10:05 PM CDT on Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Houston is the nation's biggest city without zoning laws. But in
some neighborhoods, people have found a largely unknown weapon that
they're using against unwanted neighbors. They seemed to have popped up overnight, big new townhomes in old
neighborhoods. One neighbor said, "There's no lawn, no grass, no
nothin'." Many years ago the College Court subdivision in Southwest Houston
was laid out for single homes on spacious lots. But where two homes
had once been, now there are six. Developers have leveled the little
old homes, and shoe-horned in as many townhomes as would fit. Long-time residents feel it's their rights that have been leveled.
"Its sad, its depressing, it should not have to be like that,
another long time neighbor said. There's no planning in the city of Houston. I mean, anybody's
allowed to construct anything anywhere, added another. That's true in many cases, but maybe no longer. "Its not widely known at this point, said Kent Marsh. He is
the president of a civic group in the Heights. And maybe nowhere in
the city are they fighting to keep out town homes harder than they are
in and around the Heights. They're doing it using a new provision in
an ordinance that's about as close to having zoning as you can get in
a city that doesn't have any. It's called the Prevailing Lot Size Provision. It allows
one-home-to-a-lot neighborhoods to petition the city planning
commission to prohibit lots from being subdivided, thereby making
townhome development impractical. In the Heights some 10 percent of neighborhoods are now protected.
"This particular block face was approved by the Planning
Commission last Thursday, said Marsh.
"I think the trend is going to continue to be townhomes, said Mike Spear of Allisonspear.com Realty.
The Houston realtor sells more townhomes inside the loop than just about anybody. He says denser housing is more affordable to more people and often replaces dilapidated properties. Spear said, "Lots of the ones that have been bought up and absorbed are things that needed to go and have cleaned the areas up."
The city Planning Department's Marlene Gafrick says townhomes will still get built, just not in certain neighborhoods that have asked to be protected. "There are plenty of areas inside the 610 Loop that are vacant," she said. So, has the Planning Commission approved this in virtually every case? Gaflick answered, "That's right."
But one of the few neighborhoods that failed to win protection was College Court Subdivision. Turns out, by the time that new provision took effect a couple years ago, the neighborhood already had a number of townhomes.
So the city ruled the averarge Prevailing Lot Size was no longer as big as it once was and therefore subdividing the big lots that remain can go on.
Leaving the homeowners to feel like casualities of the new more urban Houston.
The new ordinance applies only to neighborhoods inside Loop 610.