Why the Poor Stay Poor in America - Urban Sprawl With Little Regulation

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“…what looks like sprawl is healthier for the middle class and conforms to what most families want anyway.”

Joel Kotkin, CEO of a Houston-based think tank called “Urban Reform Institute”. The New York Times, Sept. 4, 2017, one week after Hurricane Harvey struck Houston

Houston isn’t the only city in the U.S. with urban sprawl, but it is known in some circles as a “model” city for rapid, supposedly inexpensive housing growth unencumbered by pesky zoning laws or environmental concerns. Like Mr. Kotkin stated above, many believe it is the housing of the future: thousands of individual, inexpensively constructed suburban homes, each with a two car garage and a cramped but private backyard, surrounding a major city or other urban area accessible only by car. Although suburban living has been popular since at least the 1950’s, the city of Houston takes this model to an extreme.

If you don’t think the picture above of supposedly “healthy” housing is depressing enough, there’s a much darker side to this “expansion at all costs” phenomenon, and that is its failure to consider the true cost of building homes and businesses on what is essentially a coastal floodplain, which includes marshland, swampland and prairie. These types of lands bordering bayous, gulf and ocean waters are the last place humans should be choosing for construction, particularly without extensive environmental safeguards in place.

And Houston, in particular, has lauded its decisions to toss aside zoning restrictions regarding expansion that most cities use, and to pave over way too many wetlands, which holdback floodwaters and considerably reduce pollution, in its rush to grow. These choices added up to millions of dollars in recovery and rebuilding after the City’s frequent flooding over the last century or so, and billions of dollars more after Hurricane Harvey struck in August of 2017. These are the basic statistics five years after Harvey, Houston’s most catastrophic flooding event:

More than 60 people died in the storm. More than 300,000 structures were flooded. More than $120 billion in damage was caused.

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By all accounts, Houston is not just one of the largest American cities, but one of the coolest: modern and diverse (it boasts 145 languages spoken within its borders), a grand performing arts center and, of course, world class sports teams. The City can certainly choose to not have restrictive zoning laws or implement environmental safety measures as it continues its expansion, but at what cost?

The word “cost” is important in this context because the urban planners who favor the Houston model tout the affordability of its homes, which are less expensive than the average price of homes across the country — according to Forbes, the average home price in the U.S. in September of this year was $384,800, and in Houston as of this October, the average home price was $336,940 according to Rocket Mortgage. But what is the true cost of a home built in a floodplain?

According to those advocating for a different model of urban growth, like higher density neighborhoods centered around public transportation, Peter Calthorpe, architect and urban designer and planner who promotes sustainable building practices said the following about Houston’s model:

Houston’s middle-class affordability, he argues, has been underwritten by the construction labor of undocumented workers and by insurance programs that subsidize building on cheap flood-prone land. And the housing is less affordable when you factor in the transportation costs of getting to and from those homes in a far-flung metro.

And Shelley Puticha, head of the “Urban Solutions Team” of the Natural Resources Defense Council believes that:

“The potential for flooding and damage to property was never considered in the calculus of ‘affordability,’ … These homes are no longer affordable.”

Of course, there’s a middle ground, too — much less destruction of natural wetlands and prairie (Houston is now touting its achingly slow construction of a few human-made wetlands to replace the hundreds that developers paved over), much less construction in areas already prone to flooding and tighter boundaries to construction adjacent to agricultural and forested areas (see Oregon’s “Urban Growth Boundary”).

Finally, there’s the human cost in time forever lost and years of anguish after losing one’s home. What’s it worth for a person to wait five years to get help to rebuild her home after a natural disaster like this woman did? A Houston non-profit who helped this resident rebuild after Hurricane Harvey, along with Habitat for Humanity, said:

Let’s hear your thoughts about Houston and other cities taking an “urban expansion all costs” approach. Let ‘er rip in the Comments Section below.

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