- Overall Houston Apartment Rents Fell 0.7% Year-Over-Year in 2016, According to MPF Research [HBJ]
- Why Developers Aren’t Building Affordable Apartments in Houston [HBJ]
- 13 Restaurants and Bars Opening in 8-Block Stretch Near Discovery Green Ahead of the Super Bowl [Houston Chronicle]
- Longtime Galleria-Area Restaurant Arcodoro to Renovate, Rename Itself Arcodoro by Efisio [HBJ]
- Dallas-Based Franchisee Planning To Open 8 More Dunkin’ Donuts in Houston [abc13; previously on Swamplot]
- Greater Houston Partnership Predicts Healthcare Growth, Energy and Construction Job Losses in 2017 [Houston Public Media]
- New Yale Street Bridge in the Heights To Open 10 Months Ahead of Schedule in February [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- White Oak Bayou Trail Closes Gap in Bike Trail Network [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- Inside the Buffalo Bayou Cistern’s Digital ‘Rain’ Exhibit [It’s Not Hou It’s Me; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of “Rain” by  Madgalena Fernández at the Cistern: Ruben S. via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
RE: Lack of affordable apartments
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tl;dr: there’s no money in it
@ brian
Re: lack of affordable apartments
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More specifically, the margins are much higher with class A.
Re: affordable apartments…
You don’t need to build (new) “affordable” apartments to get apartments that are affordable. Even if EVERY new apartment development is built for the top of the market, the net result of adding new units is to make the entire market for apartments more affordable than they would have been without building anything new.
Without all these new Class A buildings, those prospective tenants would be bidding up the prices of older, crappier properties, pricing lower-income tenants out. (See San Francisco for an example of this dynamic in action.)
Angostura’s talking about the housing filtering model, which is as empirically proven as you can get in economics. It works in both directions, too: Build lots of Class A housing, and the older housing stock “filters” downward by either reducing its price to attract tenants, or at least not increasing rents and therefore becoming affordable over time. Don’t build enough Class A housing, and the older housing stock “filters” upward as multiple bidders that would’ve bought the new Class A housing instead snap up the older stock and fix it up.
But with multifamily, credit/background check requirements can be a barrier to people accessing the class A stock even if they can afford it with all the incentives. Then, prices for the class B stock hold fast as there is little new construction and not that many people can make the jump up to class A. The average price for rent in Houston should have dropped like a stone with all the new multifamily coming on line and the lack of demand due to the oil glut. But average rents have show pretty decent resilience.
While this may be true and all, does anyone really believe that an oversupply of class A apartments in the in the central and western sides of town has a direct correlation, if any, to rents on the east or south side of town?
I think the nuance of when they say “Affordable Housing”, they really mean “New units in desireable locations well below market value at someone else’s expense”.
@ Angostura: There is actually a planners’ current lingo term for what you’re talking about: NOAH, “Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing.”
that dark dungy cistern has got to go……. affordable housing is what you can afford… period
then again what you consume is what you can afford and i dont see too many peole walking to the grocery store to buy beans, bread and milk with food stamps….. just like the guy that parks in the handicap spot and walks into the grocery store. tag affordable onto anything and its nothing more than a lure for debate when all it comes down to is the basic principle of affordable…. can i afford this? no? then find a way to do it….. that’s called kitchen table economics….. not a theory
Re: Yale Street Bridge Reopening 10 Months Early
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Big “attaboy” to TXDOT and the contractor for getting this done! I don’t travel much near the despicable Yale Street Wal-mart but it is good to know that the local populace’s suffering will be eased.
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As an aside, put this work crew on the Gulf Freeway work next and let them do their magic there. Ha ha!
I wouldn’t consider it much to brag about that the bridge was completed “10 months early” considering the completely ridiculous timeframe that was given for it to begin with. More like the bridge was completed about as fast as it probably should have been anyway.
Like MEH says, this is probably the actual timeframe for the bridge replacement. Now considering that TXDot has almost completed replacing the Dallas Street bridge over I-45 in 4 weekends ( 8 days), including demolition, I think the Yale Street bridge could have been replaced in less than 5 months, but that’s just me.