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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

I would love to see how Houston fares in this analysis, as AFAIK it’s the only large city in North America that is quite permissive towards residential development, including lower-end development. I suspect that a lot of what’s happening in general is the unavoidable scarcity of _land_ in prime urban locations manifests as a scarcity of _housing_, and development in general, due to the hyper-regulatory environment in most cities. And of course if you make housing scarce everyone is worse off, most of all the poor, but at every point in the income ladder people are paying much more per square foot of space than is necessary or desirable.

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Huston is not that different, because it has a lot of other regulations that in effect do the same. (There's just less traditional land use "zoning".)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaU1UH_3B5k

Not just scarcity, but the lack of mixed use development, the lack of high efficiency city logistics (moving people, people's belongings, food/freight/cargo to shops/restaurants and bigger stores) prevent most US cities from being adequately flexible enough to adapt to changing economic patterns. (And to allow innovating new patterns, etc.) Not to mention that most metro areas are a zigzag patchwork of planning jurisdictions, and all of these municipalities are incentivized to push certain stuff away from them.

My understanding is that Houston is facing different issues due to sprawl and transit. Housing is cheap if the commute is bad, but very expensive closer to the job centers.

If that’s true (I’m not from Houston!), then it does seem like zoning reform is probably not enough to solve America’s housing issues.

It's hard to compare to some cities in the north since a lot of what is now considered Houston were actually numerous different towns separated by open fields earlier in the 20th century, and now they've all been swallowed up. But the inner part of Houston has famously (infamously?) had minimal zoning restrictions and the inner 610 loop had quite a bit more affordable housing than comparably-sized cities such as Chicago. Nowadays people get pretty annoyed at large new apartment buildings (even luxury ones) being built in the inner loop, but that's just because Houstonians have been so used to having far more houses in the urban center than other large cities (I'm thinking of walking down shadowed streets in NYC where you don't see the sun because the residential buildings are several stories tall--something uncommon here). But the lack of zoning is making it easier to quickly fill in with denser housing such as 3-story or 4-story townhomes and large new apartment buildings, so I'm curious if it will be incredibly dense in the center a century from now.

I lived there for a while and owned an okay condo in a very central / prime location. 2bd 1ba. It cost $100k at the time (peak recession). I checked recently and saw it last sold in 2021 for $140k. From my later experience living in SF I’d guess that place would go for $800k-1.2M in SF. So, I think Houston is still pretty affordable, even in the urban core, compared to most cities.

It's even crazier to think about that Houston isn't an example of zoning reform – they've never had any zoning to begin with! You can essentially build anything you want, anywhere, of any density. Yes, even skyscrapers in a residential area [1] or an industrial crematorium in the middle of a neighborhood [2] or, most famously, an amusement park-house-hybrid [3].

The problem is just that Texas, as a whole, has a planning philosophy of outwards, not upwards. Things are densifying in job rich areas now that they've just about expanded as far as they can (the city proper 669 square miles, or about twice the 5 boroughs of NYC, twice the geographic size of its sibling city Dallas, and 150+ square miles larger than Los Angeles; none of these sizes include surrounding suburbs, by the way).

All of this is long way to say that you're right – it's not just about zoning. It's equally about ending the grip of car-centric planning and not just allowing, but incentivizing densification and walkability. The fact 2/3rds of Houston is in (increasingly-frequent, due in part to the sprawl itself not allowing anywhere for water to runoff to) flood zones, too, is apparently not incentive enough.

[1] https://s.hdnux.com/photos/51/06/32/10774164/4/1200x0.jpg [2] https://s.hdnux.com/photos/51/07/70/10780179/4/1200x0.jpg [3] https://s.hdnux.com/photos/51/07/64/10779939/4/rawImage.jpg

You might be interested in learning about J. J. Pastoriza, Houston's first Hispanic mayor, and proponent of an ambitious and short-lived land reform movement for the city back in the 1910's

https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1427107150053183505

Hey Larsius, thanks for sharing, that was very interesting! Maybe mistaken identity but I think we might know each other… we’re you in John Fairey’s studio spring ‘03? :)

That would have been sophomore year so yeah... I may very well be the Lars you're looking for.

And for homeowners, that means more equity for them. It's a massive wealth transfer to homeowners

It actually sucks when your house goes up in value, if you don't plan on moving, because everything else nearby has also gone up in value, so you'd be force to leave if you ever sold, and because your property taxes go up (in some places).

If the property taxes are going up that much, then the local government is spending much more. But I have seen places where land values go up, and tax rates actually go down (and/or assessments remain low), since the government expenses do not rise at the same rate.

That would be rare, because rapidly increasing property values are almost always driven by rapidly increased demand. The municipal government has to expand its expenditures to meet this demand, usually ahead of when it receives expanded revenue. Generally speaking, it's much more expensive to grow quickly than slowly.

Extremely true in Houston (and the rest of Texas). Property taxes are big and can change dramatically year to year.

To really understand Houston you would need more data. Chiefly, the rampant influx of illegal aliens driving massive growth, higher rents when construction can't keep up, pressure on unskilled wages, and rapid building of schools a d other infrastructure driving up property taxes. But some truth is not allowed to be voiced in polite society.

Huston has many kinds of regulations on new developments. "Zoning" is just one of them, that Huston has a laxer version of. (Compared to let's say SF/LA.)

The problem is that there's an enormous missing middle (and high) density development regime in the US that would allow cities to adequately track the changes in housing needs.

Weird.

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