INTRODUCTION
Since the 2015 publication of the
initial white paper titled “Maintaining Houston’s Affordability for Working
Class Families”, which took a comprehensive look at the state of the
housing market of one of the most affordable of America’s largest cities. Prior
to the 2008 financial crisis, Houston was for a long time regarded as a hidden
gem for housing stock and affordability and the region was recognized consistently
in national and international rankings of best places to live. In contrast to
the economic malaise that hung above most of the United States, the improvement
in horizontal drilling/fracking technology in the country led to a major boom
in the oil and gas sector, a significant driver of Houston’s economy.
The rapid recovery of Houston’s economy post financial crisis in 2010-2015 led to a steep climb in the local real estate market as thousands of families fled California, New York and other economically challenged regions for the greener hydrocarbon-fueled pastures of Texas. Neighborhoods in Houston and other major cities in Texas characterized by long-term owner residents gave way to new buyers offering above list price for homes, and newer ever more grand multifamily apartments were being constructed within Houston’s urban core, middle region, and suburban outskirts to meet the growing demand. This unabating demand from new residents led to a real estate building spike, which drove up land and rent prices seemed to only attract more new entrants. Then we experienced the crude oil crash of 2015, which unwittingly demonstrated just how resilient and diversified Houston’s economy had become.
Coinciding with these shifts in Houston’s economic fate, were changes in lifestyle and generational tapestry of Houston’s residents, many of whom increasingly became interested in living in urban environments characterized by denser more walkable neighborhoods within close proximity to retail and other urban amenities. Around the same time, Houston initiated the Downtown Living Initiative that provided a $15,000 per housing unit incentive for construction of multifamily housing in the eastern half of Downtown Houston, with the result being a boom in housing construction in the area stretching from Buffalo Bayou to Highway 45 between Main Street and Interstate 69. Additionally, the city made a determined commitment to invest in its pedestrian infrastructure embarked on the ambitious Bayou Greenways project, which led to construction of the longest intra-city bike network system in America, a 190-mile trail of connections along the city’s system of ubiquitous bayous.
The market response to the shifts in desires of urban dwellers, led to a frenzy of redevelopment and new development activity and rising rent rates within the urban core that resulted in the displacement of long-term residents of communities dispersed throughout the urban core and within proximity of Houston’s major employment centers. This displacement forced residents to seek housing in far-flung areas of the region, increasing the pressure on housing rents in suburban communities at or around the boundaries of the city limits.
In our original paper, we cited
important statistics about population, households, income, and real estate
market data for Houston, which represented the conditions as they existed in
2015 (the “base year). For purposes of this update to the white paper, you will
see terms such as ‘base year’, ‘original paper’, ‘initial white paper’, and
2015, where the reference being made is to data captured in the initial white
paper the author penned in 2015. This paper updates those statistics for 2022
and examines the governmental actions needed to create a workable solution to
the affordable housing market in Houston.
HOUSEHOLDS, INCOME, AND HOUSING NUMBERS
The 2020 census recorded Houston’s population at 2.304 million residents, representing a 4.75% increase from 2015, though lower than what was projected to be a 1.36% annual growth rate that would have resulted in a 6.33% increase in the population. A demographic phenomenon that took hold since 2015 has been a reduction in the average household size decreasing from 2.70 persons to 2.61 persons per household. During the same period the percentage of owner-occupied dwellings decreased from 45% to 42.9%, continuing a trend of a decline in homeownership rates for Houstonians.1 The percentage of homeownership not only stands out for being low when compared to other major American cities, it is abysmal in the context of a nation that prides itself on the idea of the ‘American Dream’ with a homeownership rate of 65.5% across the United States.2
Our original white paper recorded the US Census estimated the 2015 area median income for the Houston area at $48,258, a number which as of 2020 has risen to $53,600, representing an approximate 11% increase in income.1 In its June 2022 report, the Houston Association of Realtors’ monthly housing report indicated that the median home sold in the Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was priced at $354,440, which when compared to the base year figure of $223,000 in August 2015 represented a 59.42% increase. The August 2022 median home value retreated to $341,950 in the aftermath of aggressive repeated rate hikes by the Federal Reserve Bank. That number still represents a 10.8 percent increase from the same month in 2021.3 It is also worth noting that the average price of a single-family home in the Houston area is now reportedly at a historic high of $411,671. 3 The combination of those two factors greatly impacts the affordability index for Houston.
