This post is the third in a series. In early January 1990 (I think it was January 1) the local newspaper carried a story that a Houston City Councilman was going to introduce a zoning ordinance. A friend called me that day and suggested that we fight the ordinance. I immediately agreed. Over the next…
Charlie Simms, the owner of a development company in Ohio, makes a point that needs to be included in discussions regarding affordable housing. Housing advocates consider affordable housing to mean below market rate housing. However, as Simms writes, “When builders and developers speak of affordable housing we’re talking about how to build homes that the…
The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled on the case of Powell v. City of Houston. The plaintiffs had claimed that Houston’s preservation ordinance violated the city charter, which prohibits zoning without a referendum. The preservation ordinance, the plaintiffs held, is a form of zoning. In its ruling, the Court agreed that the ordinance is zoning,…
The Court of Appeals First District of Texas recently ruled that Houston’s preservation ordinance doesn’t violate the city charter, which prohibits zoning. In the ruling, the court found that preservation ordinances are often a part of zoning, but the plaintiffs presented no authority indicating that the legislature’s grant of authority to pass zoning laws displaces…
Competing Values The Houston Chronicle recently profiled a couple who have installed synthetic turf in their Houston Heights yard. They were tired of re-sodding their yard, and joined a growing number of property owners turning to artificial grass. It was a decision that they thought best for them. But the Heights is one of Houston’s…
Mismatched Curtains Sometimes, the inanity of government regulations knows no bounds. As an example, Mildred Bryant, a resident of Pagedale, Missouri, was fined for having mismatched curtains. This might seem absurd, and it is, but in principle it is no different from hundreds of other regulations that control how individuals use their property. For example,…
The city of Houston recently enacted stricter regulations governing boarding houses. The Houston Chronicle reported that: The ordinances — prompted by several fires in unregulated and unsafe multi-resident housing facilities over the last year — follow months of meetings between city officials and community groups and wrangling between city agencies. The purported goal of the…
Last week, the Houston Chronicle asked, “Where should Houston’s innovation district be?” The question implies that this is an issue for all Houstonians, or at least their elected representatives, to answer. Indeed, the article states: Two city task forces, one put together by city government, the other by the business community, recommended that the city…
Last week, Houston City Council passed the controversial Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). The ordinance makes it “unlawful for any place of public accommodation or any employee or agent thereof to discriminate against any person on the basis of any protected characteristic,” such as sexual orientation or gender identification. As is usually the case, debate…
A City of Houston ordinance bans the sale of alcohol within 300 feet of churches and most private schools, or within 1,000 feet of public schools. Apparently, city leaders believe that the sale of alcohol is a threat to the well-being of children and church goers. However, it would seem that that threat does not…
The following article was published in the Spring 2009 issue of The Objective Standard. $ $ $ Houston, Texas, my hometown, is one of only two American cities with a population greater than one hundred thousand that has not imposed zoning laws on its citizens. (The other city is Pasadena, Texas, a suburb of Houston.)…
The following article was published in the Houston Chronicle on July 21, 1994. $ $ $ Consider the following scenario: You arrive home to find that your house has been burglarized. The police investigate the scene and proceed to write you a citation for inadequate burglary deterrence. You are told that the city has an…