Affordable housing

City needs real action, not just gimmicks, as Houstonians face new pressure.

A house is a house is a house is a house is a house, as architects like to say.

A housing bond, on the other hand, is apparently a gimmick. Or so the politicians admit.

Houston has been caught sitting on more than $30 million in bond approvals for affordable housing. No, money wasn’t misplaced — unlike the $46 million in TIRZ dollars that Chronicle reporters Rebecca Elliott and Mike Morris discovered in their “Lost Money” investigation.

The brain trust at City Hall that cooked up the scheme over the past 16 years, it seems, never intended to take advantage of the approvals in the first place. They put just affordable housing bonds on the ballot three times to gin up turnout for other issues and appease political pressure.

“You need to have affordable housing on there as part of the package so that it’s sellable out in the community,” Annise Parker told the Chronicle in a surprising moment of candor. “I don’t want to say that we did it with the expectation of not using it, but that’s in essence what we did.”

When people say they want honest politicians, they don’t mean after the fact.

This news is a slap in the face to voters, and should act as a kick in the seat to make City Hall finally take housing seriously in Houston.

For years, our region could get away with responding to questions about the cost of living by simply pointing down the freeway. Endless sprawl ensured that housing supply could always keep up with demand and each suburban development or feeder-road apartment complex was less expensive than the last.

But we’re running out of sprawl. Workers’ commutes start to become untenable — especially if people are spending hours in traffic for minimum wage jobs. Closer to downtown, we’re seeing families being priced out of once-affordable neighborhoods as gentrification sends rents and property tax bills skyrocketing. Attempts to build mixed-income units near job centers — such as a subsidized multifamily complex at 2640 Fountainview in the Galleria-area — have been shut down by a “Not In My Backyard” philosophy.

Meanwhile, 10 percent of Harris County residents spend a majority of their paychecks on housing, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. And the number of high-poverty areas in Houston’s suburbs has more than doubled, according to a recent Harvard University study. So what can we do? There aren’t many sticks in the Houston planner’s toolbox, but we’re experts at using carrots. Houston spent $75 million in tax credits on the downtown living initiative to help draw apartments to the urban core. Not a single unit built qualifies as affordable. Folks on the ground can, however, peer at a 44-story high hanging pool at Market Square Tower. One-bedroom apartments are available for $3,000 per month.

We spare no expense for the wealthy.

City Council was at least willing to spend $4 million on the poor last week by expanding the “blue tarp” program. Those funds help Houstonians patch homes in disrepair and preempt the search for new housing to begin with. It can’t end there. Houston should spend funds on rental assistance and help finance mixed-income units near job centers or along transit lines. The planning commission, too, can exert pressure on private-sector affordability when developers come asking for variances.

Metro also has a role to play as the regional transit agency plans its future. This means connecting low-cost, far-out suburbs with key job centers.

Finally, the Midtown Redevelopment Authority needs to accelerate construction of mixed-income housing throughout its extensive Third Ward land bank. Each empty plot owned by the quasi-governmental entity represents an unfulfilled opportunity. If that board won’t act, City Hall needs to step in.

Houston’s leaders have to start showing some actual results on affordable housing. The time for gimmicks is over.