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Originally posted by Shape Shifter
I really haven't figured out your point with these arguments. It think it's something like "Section 8 is bad," or perhaps it is "Democrats are ruining the inner cities." As you seem to be offering only your personal experiences, I will offer mine.
Suburbs in Houston are cheap and plentiful. You can get a big house with a big yard on a quiet street for not too much money. Sure, you have to deal with the commute. But it's not so bad if you working in one of the sprawling business campuses that ring the city. Why are they there? Land. Cheap, cheap land. And tax breaks.
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I'd wholeheartedly agree with this. It costs next to nothing to buy land in a prarie here and develop it. While it would suck my soul to have to move to one of those places, I don't have three kids and need a place to put them. You can own a decent sized house, with a fair amount of land for under $200K in a hell of a lot of suburbs.
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I hate suburbs, work downtown, and I hate commuting. When I was looking to buy a place in Houston, it was going to be in the inner loop. Some of the most expensive properties were in an area that is probably one of the most racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse in the city. I have not done research on the issue (help, RT!), but I suspect there is a good deal of Section 8 housing in this area.
For the same prices as the places we were looking at in this neighborhood, we could have gotten a 5,000 sf house on the golf course in the burbs. The only neighborhoods more expensive than the r/e/c diverse one are the ones with the mansions housing our local industry leaders. I doubt there is any Section 8 housing in River Oaks. It is a Republican stronghold.
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Houston is a little different than a lot of other large cities because the city tends to annex the suburbs to retain the tax base, so it's all Houston. The city is physically the size of Rhode Island, there is no zoning, and there are no natural constraints like rivers or mountains or other cities on growth. For some reason the school systems are separate though, and I think that has a bigger impact than subsidized housing.
There's Section 8 housing right next to River Oaks, and I'd argue that the property that Allen Parkway Village (the oldest subsidized housing project in the city, and subject to massive contraversy because it was recently torn down (and uglyly rebuilt) is on is probably some of the most valuable in the city. The fourth ward (where Allen Parkway Village is located) has been able to accomodate a lot of the recent gentrification without losing it's longtime (poor, black) residents because the city made an effort to require subsidized housing when Perry Homes came in and started tearing down the old shotgun houses.
I think we keep on growing outward because it's inexpensive and the highway department likes to build freeways. I can't imagine living outside the loop though.
