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2 days ago | 
houstonchronicle.com | Caroline Ghisolfi |Mike Morris
Houston’s affordable neighborhoods aren’t so affordable anymore. Home values in working-class areas have skyrocketed in the past decade, raising the already steep property tax burden on some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. The shift threatens to price out homeowners and renters alike, a Houston Chronicle investigation found. Several of Houston’s historic, predominantly Black neighborhoods face the greatest pressure.
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2 days ago | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris |Caroline Ghisolfi
Home values have risen sharply in many of Houston’s working-class neighborhoods in the last decade, an abrupt change after decades of flat values. The shift threatens to disrupt low-income communities ill-prepared for rising costs. At the same time, home values rose slowest in the most expensive parts of town, covering the west side, the western half of the Inner Loop and the areas just north and south of it.
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1 month ago | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris |Amelia Winger
Now, the November 2022 sale: We'll start with what the agency paid to buy the land in the first place. This 10.2-acre sale combined six properties that Midtown had purchased between 2005 and 2017.
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1 month ago | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris |Amelia Winger
Then, in recent years, the agency sold 16.6 acres of that land to developers or investors - some of which has been divided into lots for new townhomes. Despite Midtown seeking to make a profit on the sales, it didn't offer the land on the open market to the highest bidder. Some of the sales even brought in less money than Midtown had paid for the land in the first place. It was that building, in fact, that helped spur Midtown to sell land.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris
The Midtown Redevelopment Authority completed construction of One Emancipation Center, a five-story office building and parking garage at Emancipation and Elgin, in 2021. The building, which contains no housing units despite being built with dollars dedicated to affordable housing, remains half-empty.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris
The Midtown Redevelopment Authority spent $22 million in affordable housing funds on an office building and accompanying garage, called One Emancipation Center, where no one lives. Yi-Chin Lee/Staff photographerHouston’s Midtown development zone for two decades has pursued an ambitious goal: slowing gentrification in Third Ward by buying hundreds of lots in and around the historic Black neighborhood, hoping to build affordable homes on the land.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris
Then-Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announces criminal corruption charges stemming from the investigation into the Midtown Redevelopment Authority on Friday, June 21, 2024, in Houston. Raquel Natalicchio/Staff photographerA former Midtown Redevelopment Authority official and two vendors were charged with felonies last summer, accused of misusing some $8.5 million in public funds meant to build affordable housing in Third Ward.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
mauimagazine.net | Savy Janssen |Mike Morris |Mona de Crinis
Alpaca OhanaTour a growing alpaca farmBy Savy JanssenNestled in the lush, green hills of Upcountry Maui lies a serene sanctuary where the gentle hum of nature mingles with the murmurs of contented alpacas. Not unlike their native mountains of Peru, here the alpaca graze and strut happily in pastures on the slopes of Haleakalā. Founded in 2020 by Janet Baldwin, the Maui Alpaca Farm began as a modest venture with just three female alpacas.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris
People walk down Post Oak Boulevard on Friday, Aug. 26, 2022, in Houston's Uptown development zone, one of the city's wealthiest such agencies. A Baker Institute study found that the city's two dozen development zones mostly benefit affluent areas, and shift the burden of funding basic city services to less wealthy residents who don't live near these areas.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
houstonchronicle.com | Mike Morris
Lt. Johnny Whiteley of the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable's Office chats with residents during a Lakewood Forest community National Night Out gathering at Russ Poppe Park in Houston in October 2023.
