- No Bull
- Posts
- The Texas Affordable Housing Shortage
The National Low Income Housing Coalition collects state-level affordable housing data. Using their data, you can visualize the affordable housing available per 100 houses. Texas is one of the worst in the country, with only 29 affordable housing projects per 100 extremely low-income households. We have to recognize that there just isn't enough affordable housing in the state and continue to push for policy change at the local and state level that can make meaningful pushes for a more affordable housing base.
While Texas, and Houston, are heralded as YIMBY havens, there is still a ton of work to be done, as shown by the National Low Income Housing Coalition data. If housing is taking up significant chunks of your income, you are not able to spend in other areas such as food, social outings, hobbies, etc. This just leaves us with a social problem even larger than the lack of housing. While there are some states worse off than Texas, and many of the larger population states have this same issue, that doesn’t mean that we cannot tackle it. According to the NLIHC, 74% of renters in Texas are severely cost burdened. This means that a big chunk of their monthly income goes to rent instead of other things in the economy. Together, we can push for affordable housing changes at the local level and begin to provide affordable housing for those who most need it.
I've talked about the upcoming race for mayor a few times already, but this race could be very important for the future of housing, affordable and not, in Houston. Under the Turner administration, we have had a lot of problems with corruption and generally bad decisions about how to tackle our housing crisis. In the upcoming election, it will be very important to find out which campaign takes the housing crisis seriously and who wants to genuinely make change happen. It’s possible to solve our housing crisis in the city of Houston and, beyond that, in the state of Texas. We just need to be sure to find out which campaign that is. In the future, I hope to be able to connect with some of these campaigns on my own, but for now, I am doing research during my off time with the blog, trying to get to the bottom of each candidate's policy platform and understand what they think they can do for the city's housing.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition gives us extremely valuable information about how much affordable housing is available is in each state. When you dissect the data, you can see how many low-cost homes are available for every 100 extremely low-income total households. With only 29 affordable housing projects for every 100 very low-income households, Texas is one of the worst states in the country when it comes to giving low-income people a place to live. We have to come to terms with the fact that there is an extreme gap between affordable housing demand and affordable housing supply in Texas.
No Bull is the only media outlet that aims for Houstonians in every part of town to live in cozy, secure, and charming communities. As such, No Bull is supported solely by readers like you and corporate sponsorships. If you would like to contribute to urbanism advocacy and coverage in Houston, you can donate here. I’ll be back on Friday with more about our great city.
Elsewhere on the internet
Join the conversation