Houston’s Affordable Housing Backlog; Lowering Lake Houston’s Water Levels Ahead of This Week’s Rain

Photo of Texas Art Supply building from Grant St.: Swamplot inbox

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  • “affordable housing”? Isn’t that all over Houston? A few years ago I bought a 3 bedroom house in airport road for like $45k. We have a 3 bed house near by for $800/month. We have 3 bed apartments between midtown and med center for $800 (okay, they sort of suck, but they’re affordable and super central).
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    Maybe I don’t understand what’s meant by “affordable housing” but I see it all over the place. Unless what’s meant is “super nice housing that’s also super cheap”. Only the government can do that by subsidizing a money losing operation.

  • why not jus make everything “affordable” and call it what it is…communism.

  • The best thing Houston can do for affordability to allow as much apartment and town home development as possible, be it luxury or not, if someone wants to build somewhere and it increases the density let them build. Trying to build affordable (read subsidized) housing in high opportunity (read rich) areas is going to be horribly expensive (because the land cost a lot) and political suicide (because rich don’t like the poors being dropped on their doorstep. Each couple who moves into a luxury condo in Riveroaks is one less montrose town house occupied which is filled by someone who would have lived in garden oaks bungalow, which is then filled by a family from… and so on, eventually freeing up an apartment in Gulfton, which is definitely affordable. The housing itself filters if you allow enough development, people forget Gulfton was the height of luxury apartment living during the 70s. The 2000 sqft townhouses in the heights being built today will have 2 families in them and be affordable living in the 2040s. Allow housing of any ‘affordability to be built wherever someone wants to build it and there will always be affordable housing somewhere in the city as filtering happens.

  • Houston is the ast city to make a claim about a lack of affordable housing their and massive swaths of land between 610 & 1960/Hwy6 that have tons of affordable housing enough for every Houstonian family. You can still get a nice home for $125,000 here and no other major US city of our scale. Now Section 8 vouchers, yes there will forever be a short supply and high demand for those, but affordable housing no!

  • Last* and there* not their (typing to fast)

  • Adoile: Yeah, if you are willing to go out far, you can get things REALLY cheap. But even inside the loop you can find things pretty affordable if you’re willing to go a few miles into the ‘wrong side of the tracks’.