Regarding Sunday's City and State cover article "Would more housing rules raise costs? / Some say Houston prices would jump; others say quality of life is bigger": A certain neighborhood wishes to limit the scale of a certain project. The city administration is trying to pass a narrow ordinance that limits density indirectly through a new cumbersome mobility analysis process. It is not clear it will be free of discretion on the part of the city or predictable for land owners. It will simply lead to expensive negotiations with the city. Once the ordinance is on the books, there will be pressure to expand its impact on a permit by permit basis. The ordinance will probably not arrive in time to affect the project that inspired it.

This is no way to stumble into "spot zoning by ordinance." The destruction of predictability leads to the deterioration of affordability. If Houston needs zoning, then follow the city charter and take it to a public vote after appropriate public hearings. Until then, honor what the citizens of Houston have voted to preserve three times, a city without zoning. Instead, the city should work to strengthen deed restrictions. This is the Houston solution.

KENDALL MILLER
stakeholder, organizer of Houstonians for Responsible Growth

Comment on 1/23

Charli wrote:

Our city charter very clearly states that the city cannot regulate land use in the city limits. That means that unrestricted land = anything the developer wants. That is what the voters have approved three times.

We have a mayor and city councilmembers who apparently believe the city charter means nothing.

We have a district attorney and assistant district attorneys who believe the law means nothing.

Apparently we need to clean up the city as well as the county and take back government "by the people, for the people."

If the mayor believes the city charter should be changed then he needs to put it to the voters. The voters may say "yes" to zoning this time. The voters may say "no" again. He was not elected king. And the city councilmembers are not the royal court.

We have choices in Houston. We can live in neighborhoods with strong deed restrictions and little if any commercial development. We can live in the "cities within the city" which have zoning. We can live in areas like Montrose and Heights which in some areas are more unrestricted land than restricted land. But some like to walk around the corner to the restaurant or the grocery store and now have to drive. There is something for everyone. We choose where to live. But with that choice comes the decision to accept things "as is, where is" to use the common real estate term. If you see a small apartment complex or duplexes and fourplexes across from where you are planning to build or buy, you might want to see if that section of the neighborhood is restricted or unrestricted. If unrestricted, well, to use another real estate term, "buyer beware."

Pulling strings at City Hall is no different from pulling strings at the Harris County District Attorney's Office. Accepting and approving a traffic impact study submitted voluntarily by a developer and then rejecting the study because of someone having used their "position" to pull strings does not speak well of the mayor or of city council.

I have spent half of my life in Los Angeles which in many ways is a model city. At least the Los Angeles that most people see. They have land use restrictions. And neighborhoods, some of them among the most expensive neighborhoods in the country, which are absolutely "single-family" only.

Most of the latter also have some of the worst traffic in the country. Particularly Bel-Air and Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Restricting land use has absolutely no effect in the end on traffic. And only a fool believes it does. Unless you want neighborhoods where you have to have a "visa" to travel through them and then the question is where do you put the thoroughfares? Eventually new thoroughfares will have to be put in to provide easier access to the San Fernando Valley. And there, as here, everyone takes the "not in my neighborhood" approach. Even as they sit and watch the parking lot outside their house every day during rush hour. Eventually they will be forced to give up land to widen whatever north-south thoroughfare the city decides needs to be widened. The way everyone who lived on Chimney Rock here had to. Fair? No. But then everyone who bought on Chimney Rock knew it was a major thoroughfare. "Buyer beware."

All these studies and projections by "experts" mean nothing. In our larger cities, what spreads out eventually begins to spread up. In Los Angeles, it spread up on Wilshire Boulevard. "Zoned" for hirise development. Applauded by most who lived on the West Side. The only "shadows" cast were on retail centers and on UCLA. But the rest of the West Side continued to be developed and redeveloped. The same thing occured closer in along Wilshire and the "Miracle Mile" and of late in Hollywood. The problem is quite a few who live in Brentwood work in downtown and quite a few who live in Hollywood work in Santa Monica. And so you have traffic. Traffic that few Houstonians can even comprehend. For many what was a 30 minute drive 20 years ago is now a 60-90 minute drive.

With growth in any city, no matter how well-planned, or how well-zoned, the only thing you are guaranteed is increased traffic. And as people in Los Angeles are finally discovering, the only solution is not regulating land use but planning for increased traffic. Traffic impact studies designed to limit growth do not address the problem of traffic. You can limit development on one section of Bissonnet. But not along other sections of Bissonnet. And Bissonnet will continue to be developed.

Of course as asked by quite a few yesterday at City Hall, is this proposed ordinance, now called something other than traffic impact, aimed at the entire city or merely one development? It seems to be the latter.

If anything, the traffic impact ordinance might be a useful tool. But only terms of addressing the need for widening thoroughfares and mandating the use of "setbacks" to allow for the widening.

What the city should have had in place when it approved the Riverway development on Woodway. The only way to widen Woodway in the Riverway area is to tear down some very expensive commercial and residential hirises.

And that of course is a problem on Bissonnet. But some have decided that limiting growth is a better solution. It is not a solution at all.

1/23/2008 10:46 AM CST