A quick analysis of the data reveals a staggering divergence from the base year to 2022 in the growth trends of income as compared to housing values, a fact underpins what has become a tipping point crisis for the Houston housing market. What you we observe is the growth in housing values outpacing the growth in incomes by a factor of five, which is simply unsustainable in the long run for a region that has long attracted people and industry based on its reputation as a place with a highly attractive affordable cost of living.
The conventional measure of housing affordability has historically stipulated that households should spend no more than 30% of their income on their total housing expenses. A study conducted by Rice University’s Shell Center for Sustainability in 2013 indicated that in five of Houston’s 11 city council districts, 31% of households spent in excess of 30% of their income on housing.4 The study further ranked Houston 26th on the list of top 50 U.S. cities for affordability when transportation costs were factored in, a fact best appreciated by suburban residents most familiar with Houston’s traffic. In a separate report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, 45.5% of rental households in the Houston MSA spent more than 30% of their income on housing.5
The rental market in Houston has fared considerably better when compared to the homeownership market, though finding affordable rental housing opportunities is increasingly out of reach for even more families. According to reporting on Houston-based Apartment Data Services, the average rent for all apartment types in Houston had risen to $1,188 per month as of 2021, with Class A apartments averaging $1,675 per month, and the forecast for a 5% rental rate growth in 2022 for the Greater Houston area.6 In its report of comprehensive tracking of apartment rental information the Apartment List revealed that the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment within the Houston MSA is now $1,092 per month and $1,301 per month for the average two-bedroom.7
In its 2022 State of Housing Report Rice University’s Kinder Institute illustrates how the median home value within the city of Houston and Harris County have nearly doubled over the last decade, with the sharpest increases occurring in the intervals between 2012-2014 and more profoundly between 2020-2022.8 The same report reveals that the median lease price per square foot of single-family homes rented within Houston and Harris County has grown a more modest 9% and 22% respectively from 2015 to 2022.
When the growth in median income from the base year to the current year is compared with the increase in median home sold, a picture emerges of a stark divergence in the average family’s ability to purchase a home within the Houston market. Based on the current rate for a 30-year mortgage and depending on how much they have for a down payment, the average family looking to purchase a median priced home would need an income above $130,000 to qualify for a mortgage. For an individual earning the median income, the maximum mortgage their income will allow them to afford is a home at or below $125,000, a home that would be a rare find anywhere in the market given the current housing situation.
When we consider the decline in homeownership rates the dynamics within the rental housing market holds greater significance as a greater percent of the population and a larger total number of households are now reliant on the rental market for housing. As the cost of homeownership has exploded over the last several years, a less acute spike has occurred in the rental market though the cost of renting a home has grown continually in every housing sector over that time span. The outlook for homeownership has been even more bleak for millennials and Gen Zers who continue to bear the brunt of the inequities in the housing market with less than 25% of that population segment being homeowners according to metrics cited by various national organizations.
Many within that age group are trapped in between the stagnation of slow growing incomes and the rapidly increasing housing costs, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, causing many to revert to moving back home with parents, while others sought out alternative arrangements such as roommates’ co-occupancy or short-term guests as a means of relieving the housing costs burden. The student loan relief executive order issued by the current administration, when enacted is expected to relieve some of the burden faced by those with student debt, however, the student loan relief affects only a fraction of that populace and will not go far enough to provide housing relief for many who owe a greater amount in student loans than the act covers.
It is worth noting that our original
paper cited that many within that age segment, who were otherwise able to
purchase a home, were opting to rent to be closer to work or the inner city, as
was confirmed by a national survey conducted in 2015 where majority of
millennials planned to put off buying a home till 2018 and beyond. Now the
additional pressures have made homeownership almost impossible.
