Reason Interviews Tory Gattis About Houston’s Affordability

A couple months ago Reason sent a crew to interview me (Tory Gattis) on Houston’s unorthodox, unzoned approach to land-use regulation and how it reduces our homelessness, as well as my suggested solution for zoned cities (spoiler alert: unrestrict all land outside single-family neighborhoods). Their resulting 26 min documentary is now available:

Why Homelessness Is Worse in California Than in Texas

Today, the Lone Star state counts 90 homeless people per every 100,000 residents. In California, the problem is almost five times as bad.

I’m really impressed with the Haven for Hope in San Antonio, which combines services with temporary housing. And I find it just staggering that California spends $500-$800k per unit for affordable housing in LA!

The Houston section of the documentary starts at 18:47, and my section starts at 22:03 and runs to 24:20, so about an hour’s interview cut down to two minutes of sound bites, lol (pretty typical). Their aerial shots of Houston are from the top of my midrise Midtown building where we shot the interview. The video link below is queued up to my section, but I do encourage watching the whole thing or at least the whole section on Houston.

 

This piece first appeared at Houston Strategies.

Tory Gattis is a Founding Senior Fellow with the Urban Reform Institute and co-authored the original study with noted urbanist Joel Kotkin and others, creating a city philosophy around upward social mobility for all citizens as an alternative to the popular smart growth, new urbanism, and creative class movements. He is also an editor of the Houston Strategies blog.

Photo: screenshot from video