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90% effectiveness? Have you ever been to Oak Forest or Garden Oaks? Lots of deed restrictions, but the architecture is from A to Z and back again. Basically, everyone is building a "mistake" because everyone is just making it up as the go along. And in the Heights, while a minority are willing to build within the character of the neighborhood or do great restoration work, the majority (prior to the ordinance) would either build faux-New Orleans Italianate or something from A to Z (modern, suburban what the F?, Mission, like this thing: http://search.har.com/engine/917-Aurora-Houston-TX-77009_HAR59575054.htm). Most importantly, deed restrictions do nothing to prevent tear downs, which was the primary reason people wanted HDs. The whole deed restriction argument is just a briar patch for builders. "Oh no, don't throw me into a neighborhood with deed restrictions. They are just as effective at historic preservation as the ordinance". Get rid of the ordinance and replace it with deed restrictions and all the historic housing will get demoed.

That house is on a 5000 ft lot and the set back for that house is consistent with the rest of the block (except the guy next door who managed to build right up to the sidewalk). You can get rid of the attached garage and squeeze the house with some property line setbacks, but you will still have a stucco suburban home built on a slab with no porch and no proper architectural elements except for a vague reference to a Queen Anne in the front elevation. So, why go through all the trouble of trying to get and enforce deed restrictions when the end result will be the same architectural cacophony that existed before the restrictions plus the loss of tons of the original housing stock? Deed restrictions do not get it done.

But the only way to keep people from building houses out of character from the rest of the historic neighborhood is to have some sort of architectural review. Deed restrictions can only go so far.

Actually, you might watch what you wish for. If you put architectural review in deed restrictions, you get one shot with the appointed review board. HAHC has two administrative appeals and then allows an appeal to a district court. And the deed restrictions in Brookesmith are fairly weak. Some builders have done a good job at blending in with the existing housing, but then there are things like this: http://search.har.com/engine/806-Northwood-St-Houston-TX-77009_HAR3191677.htm

The first home would definitely be allowed under the ordinance. A very similar design was permitted on Allston in a renovation/addition by Bungalow Revival in the WHD. The pictures of the second one look great, but in person the addition does not look good at all. It looks like someone tried to smash two bungalows together. The addition dominates the original bungalow and sticks out like a sore thumb against the other houses in the neighborhood.

You are just dancing around the fact that you have nothing to offer to refute the methodology used in the study because you have not even tried to look at that methodology. The fact is that the study used a widely accepted methodology to calculate transportation costs. Your rebuttal is that you see big cars in parking lots. So what. And the fuel efficiency numbers say nothing about how much people are spending on cars. People in Texas drive a lot of trucks: http://www.autonews.com/article/20130624/RETAIL01/306249956/as-the-pickup-war-heats-up-gm-barnstorms-top-truck-market-with-redone-# Dallas and Houston have more truck sales than all of CA. But, a baseline F-150 costs the same as a Prius, but gets less than half the gas mileage. So, looking at a parking lot and seeing lots of big things doesn't mean anything.

http://houston.culturemap.com/news/city_life/11-13-11-where-the-gap-lives-houston-has-the-fourth-highest-income-inequality-in-america/

I did say "for what it is worth". However, over 80% of Texans live in urban areas. So, I do not think that you would see a big adjustment for Houston's numbers versus the entire state. But my point was more that there is actually some evidence that people are not putting housing cost savings into transportation despite one person's eyeball data from area parking lots.

And an argument that assumes that the methodology of a study is flawed without any actual knowledge of what methodology was used is very useless. The Rice study cites Center for Housing Policy's work. They use a cost model drawn from peer-reviewed research findings from a number of different sources. http://www.cnt.org/media/CNT_LosingGround.pdf Your speculation about vehicle values skewing results is nothing more than speculation. Until you dive into their methodology, you cannot throw stones. Also, for what it is worth, accord to Forbes, Texas ranks significantly lower in % of luxury auto sales than other states with large metro areas (Texas 6.5%; Illinois 6.6%; VA 7.2%; NJ 8.5%; NY 11.4%; FL 13.8%; CA 15.9%). So, with CA and NY having around double the ownership of luxury autos as a percentage of total sales, there is at least some indication that Houstonians are not taking their saving and putting them into more expensive vehicles, despite your expert review of parking lots. Transportation costs and percentage of income measures are important metrics. Rice is not Berkley. It is a very moderate school. The study raises important issues that raise red flags for Houston's competitiveness in the future if the cost of housing continues to rise and transportation costs move in the same direction. Employers will have to raise pay to attract and retain talent. When the cost of living and doing business in Houston starts to really push up against places like San Fran, Chicago, LA, Boston, NY, then companies may start looking for cheaper places or opt for the other major metros on quality of life. Sitting around and saying "you can get a house here for X and you can't do that in San Fran" is a gross oversimplification of a very large and important issue of affordability.