POVERTY NUMBERS
The results of the 2020 US Census revealed that the City of Houston had an overall poverty rate of 19.6%, which is just below the average for the State of Texas and represents approximately 452,368 persons or 173,321 households. At a broader scale, the concentration of poverty in particular communities continued throughout the United States over the last several years. While poverty prior to the 2008 recession was concentrated in distressed neighborhoods within the urban core of most cities and in rural areas, many of these hotspots have now expanded to suburban and other areas a trend that has grown in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.9
According to a 2017 report by the
Brookings Institute poverty which had historically been a problem associated
with large urban centers and rural communities, grew at pace double of that
seen in smaller metropolitan areas, with suburbs in the country’s largest
metropolitan areas experienced the number of residents living below the poverty
line grow by 57 percent from 2000 to 2015.10 A 2014 analysis of the
American Communities Survey (2008-2012) affirmed the impact concentration of
families living in poverty had in instigating challenges similar to those faced
by disadvantaged neighborhoods – namely escalating crime rates, failing
schools, poorer health outcomes, and fewer employment opportunities — making it
harder for families to break the cycle of poverty.11 The report
further cited that the number of distressed neighborhoods, census tracts where
poverty rates exceed 40 percent, rose by 75% during the early 2000’s, and nearly
every major metropolitan area witnessed the growth of suburban poverty during
the same time period.
Figure 1.
HOUSTON’S HOUSING SITUATION
In 2015, Houston was sliding towards an era, where the average family could no longer enjoy the abundant availability of moderately priced housing for rent or homeownership. The reality at the time, though concerning, was still largely within the grasp of policymakers to redress and implement a decisive plan of action to stem the tide of what was to come. A series of successive natural disaster events, the Memorial Day flood of 2015, the ‘Tax Day’ flood of 2016, and Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, introduced a highly destabilized housing environment with internally displaced residents needing to fend for themselves, while externally displaced persons (a la Louisiana and other parts of Texas) sought refuge within the existing housing in the Houston region.
Despite significant efforts by private sector non-profit and for-profit developers, Houston has not been able to build enough housing units to replace the number of affordable units (statutory and “naturally occurring”) that were lost to this string of disasters. While grappling with a housing market facing significant upward pricing pressure, emergence of the COVID-19 public health crisis led to even further disruptions within the housing market and construction industries, then Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 introduced the term “fix the grid” into our Texan lexicon as families were confronted with a different type of disaster than previously encountered.
In the aftermath of the aforementioned period capped off by the COVID-19 endemic, the Houston MSA experienced an increase in the ‘Relative Property Value’ both within the Urban and Suburban submarkets, that applied additional pressure on both market segments, unlike in other comparable major MSA’s that witnessed a divergence with a much more significant impact on property values in suburban as compared to urban areas.12 This bifurcated effect has rendered futile any current efforts by families to flee to the outlying areas and surrounding counties of Houston in search of lower cost housing. That is an issue further complicated by the rise in transportation costs reflected in the cost of automobiles, vehicle maintenance, and gasoline prices.
The difficult reality of the challenges surrounding around affordable housing have only accelerated since the 2015 base year and created a further chasm between what working families need –- a balanced housing market with an adequate number of affordable options for renters and homeowners –- and what the market offers. Data from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs indicated that in 2015, 46,261 affordable housing units available in the Houston from the state’s Housing Tax Credit programs.13 The most recent report from July 2022 revealed that the total number of affordable housing units available in Houston grew to 56,438 units, representing a 22% increase or a total increase of 10,177 units the equivalent of a 1,454 increase in the number of units delivered annually.
The Houston Housing Authority publicly reports that the agency currently owns 5,700 housing units in 25 housing developments and administers a Housing Choice Voucher program that serves over 17,000 families for a combined total of approximately 23,000 housing units serving about 60,000 low-income Houstonians and serves an additional 40,000 individuals via its Public Facilities Corporation’s involvement in multifamily developments. Combining data from both agencies, we can approximate that affordable/rent-restricted housing units for Houston’s low to moderate income families, earning between $16,000 and $57,000 or 30% to 80% of Area Median Income (AMI), totals approximately 80,000 housing units. It is important to note that with a decline in the average number of persons per household (-3.3%), the number of households needing affordable housing has also increased by the corresponding factor to the decrease in household size.
The analysis of the household and population data from the 2020 American Communities Survey indicates that there are approximately 833,000 households within the city of Houston or a total of 1,437,000 within Harris County. The Harris County ‘My Home Is Here’ report indicated that the 2020 median household income for Houston and Harris County were approximately $61,900 and $73,000 respectively.14 The income data coupled with the low level of homeownership in Houston reveals the difficulty of homeownership as a viable option for most of Houston’s families, leaving over 700,000 Houston area households with rental housing as their primary option. Considering other socioeconomic factors such as credit, employment stability, and upward mobility, you find that most of those residents simply are unable to leverage homeownership as a tool to climb up the economic ladder.
