Drop rules limiting Houston’s growth

Affordable housing, better transit, livable city will follow

California State Sen. Scott Wiener just launched a broadside against the sort of local ordinances that drive up home prices across the nation. Under Wiener’s proposal, California cities would no longer have authority to restrict housing construction or impose parking mandates within a half mile of light rail stations and transit centers. The legislative package frees developers to start building the kind of projects that best serve the market rather than simply conform to government building and permit codes.

Wiener and a budding California YIMBY movement (Yes In My Backyard) have figured out what should be obvious — that the key to lower housing costs is increased supply.

In Texas, we have long looked down our noses at the east and west coasts as skyrocketing real estate prices have made the cost of living unbearable for all but the wealthiest residents. Ironically, although we Texans pride ourselves on our free-market mindset, it is California that is proposing to let the market decide. In Houston, we continue to let bureaucrats tell private enterprise how to develop their land.

Here, our low-cost housing strategy has been “drive till you qualify,” enabled by tollway and debt-financed freeway expansion, a tolerance for long commutes and loose land-use regulations in the suburbs and exurbs.

If it wasn’t clear before, Harvey’s floodwaters now have exposed the hazards of paving the prairie — the result of our long-standing reliance on building ever farther out to satisfy demand for affordable housing. Post-Harvey, flood maps will push development to higher ground and force Houston to build more densely on that higher ground.

It is this density of development that will allow Houston to continue its remarkable growth — and more importantly, to grow sustainably. Building more closely within the urban

core of Houston will make the city more walkable, encourage smart public transit, allow people to live close to work, shopping and recreation. To reap these benefits, Houston must re-examine the current thicket of ordinances that codify urban sprawl into being and drive up costs.

Sure, we pride ourselves on not having zoning, but how does that help when Houston building codes call for absurdly large street setbacks (that cost a pretty penny and for which the rationale has been lost in the mists of time), overly generous parking requirements (more pavement equals increased flooding), and minimum lot sizes designed to maintain a suburb-like innercity. Houston sprawls for many reasons, but among the most powerful are Houston’s far-reaching building codes.

For example, to build a house here requires a minimum 3,500-square-foot lot. That means for a modest townhouse, land costs will top $100,000, even in lower-cost neighborhoods. That townhouse will come with two required parking spaces, which must both be sized for big cars, even if you don’t want or need them (the spaces or the cars). If you have a big lot and want to build a “granny flat” out back, as many cities now encourage in order to increase housing supply, sorry; it can only be 900-square feet, and you have to add a parking space for grandma’s Suburban. Defenders of the status quo will point to Houston’s “Transit Oriented Development” statute, which allows higher density near rail stations. Since its passage eight years ago, a small number of projects have run this gauntlet. Although a separate ordinance allows businesses to opt out of parking requirements, the city has granted no zero-parking variances since the rule’s passage.

Density is allowed in Houston, but only by exemption. Developers who wish to create denser, more walkable and transitfriendly projects can do so, but they must navigate the Planning Commission, a time-consuming and uncertain process. The upshot is that most developers don’t bother to try, and only the biggest projects with the highest-quality connections attempt to make it through. By design, there is no confidence in organic growth driven by small projects, which has been the bedrock of community creation in other cities. Indeed, some of the most coveted places in Houston, like 19th Street in the Heights and much of Montrose, would be illegal to develop under today’s ordinances.

Mandating low density around rail stops does not foster improved transportation options for low-income workers. The city should drop this rule in areas served by Metrorail in order to drive density, which drives ridership, which would leverage our multi-billion dollar light-rail investment. Furthermore, Houston housing policy’s evil twin is traffic, so promoting housing development along our nascent rail system is critical.

Instead of sporadically granting exemptions, Houston officials should follow the brave California senator’s lead and end this city’s government-knows-best building mandates. It’s time to trust markets to drive the density Houston requires.