Houston is renowned for being the only major American city without zoning. To the chagrin of die-hard believers in zoning’s necessity, Houston proves that you can have a successful, affordable city without it. Yet, counter to those who believe that zoning is at the root of most of America’s urban ills, the city also shows its absence does not make a city that different from its peers. Looking at a variety of metrics on housing affordability, one can see how Houston does well but not too dissimilarly from other middle American cities. 

The Houston model has several distinct features that should be more widely emulated by cities whose housing markets have been strangled by land use regulations, but it is one of many worthwhile urban housing models throughout the center of the US that provide lessons that should be emulated.  

Perhaps the best measure of housing affordability is the median house price to median income ratio. The median Houston metropolitan house now costs 4.7 times the area’s median income, which makes Houston one of the more affordable growing cities in America (ignoring those declining or stagnant cities, such as Detroit, where low demand keeps housing prices low). Yet Houston is still slightly more expensive than other growing cities such as Oklahoma City (3.6) and Atlanta (4.5).  

Houston is similarly keeping pace with or just outpacing its peers when one considers rent. Its median rent of $1,374 is very low for a large, expanding city, but still slightly more than Jacksonville or nearby San Antonio. If one focuses on the lower end of the rental market, Houston’s Harris County has some of the lowest big city rents for studio and single bedroom apartments, but there again it is close to or sometimes higher than other metro home counties such as those for Columbus or Minneapolis.   

One good indication of insufficient housing supply is the percent of land value in the total value of a home. A high land ratio means people are paying more for already built homes rather than the straightforward construction costs of a new one. According to AEI’s land price index, land values have soared nationwide since the nadir of the housing crisis, but Houston has restrained the growth more than most. Metropolitan Houston’s land value as a percent of total house value has grown from 28 percent in 2012 to 49 percent today. Yet this is not dissimilar from San Antonio’s rise from 22 percent to 44 percent or Oklahoma City’s from 25 percent to 39 percent.  

What accounts for Houston’s relative success? What, in the absence of zoning, explains its similarities? One reason is that Houston proper contains only about 2.3 million of the metropolitan region’s 7.5 million people, or a little under a third. Most of the metropolitan growth in recent years has happened on the outskirts of the actual city. In 1980 the city of Houston had just under 1.6 million people and the metropolitan area had 2.9 million, so about 80 percent of the growth since then has happened outside of the city proper.  

Houston has thus participated in the general tendency of cities to expand almost entirely through sprawling, low-density development. A recent study of homes built in major metros from 1980 to 2010 shows that 94 percent of Houston area homes were built in low-density areas in this period. This makes Houston one of the fastest sprawling of the largest metropolitan areas. Yet the fastest growing metros generally had rates of low-density development above 90 percent as well. As the report notes, there is a tight correlation between how fast cities sprawl outward and their success in keeping housing prices down. Zoning’s absence in the city of Houston, as well as its absence in the surrounding, unincorporated counties, which cannot zone according to Texas law, has not altered, either for or against, this tendency towards outward growth apparent in other successful metros.  

In many ways Houston is a surprise not because it is so distinct but because it is so similar to many other successful mid-American cities. It is growing largely outwards not upwards and it is trying to meet a torrent of housing demand in the wake of a generation of underbuilding, most especially in coastal cities. But there are ways that Houston offers distinct possibilities that other places should heed.  

Obviously Houston’s lack of zoning, and its ability to ward off its imposition, most recently in a 1993 referendum, is a distinct part of its identity that has helped keep housing affordable. Houston is like many cities though in that it has other restrictions on housing, for instance, minimum lot size requirements for new development. Yet in 1998 it reduced the minimum lot size from 5,000 to as low as 1,400 square feet in parts of the city center, and after 2013 it expanded this new minimum city-wide. These reforms have allowed up to 2,000 of these smaller parcels to be developed a year, which has been a significant boon to housing affordability and central city living. In 2019 some central areas were exempt from the city’s minimum parking requirements, which allows developers to create more buildings where the demand is highest. 

Houston does have one unique aspect of its outward growth, which, along with zoning’s absence in the center, is one the more distinctive things about it. Texas law allows developers to create “Municipal Utility Districts,” or MUDs, to finance and build water, sewer, road and other infrastructure in advance of housing development. Due to some local peculiarities, about two-thirds of the state’s active MUDs are in metropolitan Houston. These districts allow developers to anticipate growth on their own instead of waiting for permission from government authorities on where and when to place infrastructure. Other areas could learn from this type of privatized infrastructure development.  

Houston is a healthy reminder that, although the American housing system is littered with needless regulations and pettifogging bureaucracies, our broad land with its diversity of cities allows successful cities to outcompete restrictive ones. Houston is distinct in many worthwhile ways, but so are many other middle American cities. Some such as Fort Worth have pioneered third-party permitting and inspections. Some such as Oklahoma City have managed to keep taxes and therefore the cost-of-living down (something Houston is struggling with). Some such as Nashville have opened up “adaptive residential” development, which allows housing in commercial districts. Each of these places have something to teach other growing cities such as Houston as well as more restrictive ones. 

America’s diversity of urban models is one reason that, for all of its problems, it ranks number one on the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development’s national rankings for affordability, quality, and size of housing. The tragedy is that many restrictive American cities don’t learn the lessons of places such as Houston and are content to see the continuing exodus of their discontented citizens to peers and rivals.