The same Harris County report
indicated that there are approximately 315,000 naturally occurring affordable
housing (NOAH) units in Harris County or about 22% of the total households. With
the high number of renters, and such low levels of rent-restricted affordable
units, nearly 400,000 households must rely on market supply for affordable
housing options. Though the market does supply housing for some within that gap, the reality is those options can
often be limited to substandard dwelling units. Further, many of the
neighborhoods characterized by naturally occurring affordable housing in
Houston usually result from housing units built four or more decades ago. The
aging housing supply in these areas are sometimes surrounded by declining
neighborhoods or areas attracting throngs of investors rehabilitating some of
the older housing units to flip for a profit or put back on the market at much
higher rents. All told, over 500,000 households within Harris County were
reported to be spending above the recommended 30% of their income on housing
costs, leaving less for other living expenses including transportation.14
In its ‘The State of 2022 Housing in
Harris County and Houston’ report, the Kinder Institute at Rice University observed
that the Houston region was short 160,000 housing units affordable for
households earning less than $20,000 a year.15 In October 2022, of
the 5,706 homes with a Houston address on the Houston Association of Realtors
website, only 1,660 (29%) were priced below $292,000 (City of Houston’s 2022
affordability threshold for single family), and 302 two-plus bedroom Townhouse/Condominiums
priced at or below $200,000. Most “would be homeowners” nationally cite
affordability challenges tied to soaring home prices and higher mortgage rates
as significant barriers to homeownership.16 When a full accounting
of the facts and statistics is taken into consideration, we are left with the
unmistakable conclusion that homeownership has become unattainable for a
significant majority of Houston’s families who do not already own a home.
RECOMMENDATIONS: A PATHWAY FORWARD
The City of Houston’s embrace of higher density policies has facilitated construction of more dense housing initially within the 610 Loop and now inside the Beltway 8 loop, which contributes significantly to more Houstonians having access to housing units that are comparatively more affordable. More recently, revisions to parking requirements along transit corridors and greater flexibility in allowable housing types and materials have been positive steps in the right direction. Furthermore, the City’s establishment of the Houston Community Land Trust and the reinvigoration of the Houston Land Bank during the current administration have equally been important advancements towards addressing and protecting long-term housing affordability for Houston’s families.
The City’s planning commission, however, has in recent times implemented major revisions to the development code that impacts and stands to counter so many of the gains that have been achieved in terms of policies promoting housing affordability. One example is the revision of the building setback that extends the necessity for a fire-rated exterior wall for structures from within three feet of a property’s boundary threshold to within five feet of the property boundary line. The revisions were ostensibly approved as a means of reducing fire hazards for adjacent property owners. However, the potential dollar value in fire damage it would reduce pales in comparison to the cumulative increase in housing costs that will result from this change alone. To put it succinctly, the average 5,000 square feet single family lot, which spans 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep, has effectively had development curtailed across 400 square feet (both sides from boundary line) or 8% of its coverage area or would force developers have to develop within those areas at a higher cost.
If Houston is to stem the tide of its housing crisis, the urgency of the moment must come into focus, and Houston and Harris County will need to apply every tool at their disposal in hopes of mitigating the imminent housing catastrophe. Small incremental steps are no longer sufficient and relying on federal dollars is wholly unsustainable as those dollars will only flow after another disaster has wreaked havoc on the already anemic supply of affordable units. Policymakers need to go BIG in the development of solutions to improve access to affordable housing, both from a funding and public policy perspective. Houston needs a Comprehensive Housing Plan and a statutorily codified implementation plan to bring the plan to fruition.
In addition to the Comprehensive Housing Plan, new financial priorities must be established to provide significant funding for implementation of the plan. The City and County need to pursue housing bond referenda that will raise no less than a combined $500 million to be committed to the preservation and production of affordable housing over the next ten years. Additionally, significant budgetary resources need to be committed to housing by both entities, particularly given the positive impact that access to safe quality housing has on other social determinants of health and life outcomes. To put it another way, making considerable investments in affordable and mixed-income housing will arguably significantly reduce the resources that will have to be spent on healthcare, incarceration, and social benefits in the long run.
