Addressing the Affordable Housing Crisis in Harris County, Texas

The housing affordability crisis is massive in scale and  Harris County is facing major challenges due to the rising median housing sales price, rising rents, and a short-supply of rental units, without a related increase in household incomes. Currently, these factors are compounded by rising mortgage rates that erode mortgage affordability, with Fannie Mae forecasting that principal & interest payments will change over 67% between 2020 & 2023. The loss of units during  Hurricane Harvey severely amplified the crisis.

The Harris County Community Services Department My Home is Here (MHIH) Housing Needs Assessment and 10-Year Strategy was presented to County Commissioners Court in November 2021. The strategy is funded through  Community Development Block Grant-DR planning funds, supported by a consultant team led by the Rice University - Kinder Institute for Urban Research.  MHIH culminates a 2-year effort of extensive socioeconomic, housing market analysis, opportunity and cluster analysis,  and community engagement involving the formation of a 21-member County led Housing Policy Advisory Committee,   focus groups with policy makers, developers & lenders, housing advocates, and community interest groups, surveys, and targeted interviews.  Specifically, the survey represents a demographically-weighted sample of over 17,510 responses.

MHIH is framed as an asset-based approach to evaluating areas of opportunity and moves beyond the high- and low-opportunity framing in conventional housing analyses. It represents a comprehensive strategy and outcome with four core values, and 11-goals that recognize that housing investment is not undertaken in a silo.

The strategy builds on community plans and is informed by a land development suitability analysis, a market analysis of housing demand & supply, a demographic analysis, and 10-year demand for housing segmented by income for rental and ownership. The data is an extension of the framework and allows county and partner organizations to intervene in the development of affordable housing. The results from MHIH have, in turn, informed recent County efforts, including:  $916M U.S. Treasury American Rescue Plan allocation plan, with over $250M allocated for affordable housing & homelessness, and a  $16.7M HUD HOME-ARP Plan over a 10-year period, and investments made by the Harris County Housing Finance Corp., and a subsidiary corp. Harris Co. Community Land Trust, and tax increment financing through the Harris County Redevelopment Authority (HCRA), and Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ).

MHIH exposed just how significant the housing need is over the next decade–needing 200,000 units (150,000 affordable to households earning under 60% AMI) just to keep pace and nearly $40B in related housing investments to support this shortage. And while the funding gap exposes a significant problem for local planning and policymaking in an 1,800 sq. mi. county with 4.7M population, it simultaneously allows Harris County to rally its 34 municipalities (including the city of Houston), the private sector, nonprofit developers, and philanthropic organizations to the cause of addressing our housing shortfalls. Harris County recognizes that is must lead solutions to the housing challenge in a regional collaboration model and that it "cannot go it alone" to address this $40B housing deficit.