Ordering wetland restoration is basically the same thing as paying impact fees to a fund for wetland restoration. The municipality just eliminates the middleman by ordering payment directly to the contractors. But it is a monetary exaction because Koontz is just spending money on behalf of the government in order to get his permit. But you still do not understand what an exaction is. An exaction is not any regulation that creates an additional expense. Building codes, performance/Euclidian zoning, setbacks, height restrictions, density restriction, signage restrictions, and historic preservation ordinances may require a land owner to incur an additional expense to comply with the regulation, but they are not exactions. You do not get under Nollan/Dolan because you have to hire an structural engineer in order to get a building permit. You do not get under Nollan/Dolan because you have to hire an environmental engineer to get a permit. These are all costs that are directly related to making sure what you do complies with the regulations. Exactions are traditionally a requirement that the property owner dedicate land to mitigate an impact of the development. Monetary exactions are payments required for mitigation of impacts. The key distinction is that exactions have nothing to do with the actual work of developing the property. The exaction goes to other interests (park development, wetland mitigation, public access etc.) and do not touch the actual development. And even if you get a Nollan/Dolan test, what in the world is the argument that would cause historic preservation to fail that test? The Nollans won because the court found that there was no essential nexus between beach access and a "psychological barrier" presented by the Nollans' planned house. The evidence was that people could still get to the beach by other access points and were not really restricted by what the Nollans were doing. The policy of requiring an easement to reduce a merely psychological impact on access had no nexus to the goal of beach access. In Dolan, the requirement of the dedication of a public greenway and bike path was justified to prevent flooding and traffic congestion. The court found there was no reasonable relationship between the requirement and the impact of the development. Basically, they could not show that the development would cause any additional flooding or traffic congestion. The goal of historic preservation is to maintain the original structures and to ensure that all architecture is historically appropriate for the neighborhood. Prohibiting demolitions and requiring approval of architectural alterations and additions is about as close a nexus between the state interest and the permit condition as you can get. And there is nothing more proportional to the impact of non-conforming architecture than a permit condition that prohibits it. You beef with historic preservation has never been about the Nollan/Dolan test. Your problem is that you do not believe that historic preservation is a legitimate exercise of the police power/legitimate state interest. That has been decided under Penn Central and is not changed one bit by Koontz.

My point has always been that things are changing in Houston. Houston is definitely affordable, but gone are the days where $250k got you 3000 sq ft new construction in the burbs with great schools or a cute little bungalow or townhome close in. Back then, Houston was cheap. Houston has gone from cheap to affordable and if all things stay constant will begin to push the cost of living in northern cities in a few years. That is significant because the major advantage Houston has on other cities is gradually eroding away. Of course, I cannot possibly argue with your survey of parking lots in Houston. That is clearly irrefutable evidence. You shouldn't be burdened with having to substantiate that assertion.

http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/18/2/182.abstract

I was just saying that when your budget for a house is 2-3 mil, 500-600k for land is a perfectly reasonable amount to pay. And you can expect to find people willing to pay that much. People are paying 800-1 mil for "teardowns" in River Oaks and Tanglewood. 500-600k for land in West U/Bellaire/Spring Branch is very reasonable if your overall budget is 1.5mil+. Whether that individual should be putting that kind of money into a house depends largely on individual needs. I know some big plaintiff's attorneys who put about as much money into their homes as the could possibly manage because Texas has no limit on the homestead exemption for judgment creditors. If they get sued for malpractice or get in a dispute with a partner, they can just take a line of credit against their house if everything blows up. But for others who do not carry as much risk in their jobs, it might be smarter to live below their means and keep more liquidity for investment opportunities.

Most of the bidding wars were for bungalows that got the interest of investors and were in a price range that was more accessible to more people. But, on my side of town, a 2900 sq ft new construction on a small lot sold for @730k in the spring. The house had a bidding war just based on word of mouth from realtors and the builder. I also know some people who paid just over 800k last spring for a new build in the eastern HD and had to out bid a couple of other people. Both never listed, so I do not know what the builder/investor had for the asking price. My understanding is that the one that sold for 730k went for tens of thousands above what they intended to be the list price. Houston isn't that cheap when you stop looking at real property prices in a bubble. When you factor in housing and transportation costs, Houston is only 26th in the largest 50 cities in terms of affordability: http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2013/09/houston-not-so-affordable-after-all/

The majority opinion is clear that they are only extending Nollan and Dolan to requirements of monetary payments to the government because those payments can be akin to a taking if they are the equivalent of the cost of dedicating a portion of your property to the government (payment in lieu of dedication=monetary exaction). Nothing in the opinion suggests that the Court would apply Nollan Dolan if government regulation required a land owner to incur a cost paid to a third party. Even Kagan's argument, which you are in love with, is clear that the hypothetical challenges under the new Dolan/Nollan analysis are all fees paid TO GOVERNMENT. A regulation that burdens property with additional costs to comply is still analyzed under the Penn Central line of decisions. That is because there is a difference between a mere regulation and an exaction.