The City of Houston must continue to
pursue revisions to its Development Code to promote the reduction of costs
associated with building new multifamily and single-family housing. To achieve
this action, an advisory board of external stakeholders, including industry
professionals and neighborhood organizations, should be established to provide
periodic recommendations for the planning commission for discussion and action.
Policies to be routinely reviewed include should include parking requirements,
setback regulations, the development ordinance, and streamlining of the
permitting process. Finally, to achieve its long-term aims, the City of Houston
needs to collaborate with key stakeholders including developers, non-profit
organizations, real estate professionals, quasi-public agencies, and neighborhood
organizations, many of whom comprise the recently formed Houston Housing
Collaborative, to generate a workable needs and market driven comprehensive plan
for housing affordability.
In the initial white paper published
in 2015, we outlined specific recommendations for actions the City of Houston
administration needed to take and most of those same recommendations are being restated
below since action on them has not occurred:
(The following italicized segments
restate verbatim recommendations from the initial 2015 white paper)
The City of Houston should take action to implement the
following:
-
Adopt and implement a Comprehensive
Housing Plan.
-
Replicate the $15,000 per door
incentive program used to drive development of residential units in the eastern
half of Downtown during the Parker administration, by offering abatements to developers
whose projects incorporate at least 60% of the units restricted to below market
rents for residents within 30–80% AMI.
-
Leverage existing HOME and CDBG funds
with State 4% Tax Exempt Bonds and 9% Housing Tax Credits to drive development
of affordable housing in target areas.
-
Utilize CIP spending to drive
infrastructural improvements in target areas spelled out in the Comprehensive
Housing Plan, and apply housing dollars from TIRZ’s, and development incentives
such as tax abatements and lower permit fees to accelerate workforce housing
development
-
Implement a standard reimbursement
for builders who tear down structures cited as dangerous buildings by the City
of Houston, provided they construct affordable housing in its place within
three years
-
Establish a policy that stipulates
that in the event the City of Houston funds are expended towards a development
or on City-owned land, there is a requirement that between 10 - 25% of
affordable housing units be included within the project.
-
Incorporate fast-track permitting for
“affordable” housing to facilitate faster delivery of housing units.
-
Fast-track the Planning Department
approval process for affordable housing developers with an established track
record with the City.
Homeownership
The goal of achieving development of affordable homes within the urban core must focus on overcoming the significant barriers of high cost of land, scarcity of assembled large contiguous tracts, lack of qualified buyers, tightened mortgage requirements, higher interest rates, and the unfavorable risk/reward ratio that drives most builders to respond to the needs of the higher end of the market. The City of Houston needs to rebuild and rebrand its homeownership incentive program to make it more robust, flexible, and accommodating to the development of affordable single-family homes within the urban core. Some of the proposed goals for City’s single-family program should include:
-
Achieve a 40% annual conversion rate of Houston
Land Bank owned lots into development of single-family dwelling units from 2023 – 2025.
-
Facilitate construction of 10,000
single family homes for working class families between 2023 – 2028.
-
Partner with developers and offer
reimbursements for infrastructural improvements (sidewalks, lighting, pocket
parks) in communities needing revitalization.
Rental Housing
Using its internal data, the City of
Houston should identify target goals for affordable rental housing units to be
developed over the next ten years within its boundaries. Furthermore, the
City should establish targets for development of housing in certain
opportunistic areas with good schools that are within proximity of major
employment centers including: Downtown, Texas Medical Center, NRG
Stadium, Westwood/Sharpstown, Energy Corridor, and NASA/Clear Lake.
(Galleria, Greenway Plaza, and City Center/Town & Country have been deleted
as those areas have largely become closed off to affordable rental and
homeownership opportunities)
CONCLUSION
The City of Houston needs to commission a Comprehensive Housing Market Analysis, which would measure income and households against housing options available that fit within the 30 percent income test. This study would help the city better understand the shortages in affordable housing, identify areas of greatest need, and offer a defined basis on which to prioritize affordable housing development. The study should quantify the percent of current dwelling units that are substandard housing, and those that need to be rebuilt or rehabilitated to extend their useful life. Quantitative data from this study should be evaluated against the aforementioned recommendations to ascertain whether the suggested actions go far enough in helping the City meet its long-term affordable housing needs.
