Despite being consistently ranked as one of the most “affordable cities” in the country, Houston increasingly is becoming more expensive for longtime residents and newcomers.
Just ask Amy Connolly, chief of staff for the city’s Housing and Community Development Department, who said there is a misconception about Houston’s affordability.
“It’s always shocking to me how much rent for an apartment is, even here,” she said.
More than half of Harris County renters spend in excess of a third of their income on housing, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research concluded in its 2023 State of Housing annual report. The median cost of rent jumped nearly 30 percent to more than $1,100 between 2015 and 2021.
According to a report from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, Houston has the second-most severe shortage of rental homes in the country available to low-income residents.
“I think when people think about who needs affordable housing, they think of the really, really poor,” Connolly said. “But affordable housing is needed by brand-new employees, recent college graduates and people who haven’t quite climbed the ladder.”
Houston’s Housing and Community Development Department is one of six entities throughout Harris County that manage federal and local funding to support and develop affordable housing. The others are:
Harris County Housing Authority
Harris County Department of Housing and Community Development
Funding and jurisdiction are the critical differences between the various agencies, Connolly said, adding that the city and county departments utilize federal funding in different capacities.
“(Our department) operates more like a bank,” she said. “We’re providing the funding for other people to provide the development and services, whereas the (housing) authorities are largely focused on specific housing programs.”
What are housing authorities?
Public housing authorities are governmental bodies that manage and administer affordable housing programs using funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs.
Despite their names, the Houston Housing Authority and Harris County Housing Authority are separate from city and county government and administer the federal Housing Choice Voucher program. The Houston Housing Authority also manages several public housing communities.
Pasadena and Baytown also have federally-supported housing authorities.
All of the housing authorities provide rental assistance to very low-income families, elderly and disabled who qualify for the federal housing voucher program. The authorities pay subsidies to landlords that typically cover 60 to 70 percent of the cost of an apartment or house; the tenant pays the difference between the actual rent charged and the subsidy.
The Houston Housing Authority has issued about 18,900 active vouchers and has more than 18,000 applicants on its waitlist. Its waitlist has been frozen since December 2023 due to rising rents and budget constraints, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Meanwhile, the Harris County Housing Authority has issued nearly 5,000 vouchers to qualifying residents outside Houston city limits and has more than 3,000 applicants on its waitlist, Executive Director and CEO Melissa Quijano said.
Unlike the Houston Housing Authority, which operates about 4,000 rental units across 19 public housing developments, the Harris County Housing Authority does not administer public housing, Quijano said.
The county housing authority does allocate funds to developers building affordable housing communities, as well as disaster relief.
“We’re here for the families and we’re here to make that impact,” Quijano said. “We don’t have a lot of funding, but with what we do let’s make an impact and help make a difference in their lives.”
Texas housing authorities do not receive direct allocations from the city or county’s general funds, according to Texas local government code.
Role of city, county
Houston and Harris County’s departments of housing and community development take on more of a policy and administrative role.
“We are not the people actually out there swinging the hammers or delivering the services,” Connolly said.
By comparison, housing authorities, including those in Houston and Harris County have two roles: provide low-income residents with federal housing initiatives, like the voucher choice program, and build affordable housing units on their own or by collaborating with developers.
The city and county housing and community departments receive federal funding from HUD through community development block grants, home investment partnership funds, emergency solution grants, housing opportunities for people with AIDS grants and disaster recovery grants, Connolly said.
“We’re taking in these federal dollars and providing competitive opportunities for community development corporations or contractors,” she said.
Both departments target low- to moderate-income residents and communities and also assist with disaster recovery.
Qualifying for assistance
Connolly and Quijano said the demand for affordable housing is their greatest concern.
“There are just not enough apartments available at a leasing rate that people can afford,” Connolly said. ”We want people to have jobs and want people to move to Houston and invest here, but in order to do that effectively, we need to make sure they can afford housing at the amount they’re getting paid.”
She stressed that Houston’s Housing and Community Development Department works to help families own their own homes, as well as rent.
The Harris County Housing Authority, Quijano said, is committed to destigmatizing the phrase “affordable housing,” and how access to assistance is perceived.
“It’s not the same as it was 40, 50, 60 years ago,” she said. “We help teachers, firefighters, police officers and local grocery store managers.”
Here’s how to reach the local housing agencies:
- Houstonians can register for accounts with the Houston Housing Authority to access services at HHA My Housing.
- Call: 713-260-0500
- Visit: “Contact Us” page
- Residents who live outside the city’s boundaries can review the Harris County Housing Authority’s “Residents” tab to find more information about the county’s housing choice voucher program, homeownership and other forms of assistance.
- Call: 713-578-2100
- Visit: “Contact Us” page or Email: hcha@hchatexas.org
- To access the Houston’s Housing and Community Development department, visit the agency’s website:
- Call 832-394-6912 or 832-394-6227 from 1-4 p.m. on Wednesdays during the department’s “Virtual Community Office Hours”
- To access the Harris County Housing and Community Development department, visit the agency’s website:
- Call: 832-927-4955
- Email: askHCD@harriscountytx.gov
“Don’t be intimidated to call and ask,” Connolly said. “We understand it’s confusing and we’ll do everything we can to make sure people get to the right location.”
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