The Gulfton Fallacy: Don't Let Zoning's 'Perfect' Be the Enemy of Houston's Good
The Houston Chronicle just published a shorter version of this as a Letter to the Editor, but here is the full version.
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The recent call to use the Gulfton neighborhood as a poster
child for imposing city-wide zoning (“I'm an urban planning expert from
Houston. It's time we talk about zoning again.” Houston Chronicle 8/1/25) is
the latest verse in a seductive but dangerous song. Words like “planning” and
“zoning” poll well because they offer a vague cure-all for the complexities of
a dynamic city. It’s an understandable impulse, but it’s a trap—a classic case
of the “grass is always greener” fallacy, where a theoretical, perfect version
of zoning is imagined, while the grim reality of its failures elsewhere is
ignored.
Before we consider dismantling the very system that has made
Houston a beacon of opportunity, we must take an honest account of what that
system delivers. Houston’s status as one of America’s most affordable and
dynamic major cities is the direct result of our unique light regulatory touch.
Our ability to build new housing at a rate reportedly up to 14 times that of
our zoned peers is the core of our success. This is why Houston largely avoided
the catastrophic housing bubbles that devastated other regions and why our home
price-to-income ratio remains the envy of the nation.
The contrast with heavily zoned cities is stark. While Texas has
approximately 90 homeless individuals per 100,000 residents, California’s rate
is nearly five times higher, fueled by a regulatory crisis that can push the
cost of a single “affordable” housing unit to over $500,000. Houston
prioritizes building, which results in a higher standard of living for those
with resources and more humane options for those without.
A critical part of our success has been smart, inner-loop
densification, unleashed by pragmatic lot-size reforms. The resulting townhome
boom created tens of thousands of new homes, the very “missing middle” housing
that has effectively become illegal to build in most American cities. On
expensive urban land that, under a restrictive zoning regime, would either
become a massive McMansion or remain blighted, Houston gets thousands of new
homes affordable to middle-income families.
The city-wide zoning now being contemplated, using Gulfton as an
example, is a recipe for exclusion. It would hand a powerful tool to NIMBYs all
over the city to kill development and force stagnation. This isn’t a guess;
it’s the lived reality of every major zoned city, where restrictions choke
supply, drive up prices, and displace the very people they claim to protect.
Furthermore, this push, like the recent attempt to create so-called
“conservation districts,” is an undemocratic end-run around the City Charter
and the will of Houston voters, who have decisively rejected zoning three
separate times.
The choice is not between chaos and zoning. Houston is not
“unplanned”; it is largely privately planned through a robust system of
voluntary deed restrictions. This provides the best of both worlds: neighbors
who want zoning-like protections can have them, while the city as a whole can
grow and adapt. For specific conflicts, we use surgical tools like buffering
ordinances, not a sledgehammer.
Cities across America are now desperately trying to liberalize
their land-use rules to achieve a fraction of the affordability and dynamism we
take for granted. For Houston to voluntarily inflict this self-destructive
disease upon itself would be a historic tragedy. We are the model other cities
are trying to emulate. Let’s not break what works.
Tory Gattis is the editor of the Houston Strategies blog and a Founding Senior Fellow with the Urban Reform Institute.
Labels: affordability, home affordability, land-use regulation, zoning
posted by Tory Gattis @ 8:02 AM
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