Given the Comprehensive Study data available, the City’s Housing and Community Development Department can work with the Planning Department and community stakeholders to apply necessary revisions to the goal of completing affordable housing units within the five-year span from 2023 to 2028. The data can also help establish a more comprehensive decade-long forecast. This longitudinal forecast can then be incorporated into a prioritization chart, where housing development numbers are targeted by geographic area, type (family or elderly), and category (rental or owner occupied). Lastly, the action plan should be integrated within the City’s Neighborhoods and Public Works & Engineering Departments, so that they can be part of the process of improving target neighborhoods, and prioritizing capital improvement spending.
A few other factors that will affect
the trajectory of the Houston region over the next decade include the so-called
doughnut hole effect, where the suburban areas within Harris County continue to
outpace the rate of growth within the City, a trend further exacerbated by the
shifts in the housing preferences of millennials.17 The continued
undersupply of the Houston housing market will also continue to render
consequential effects as the region’s population growth continues to outpace
the growth in its housing stock.18 Houston’s diversity, geography,
and dynamic economy will for the foreseeable future continue to foster vibrancy
of the region, but the housing challenges it faces could become intransigent
over time leading it on an intractable path to unaffordability. It is safe to
assume that housing unaffordability will remain a malignant problem in Houston for
the foreseeable future absent an aggressive housing action plan backed by
government policy.
* *
*
Laolu Davies-Yemitan is principal of Five Woods Realty, a
real estate development firm focused on developing affordable multifamily and
urban in-fill residential development. (Contact: Linkedin.com/in/laolu).
REFERENCES
1. US Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/houstoncitytexas
2. FRED Economic Data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
3. HAR (September 2022): https://www.harconnect.com/houston-housing-remains-robust-in-august-as-the-market-cooldown-continues/
4. Rice University Shell Center for Sustainability (2013) - http://news.rice.edu/2013/09/23/affordable-housing-and-flooding-among-sustainability-issues-to-address-in-houston-2/; https://shellcenter.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/Shell_Center/Indicators/HSISocial2013sml.pdf
5. Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies - http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/jchs-sonhr-2015-ch5.pdf
6. Houston-area apartment affordability has ‘left the building,’ apartment data analyst says, Houston Business Journal (2022) - https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2022/02/07/houston-apartment-state-of-the-industry-2022.html
7. Apartment List (2022) - https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/category/data-rent-estimates
8. The 2022 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston (2022) - https://kinder.rice.edu/research/2022-state-housing-harris-county-and-houston
9. American Poverty is moving from the cities to the Suburbs, The Economist (2019) – https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/09/26/american-poverty-is-moving-from-the-cities-to-the-suburbs
10. The changing geography of US Poverty, Brookings (2017) - https://www.brookings.edu/testimonies/the-changing-geography-of-us-poverty/
11. The Growth and Spread of Concentrated Poverty, 2000 to 2008-2012 (2014) - http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2014/concentrated-poverty#/M10420
12. Did the Pandemic advance new suburbanization? https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/05/23/did-the-pandemic-advance-new-suburbanization/
13. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs - http://www.tdhca.state.tx.us/multifamily/housing-tax-credits-9pct/index.htm
14. My Home Is Here: Harris County’s Housing Needs Assessment and 10-Year Strategy (2021) - https://www.myhomeishere.org/Portals/myhomeishere/Documents/Resources/-48034192993MHIH_Final_Report_10292021_compressed.pdf
15. The 2022 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston (2022) - https://kinder.rice.edu/research/2022-state-housing-harris-county-and-houston
16. Nearly two-thirds of Non-Homeowners Polled say Affordability woes Block Homeownership, BankRate.com (March 30, 2022) - https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/homeownership-remains-centerpiece-of-american-dream/
17. How Covid-19 migration, housing trends will remake the suburbs, Houston Business Journal (2022) - https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2022/08/31/population-housing-migration-suburbs-covid-19.html?utm_source=st&utm_medium=en&utm_campaign=ae&utm_content=HO&j=28908576&senddate=2022-08-31
18. Houston’s housing market is undersupplied and overpriced, studies find, Houston Business Journal (2022) - https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2022/08/29/housing-supply-houston-population-stessa.html?utm_source=st&utm_medium=en&utm_campaign=ae&utm_content=HO&j=28908576&senddate=2022-08-31
