Neighborhoods on Houston’s east side highly susceptible to gentrification

Virtually all of the neighborhoods on the east side of Houston inside the Interstate 610 loop — including Old Spanish Trail/South Union, Fifth Ward, Denver Harbor, Kashmere Gardens, Eastex/Jensen, Near Northside, Second Ward and Pleasantville — are susceptible to gentrification in the future, according to a new report from Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

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“Neighborhood Gentrification across Harris County: 1990 to 2016” by Kinder Institute researchers Wendie Choudary, Jie Wu and Mingming Zhang documents recent changes indicative of gentrification and discusses strategies that would support equitable revitalization.

“Gentrification is a problem in more than just Houston, but our city’s specific combination of socioeconomic and cultural diversity and sprawling residential patterns has some unique challenges,” Choudary said. “Affordable housing is diminishing, and environmental shocks like Hurricane Harvey exacerbate housing challenges, moving neighborhood change in unintended directions.”

The report defines neighborhoods vulnerable to gentrification as areas that exceed Harris County’s average number of renters, average non-white population, average percentage of low-income households and average number of people over 24 without at least a bachelor’s degree. To be defined as gentrified, neighborhoods need to show greater changes than the county changes in median income, population with at least a bachelor’s degree, non-Hispanic white population, median rent and home values. The researchers used data from U.S. censuses, American Community Surveys, the Neighborhood Change Database and other surveys.

In addition to identifying the high susceptibility for gentrification in the future on Houston’s east side, the researchers found that the state of gentrification across the city overall has accelerated since 2000.

“Very little gentrification occurred from 1990 to 2000, while the period between 2000 and 2010 saw the greatest change,” the researchers said. “And growing gentrification patterns emerged from 2010-2016.”

The report found Houston has more gentrified neighborhoods outside the 610 loop (144 out of 783 census tracts) than inside the loop (73 out of 783). Civic leaders trying to take control of gentrification in their neighborhoods have used local land use policies, deed restrictions, homestead exemptions, land trusts and strategies that include community members in the development process, the researchers found.

The report also includes three case studies, chosen for their relatively high susceptibility to gentrification in the future, that reveal unique housing and demographic differences among the Fifth Ward, Old Spanish Trail/South Union and Greenspoint neighborhoods.

The researchers hope their work will not only shine a spotlight on the prevalence of gentrification and the problems it causes, but also help cities and communities think about how they can help low-income residents remain in their neighborhoods.

Two subsequent reports — one examining the link between transportation and gentrification and the other detailing the changes in housing stock in selected gentrifying neighborhoods — will be released in 2019.

A web-based data tool developed by the researchers that illustrates neighborhood gentrification is available online at www.datahouston.org/story/gentrification.