Center for Planning Excellence Virtual Smart Growth Summit 2021
In February of 2019, we released Resilient Houston. 62 prioritized actions all focused on how we make Houston a more green, resilient, and equitable place to live, work, and play. We have experienced 7 declared disasters in the past 6 years. Most of which have been flood events. Most recently, we were forced to widen our field of vision to include prolonged cold and certainly COVID 19 prior to that.
As succinctly as possible: Resilience – as we practice it – is a community’s ability to absorb a variety of shocks and stresses and learn from those shocks and stresses, using them as opportunities to evolve and transform. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Mayor Turner’s mantra has been “Build Houston Forward.”
I can’t stress this enough. We are experiencing a climate crisis, and we are getting absolutely drummed. Climate change is a global challenge, but its impacts are felt locally in the communities where we live. Cities around the world are leading the way on climate action. Houston is a global energy capital and a coastal city already experiencing multiple impacts of climate change. We are uniquely positioned to develop innovative solutions to our climate crisis. And we don’t do this in a vacuum. Our first CRO, Marissa Aho was LA’s first CRO. And Houston was the 101st member of 100 Resilient Cities. We are part of a global conversation and are applying global thinking to our local planning and project development.
Houston is certainly a developer city. And that ethos can actually help us tell our resilience story. For us at the City, access and equity are paramount. And advancing equitable affordable housing encapsulates that really well.
So, It’s important to understand why we consider housing “critical infrastructure” and how we can take the initiatives that we develop to protect our neighbors who rent and make them applicable across our city and building typologies – First, 57% of Houstonians rent their home. To put this into perspective; renter-occupied units made up 30.4% of the national inventory in the fourth quarter 2020.
(Housing and Community Development)
46% of those who rent, spend more than 30% of their monthly income on housing. 23% spend more than 50%. 60% of Houston’s kids live in rental units and 66% of Houston’s foreign-born population rent.
(Housing and Community Development)
47% of all households impacted by Harvey were renters. Fewer renters carry insurance than homeowners, increasing their vulnerability to a wide range of disasters from flooding to - notably and most recently - extreme cold as well as extreme heat. With this in mind – and considering our affordable housing stock was (and still is) well below where we need it to be – establishing and fortifying equitable affordable housing opportunities for our neighbors who rent has been a priority.
(Housing and Community Development)
With that in mind, Houston is a marshy prairie. Houston is roughly 50 miles inland and maybe 50 feet above sea level. Our prairie is brought to life through a network of 22 watersheds – an intricate system of bayous that can be celebrated as an attraction or cause a great deal of heartburn when they begin to swell.
They are a required natural consideration. It’s impossible to develop in Houston and not know how close you might be to a bayou, a creek, or a gully. So it’s no surprise that there are approximately 162,000 building in the 236 square miles of mapped flood plains. So in order to better protect our neighbors and be mindful of our natural environments we simply have to build smarter.
Note: One in 5 new homes permitted in Houston in the year after Hurricane Harvey is in a flood plain. So it should come as no surprise that Houston has adopted one of the most strict floodplain ordinances in the country.
(Houston Chronicle, “Even after Harvey, Houston keeps adding new homes in flood plains”, Mike Morris, Matt Dempsey)
I’ll discuss this further in a moment but in addition to our riverine or bayou system, we have an extensive and frankly undersized urban stormwater system. Through the development of Resilient Houston, we realized we are a community that is best served when we stop trying to avoid water and start learning to live with water. Our Living with Water workshops, which were held in November 2018 and May 2019, are part of Houston’s ongoing resilience program that brought together local, national, and international experts representing multiple disciplines to solve site-specific water and resilience challenges alongside local governments, states and federal agencies, and community stakeholders.
That drainage system contributed to a very disturbing fact - 59% of all flood damage resulting from Harvey happened outside of any defined floodplain. Which brings us to the to the thesis of this chat: How do we codify a set of standards that extends protection to all of Houston?
(Housing and Community Development, Civis)
We start by being innovative. We want to be data driven. We’re studying our water system choke points across our bayous and other systems within the watersheds to identify and remove obstructions that slow down or impede the movement of water downstream. For instance, network intersections, such as railway crossings and roadways, can create choke points in drainage systems if not properly designed. So a thorough analysis of overland water movement across a watershed will determine the priority locations for addressing choke points, focusing on areas with a high risk of flooding.
Additionally, we’re partnering with local academic institutions and other partners to advance research, testing, and implementation of nature-based infrastructure. Many regional and external agencies have conducted benchmarking and reviews of the specific GSI solutions that are applicable to Houston. However, applied research on the specific designs and locations best suited for the Houston area has not been conducted or brought to scale.