Forget Kagan's dissent. Look at J. Alito's opinion: "Because the government need only provide a permit applicant with one alternative that satisfies the nexus and rough proportionality standards, a permitting authority wishing to exact an easement could simply give the owner a choice of either surrendering an easement or making a payment equal to the easement's value. Such so-called 'in lieu of' fees are utterly common place . . . and they are functionally equivalent to other types of land use exactions." How in the world do historic district requirements fit into the monetary land use exactions described by J. Alito? There isn't even a permit fee for HAHC. A monetary exaction is not a diminished return on development of real property caused by a land use restriction. Penn Central's test covers that issue ("investment backed expectations"). Nollan/Dolan require an exaction, whether it be monetary or dedication of land. All Koontz does is expand Nollan/Dolan to monetary exactions. No monetary exaction, not Nollan/Dolan. Koontz does absolutely nothing for someone opposing historic building regulations.

Still waiting to hear your argument that compliance with a historic ordinance is an exaction that is subject to Nolan Dollan. No cracks until you can clear that hurdle.

Now you are just embarrassing yourself. The case does not hold that fees are a taking. It just opens the door for a constitutional challenge to exactions. Kagan just makes a "taken to its logical limits" argument. If you want to file a Federal lawsuit citing Koontz seeking to declare the permit fee for a certificate of appropriateness, you will first have to find a fee to pay (there is none for a COA). Then, you will have to argue that the approval of a historic commission is an exaction under Koontz. It is not. If Koontz went that far, then setbacks, building codes, and even the ADA standards could be subject to constitutional attack because they all burden property owners. But that is not what Koontz is about. Koontz extends Nolan Dollan analysis to offsite exactions that take the form of a requirement to purchase land for mitigation. Kagan just points out that many municipalities have similar programs that require developers to pay impact fees in exchange for permits. Read broadly, Koontz could allow a constitutional takings challenge under Nolan Dollan to those sort of exactions (apologies for the typos above on "extractions"--too much oil and gas law for me). No judge would ever extend Koontz to every last restriction on real property. Koontz is only about exactions. Penn Central and a number of other takings cases cover regulatory control over how property can be developed which is plainly distinct from the exactions covered by Koontz. As I said before, until you figure out what an exaction is, you will be barking up the wrong legal tree.

He doesn't even understand the alignment of the parties and the arguments they made. Koontz did not find a way around Penn Central. He knew that he had no chance to prevail under Penn Central and sought to extend the Nolan Dollan test to his situation (offsite extraction in the form of a wetland mitigation requirement rather than requiring an onsite mitigation--Nolan and Dollan only dealt with onsite extractions). If the Supreme Court viewed extractions as the same thing as historic preservation ordinances, they would have had to overrule Penn Central. Penn Central held there was no taking by denying the right to build above the old train station. The historic preservation ordinance in Penn Central did not require the developer to dedicate a portion of his property to the public or to buy and restore another property as a condition of getting his permit to build on top of the old train station. Restrictions on what you can build are not extractions. Extractions are permit conditions that require dedication of land to public use. In Dollan it was the requirement to dedicate a bike path and in Nolan it was a requirement to provide a public easement for beach access. Apples and oranges. And Koontz was remanded for further consideration. He has not won yet. All Nolan and Dollan do is require the government to show a nexus between the public purpose and the extraction and to show that the exaction was roughly proportional to the impact. This line of case law has nothing to do with historic preservation rules because there is no exaction. The only takings argument in a historic preservation issue is the investment backed expectations argument. That argument isn't going to go too far in the Heights given the piles of cash everyone is making on real estate right now.

You still do not understand what an exaction is.

Please file a lawsuit in Federal court and try to cite to the exactions line of case law in your attack on historic districts and see how far that gets you. It is not a way around Penn Central. It is a different test for a different regulatory taking. Just because you do not understand the difference between a regulation that is an exaction and one that is not does not mean that there is no difference.

Nollan-Dolan concerns regulatory exactions. That line of takings decisions have nothing to do with Penn Central's holding that historic preservation is a valid exercise of the police power and the investment backed expectations test. Apples and oranges. And Penn Central was called the court's "polestar" in takings cases by J. O'Connor in Palazzolo v. Rhode Island. Koontz just extended Nolan-Dollan analysis to fees imposed by government.

Yes we have. You are free to go to the courts to try to overturn Penn Central. You are free to petition the government to amend the constitution. Penn Central has been around for 45 years and has not been seriously challenged in the courts, and there is certainly no political movement to amend the constitution to ban historic preservation laws. The constitution doesn't mean what you want it to mean. It means what the courts say it means and is enforced accordingly. If you disagree, you have remedies available to you. If your viewpoint does not prevail, that does not mean that the constitution is not enforced. It just means that you lost.

It is a bit embarrassing when you claim that people in the US do not know what the constitution is when you clearly do not know that the US Supreme Court has long ago held that historic preservation laws are well within the police powers of a municipality and are not a taking as long as they permit a reasonable return on the owner's investment.

Waldo's coffee house is becoming Boulevard Coffee. They are renovating to add a bakery and more outdoor seating. https://www.facebook.com/heightsblvdcoffee Waldo's was nice, but not up to the quality of Boomtown, Revival or Catalina. But, Waldo's did open up back when no one was interested in the Heights and was a nice place to stop on walks along Heights Blvd during the cool season.