they keep on doing the same thing. Metro, for example, continues to subsidize high-density housing projects and is busy planning at least two more light-rail lines."

Read that again. Decades of top-down planning, restricting what people actually want (like single-family homes with a yard, or the ability to drive their own car efficiently) and subsidizing what they don't, has led to the opposite of its stated goals. Housing is less affordable, and mobility can be worse despite billions spent on transit modes few choose to use for most trips.

Houston, for all its imperfections, has largely avoided this kind of ideological, restrictive planning when it comes to land use. Our "plan" has largely been to allow the market to respond to demand. And what do you know? We're a top destination for people seeking opportunity and a better quality of life, with housing that, while not immune to national trends, remains far more attainable than in heavily regulated, "planner-paradise" metros. Coincidence? I think not.

Labels: , , , , , ,

posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:47 PM 4 comments

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Whitmire = Bob Lanier, Vision Zero doesn't work, people prefer sprawl over walkability, and more

  Clearing more from the smaller items backlog this week:

  • This Texas Observer piece on Houston's northside is so scattershot and random and socialist/left-wing biased it's hard to know where to start. Houston is bad because... it has gentrification, inequality, racial tensions, and suburbanization/sprawl like every other city in America?? Because it has the most affordable housing among the nation's major metros, but not affordable enough for the very poorest populations??

At the end, he calls for communities to control their own fate vs. developers, but isn't that what every other over-zoned and over-regulated city in the country has done resulting in a massive national housing affordability crisis?? The fact is that we called it right when we said Houston had the right formula for housing supply and affordability, and the rest of country is finally catching up to that. This incoherent, woke, down-with-capitalism/free-markets rant adds nothing helpful to the conversation. 

  • Why so many Americans prefer sprawl to walkable neighborhoods in the Washington Post piece (no paywall archive link).

    • While walkable neighborhoods like Clarendon offer convenience, they can be expensive and lack living space compared to suburban "sprawl."
    • Despite the benefits of walkable neighborhoods, surveys show that many Americans prefer the spaciousness of suburban sprawl, especially older, less-educated, and Republican-leaning individuals.
'This seems to be the basic pattern of vision zero plans across the country: impose a bunch of auto-hostile policies, ignore the fact that they don’t work, and then blame others when fatalities rise. As Lewis & Clark law professor Jack Bogdanski says, “the bureaucrats are great at spending money to make life miserable for people who drive cars, but they don’t bother to see if any of their spending actually makes any difference in improving traffic safety.”'

  • I got quoted! 'In many ways Whitmire is, in the words of longtime Houston blogger Tory Gattis, “the second incarnation of Bob Lanier: focused on running a good city, not caught up in the urbanist dogma"...Apparently, Bayou City voters aren’t chomping at the bit to see their city become the next Portland.” From "These Mayors Understand How to Run a City" in the City Journal.


Labels: , , , , , , ,

posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:41 PM 6 comments

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

The advantages of no-zoning in Houston, The Economist on Dallas, Chicago's fiscal warning

 Clearing more from the smaller items backlog this week:

  • No-Zoning Flexibility (and Complications): The Houston Landing recently explored Houston's lack of traditional zoning (with a leftist bias, of course). While acknowledging it adds some complexity (requiring deed restrictions, etc.), experts cited in the piece note the significant flexibility it provides, contributing to our ability to adapt and grow more dynamically than zoned cities. It reinforces that our system, while different, has tangible benefits.

  • Houston's No-Zone Recipe Keeps Housing Affordable: Hat tip to Barry Klein for sending The Daily Economy piece that summarizes Houston's success. Judge Glock highlights how our unique approach allows the market to respond quickly to demand, preventing the kind of artificial scarcity and price spirals seen elsewhere. The key elements? No zoning, minimum lot size reform, and a responsive development community. It's a recipe other cities could learn from.

  • Chicago's Fiscal Woes - A Cautionary Tale: This NYT Opinion piece details the severe fiscal challenges facing Chicago and Illinois, largely driven by pension debt. It's a stark reminder of the importance of fiscal discipline and realistic accounting for long-term liabilities – lessons Houston and Texas have generally taken to heart, contributing to our healthier financial position compared to many older northern cities.

  • The Economist: Dallas: Utopia for the Trump-curious CEO - The Texan city embodies the allure of small government. The description definitely sounds similar to Houston:

"The city boasts an enviable standard of living. Scorching summers are a small price to pay when a typical house costs a fifth less than in Austin and half as much as in San Francisco. “You don’t need to know some secret handshake to get your kid into a private school,” gushes a banker. Co-workers raise eyebrows when you do not go to your child’s 2 o’clock school play, marvels another.

Best of all, enthuses a venture capitalist, Dallas is “unabashedly American” in its embrace of meritocracy and free enterprise. “If you are successful, any prejudice melts away,” agrees a CEO. The result is a virtuous circle. Business begets growth, growth brings people, people draw restaurants, culture and buzz"

Labels: , , ,

posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:59 PM 3 comments