Through these partnerships, we hope to evaluate opportunities to incorporate additional smart city technologies and innovations into the way we live with water. These technologies include real-time controls into detention systems at a watershed scale to more efficiently manage volumes of water, real-time flooding information connected to mobile apps and other route guidance platforms, and crowdsourced response and recovery. These technologies will help the City acquire, manage, and share data for a wide range of initiatives
We also need to be thoughtful about how we mange our water resources. Our expectation over the next few years is to develop a comprehensive One Water plan that includes climate resilient infrastructure to address the impacts of climate change and prepare the region for the future. The impacts of climate change will primarily be felt through changing water cycles, specifically with large and uneven consequences to our food, energy, urban, and environmental systems. The proposed solutions will be focused at all scales; value water as a finite resource; and combine existing efforts at local, state, and federal levels.
We’ll be working with partners to advance local coordination efforts, implement actions specified in the Water Conservation Plan and Drought Contingency Plan, and develop a Stormwater Master Plan with the goal of ensuring water resilient communities. The City will also implement the Incentives for Green Development program as well as execute additional watershed-scale planning and actions to tailor solutions to the geology and hydrology of an area. The development of an integrated systems approach to water management will ensure that the value of water is maintained and is managed in a sustainable, inclusive, and integrated way.
And we want to leverage other efforts to advance smart growth. The living with water workshops resulted in an extensive set of strategies that are being further developed through a set of planning studies that leverage HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery dollars. As we work through implementation in three of Houston’s most vulnerable communities: Greenspoint, Independence Heights, and Kashmere Gardens, these neighborhood-scale strategies can then be scaled for other neighborhoods in Houston that face similar challenges.
During Harvey, churches, schools, libraries, all became gathering spaces. Unfortunately, these facilities lacked the services needed to function as a shelter. By formally developing a series of lily pads, we can codify the community spirit exhibited throughout Houston during Harvey while identifying and developing a network of high and dry spaces that can become “lily pads” for individuals to obtain basic needs, assistance, and resources during floods, heat events, or even air quality emergencies.
One of our most important efforts with direct ties to our LWW Workshops looks to develop a comprehensive buy-in/buy-out plan for the city with 2 priorities – 1. Protect families currently living in areas susceptible to flooding and 2. Protect the continuity of Houston communities through investments. The Houston Buy-in/Buy-Out Plan aims to identify areas of highest risk – those that repetitively flood and areas within those same neighborhoods that are less likely to flood. This is a critical adaptation measure that supports our communities, while improving health and safety for Houstonians.
Our most advanced effort brings us back to Affordable Housing. In response to Hurricane Harvey, Houston’s Housing and Community Development Department stood up a number of programs made possible through significant HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery dollars. 480 million of those dollars were allocated for the development of quality affordable housing throughout Houston. The 30+ projects that take advantage of CDBG-DR funding are transit oriented, located in high opportunity communities like the one I’m lucky enough to live in – The Houston Heights - and have access to food, healthcare and other amenities like quality public schools. They are also more resilient structures with significant investments in things like Green Stormwater Infrastructure.
(Housing and Community Development)
As briefly as possible - Single-purpose gray stormwater infrastructure—conventional piped drainage and water treatment systems—is designed to move urban stormwater away from the built environment, green infrastructure reduces and treats stormwater at its source while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits.
Green infrastructure uses vegetation, soils, and other elements and practices to restore some of the natural processes required to manage water and create healthier urban environments. At the city or county scale, green infrastructure is a patchwork of natural areas that provides habitat, flood protection, cleaner air, and cleaner water. At the neighborhood or site scale, they are stormwater management systems that mimic nature, soak up, and store water.
Working with the Chief Resilience Officer, and leveraging our recovery efforts to advance Resilient Houston, HCDD developed additional standards that further protect the folks who will ultimately call these communities “home.” Some of these efforts are intuitive considerations; elevating living spaces, relocate critical equipment to higher floors, etc. Others are more of a financial or long term commitment like green infrastructure measures or pre-wiring for solar or electric vehicles.
As part of Resilient Houston we call for 100 new GSI projects by 2025. We accomplish that through incentives that encourage the private sector, as well as lead by example. We lead by example by incorporating projects within the right of way, planting more trees, and by making GSI a part of the built environment through our own efforts.
Ultimately, we have a lot of work to do. Even through a pandemic we kicked off 56 of our 62 actions and our resilient framework has provided the scaffolding for how we responded to Winter Storm Uri and how we continue to respond to COVID 19.
These are collaborative efforts that are not developed or executed in silos. In addition to interdepartmental collaborations, we work with state and federal partners. From the Recovery Office, we help facilitate the project planning and development, working with project managers at Houston Public Works, the Houston Permitting Center, Planning, the Office of Resilience and Sustainability as well as support departments.
In response to unprecedented damage, Houston has received significant federal assistance to aid in our recovery efforts and build Houston forward. Through FEMA grants, Public Assistance, Mitigation and other Housing and Urban Development dollars, Houston has been given a unique opportunity to recover and simultaneously develop resilient best practices that are scalable and sustainable.
Thank you for bearing with me to this point. If you’d like to learn more about what we’re doing in Houston or if you’d like to trade some really good ideas, please reach out any time. I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.