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Mayor Turner We Need More Housing, Not Less

The Tanglewood debacle

Author

Brendan O'Hare
February 10, 2023

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Mikhail Abramkin

As I wrote about on Monday, I am an advocate for building more communities, and more housing for Houstonians. This includes affordable housing, which is generally housing that comes in at below-market rates with help from government incentives such as tax breaks. Housing prices in Houston are much too high, and this is hurting our city in many ways, economically, financially, and socially. So, when I heard that Mayor Turner had decided to end an affordable housing project in the wealthy neighborhood of Tanglewood, I was furious. Don’t get me wrong, Mayor Turner is right about the Section 303.042(f) tax break that allows for “public housing” tax breaks to be manipulated in order to unfairly reward developers. Mayor Turner, however, is missing the forest for the trees in this case. We need more housing, period. The laws are what they are, as written, but should be addressed by the Texas legislature this session. Housing supply brings down prices no matter what, and Mayor Turner should not put the priorities of rich residents above those of current and future Houstonians looking for a home.

As a University of Texas Law School report has found, the Section 303.042(f) tax break intended to incentivize public housing development is deeply flawed. This government incentive has a few requirements. The developers must work with a public entity in partnership. They also require that the affordable housing rent be at or below 80% of the market rate. If they meet these requirements, the developers are eligible for a 100% property tax exemption. Under the law passed in 2015, cities that attempted to set up affordable housing programs lost a ton of money on property tax exemptions. The University of Texas report looks at one development in San Antonio in particular that provided millions in property tax breaks for a relatively small number of units. During the last Texas legislative session, a few bills were brought forth by Houston area representatives to help address the problems with 303.042(f). Specifically, these bills were trying to address the targeting of affordable housing and the prices at which they were set. From what I can tell, those bills did not make it through the legislature. Fortunately, our Texas Legislature, where this amendment originated, is currently in session. There are multiple bills currently making their way through the Texas House and the Texas Senate looking to help address this issue. House Bill 2071 and House Bill 1556 are both seeking to address the various issues with 303.042(f). This is a state-wide issue that should be dealt with in the chamber where it originated, and that will hopefully be done this session.

UT Austin Law School Report

Even if a person has a different idea of what "affordable" means, if there are more housing developments, prices will always go down because of the increase in supply. This is pretty much Econ 101, which they teach you in your junior year of high school. Many researchers, including a few from the Federal Reserve, have been in unanimous agreement over the fact that more housing supply pushes prices down. The only real disagreement in the literature is over exactly how much prices come down with increased supply. If that's the case, shouldn't we try to build more housing, no matter if the mayor thinks it's "affordable" or not? The goal is to get more people into homes, and building more houses in Tanglewood will do that, loophole or not.

A small number of very wealthy Tanglewood residents are very vocal about their opposition to the Tanglewood affordable housing project. The Houston Chronicle report on this mentioned a Tanglewood resident who “argued that putting any low-income households in such a high-income area was a disservice to such families.” In fact, the opposite of this resident’s view is true. Adding affordable housing to wealthier neighborhoods (sometimes referred to as “inclusionary zoning”) makes them more diverse and improves the quality of education, while reducing economic segregation. Housing is housing, whether or not the area is “high income” or “low income.” It’s a human necessity and a basic human right, and anybody who argues against that should not be taken seriously, either by the public or by Mayor Turner.

It's clear that Mayor Turner cares more about the positions of wealthy Tanglewood residents than about people who need a place to live. Like I said, housing is a human necessity, and a human right. We all need a roof over our heads, especially here in Houston. It baffles me that the city cannot look past Tanglewood's inhabitants' "housing for me, not for thee" attitude. Hopefully Turner and his team can take a second look at this decision while our state representatives seek to alter the targeting of the program.

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