City officials unveil first report on equity
Mayor Sylvester Turner said Tuesday that Houston’s first equity study shows what most in the city already know: Many opportunities differ depending on your ZIP code, race and sexual orientation.
Turner and city officials unveiled the document, One Complete Houston, on Tuesday along with the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and Shell USA Inc., which underwrote the report. It uses a methodology developed by the City University of New York to measure the varying levels of opportunity in a city.
Houston scored a 44.1 out of 100, landing in the middle of the pack among seven U.S. cities that have conducted the measure. Pittsburgh (55), New York City (48.52) and St. Louis (45.57) scored higher, while Tulsa (43.63), Dallas (39.8), and Oakland (33.5) scored lower.
“Though I would love to stand before you and say we live in a colorblind society, that’s just not the reality when you take a look, even in the City of Houston,” Turner said. “So we are very diverse, but equity still very much eludes us. And quite frankly, it is not something that can be addressed by one administration.”
Sixty-three different data points contributed to the score, spanning across categories such as health, public safety and economic opportunity. Houston scored below a 20 out of 100 on 13 of them, and scored a 1 on eight of them, including residents without bank accounts, environmental penalties and mental health transports.
Houston posted equity scores of 34.6 in economic opportunity and 27.3 in health. The report pointed out that fewer than 1 percent of Black Houstonians are business owners, compared to 6 percent of Asian residents and 5 percent of white residents. The city scored an 82, though, on high school graduation, with similar rates across demographic factors at Houston Independent School District.
The biggest health disparity involved ambulance transports for mental health services. About 318 out of every 100,000 Black residents experience those trips, while the figure is 174 for white Houstonians, 98 for Hispanic residents and 31 for Asians, according to the report.
Daniel Potter, a senior director with the Kinder Institute of Urban Research, said it is important to focus on both equity and quality. For example, he said, Houston scored a 98 on the equity indicator for drainage, and a 94 on air pollution, but those metrics are not celebratory. It is because drainage and air quality are bad across the city, he said.
“This is a case where the equity score is high, but all Houstonians could benefit from cleaner air,” the report states.
Both Turner and Potter said the issues highlighted in the report have been decades in the making, and similarly will take enduring investments to address.