Bellaire - Meyerland - West University Edition | July 2022

CONTINUED FROM 1 Inventory overview

generally divided into two overarching categories. The rst category includes subsidized housing, or housing that is supported by public entities. This type of housing makes up about 15% of aordable units in Harris County, or 55,000, according to Kinder. The second category is known as naturally occurring aordable hous- ing—or NOAH—and refers to housing that is not subsidized, is privately owned and falls below a certain rent threshold. The local chapter of the community development support organization, LISC Houston, denes NOAH as housing where rents are $999 maximum for a one-bedroom unit or $1,199 for a two-bedroom unit. The vast majority of aordable housing in Harris County falls into this category at roughly 315,000 units. Houston is far more reliant on NOAH than almost every other large U.S. city, Fulton said. Although that trend has reversed in more recent years, its eects can still be felt in that the city’s supply is more vulnerable to market trends, he said. With the recent increases in land values, rent prices have followed. For NOAH, no guardrails are in place to stop landlords from raising rents as high as the market will allow or from selling their properties to another developer that wants to tear it down and replace it with something more protable, Ful- ton said. “Although this is a problem all over the country, it is especially in Houston because we are unusually dependent on these older, privately owned, low- priced apartments,” Fulton said. Subsidized housing in Houston is at risk too, Fulton said. Of the 55,000 subsidized units in Harris County, 16% of them will have their housing assistance expire by 2030 and 42% by 2040, at which point landlords of those units can decide to either renew their agreements or raise rents, according to Kinder research. The Houston-based nonprot New Hope Housing has been working for 28 years to provide aordable hous- ing with eight of their nine properties specically built to support homeless individuals and those at risk of home- lessness, CEO Joy Horak-Brown said. The group has ambitions to build three new projects per year, including a proj- ect in Sharpstown called Savoy, set to open in 2023 with 120 units for working families and seniors. Openings at existing properties do

Project status:

Subsidized aordable housing in southwest Houston can be found around Gulfton, Bellfort and the Third Ward. This list is not comprehensive.

Under construction

Proposed

Built

TC Law Herrington Senior Living

PH Ewing apartments

Project type:

TC South Rice Apartments

PH Public housing: Aordable housing is provided by public housing agencies. Many projects are set aside for seniors, veterans or people with disabilities. MI Mixed-income: Housing is provided at dierent levels of aordability, including market rate, low-income and middle-income. TC Tax credit: An indirect federal subsidy is provided to private developers and investors to construct and rehabilitate housing where a certain share of units must stay aordable for 15 or 30 years.

BISSONNET ST.

MI Connect South

TC Savoy

TC Gala at McGregor

TC Regency Loft apartments

TC St. Cloud

BELLAIRE BLVD.

TC The Grove at Renwick

TC Parks at Yellowstone

610

BEECHNUT ST.

TC Parkside Point

MI Unnamed Stella Link project

TC Bellfort Park Apartments

288

B E L L F O R T

TC Cypress Gardens

SOURCES: CITY OF HOUSTON, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY AFFAIRS, NEW HOPE HOUSINGCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER

MAP NOT TO SCALE N

other cities,” Lawler said. “That’s not the case and has not been the case for a long time.” Lawler’s perspective is one echoed by housing experts who have been studying the city for the past decade, a time during which apartment rents and rising property values have been putting a strain on a wide range of res- idents. With median home sales prices in Harris County jumping by 15.4% between 2020 and 2021, one market area in particular is facing greater chal- lenges than ever, experts said: aord- able housing. In the 2022 State of Housing in Hous- ton and Harris County report, released June 22, researchers with Rice Uni- versity’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research said the convergence of many factors—the city’s lack of zoning, rising costs of construction materials and the general lack of units that are restricted from raising rents—has put a strain on the county’s already-dwindling aord- able housing stock, which researchers said totals about 370,000 units. Kinder Institute Director Bill Fulton said there are several groups in Hous- ton like Avenue CDC that are doing good work to tackle the issue. How- ever, what needs to happen next, he said, is more organizing. “I think Houston probably has the money because Houston has strong philanthropies, but Houston has not organized around this issue in the past, and the talent pool in Houston is much

smaller than it is anywhere else,” Ful- ton said. Fighting against the grain Several local projects that are under construction or have been recently completed have beneted from funding supplied through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Hurricane Harvey Community Development Block Grant

Disaster Recovery program. The 115-unit South Rice Apartments on South Rice Avenue made use of $12.4 million in grants and opened May 16. The project features units for 42 households at or below 60% of the area median income, while another 35 units are for 50% AMI households and nine units are for 30% AMI households. Aordable housing can refer to both single-family and multifamily and is

Analyzing the problem

Houston’s challenges with aordable housing can be tied to a number of factors, including rising rents and a larger share of units that are more at risk of becoming unaordable.

Problem No. 1: Rising costs

20,000

The city lost about multifamily units with less than $800 monthly rent between 2018 and 2019.

12.9%

Amount average rent increased from May 2021 to May 2022 in Houston ($1,092 to $1,233)

Problem No. 2: Aordable housing stock

85%

of aordable housing in Harris County falls under the denition of naturally occurring aordable housing at roughly 315,000 units.

Housing stock

1 BED $999 maximum rent

2 BEDS $1,199 maximum rent

3 BEDS $1,399 maximum rent

15%

is federally subsidized housing:

Low-income housing tax credit programs: 36,352 units*

Section 8: 10,343 units*

Federal housing: 10,365 units*

Other: 8,113 units*

SOURCES: APARTMENTDATA.COM, KINDER INSTITUTE FOR URBAN RESEARCH, LISC HOUSTONCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER

*SOME UNITS FALL INTO MULTIPLE CATEGORIES.

COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER • COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM