[Carolyn Feibel, Chron.com]
New homes built in Houston will have to meet more stringent energy-saving standards starting next October under a new energy code approved Wednesday by the City Council.
"The modern trend among both some of the finer small and large home builders is to build much more energy-efficient homes," said Mayor Bill White. "In fact, you're going to see people are drawn into the city because we have good building standards."
The council passed the code unanimously with no discussion.
The new code requires new residential construction up to three stories to attain a 15 percent energy savings over the existing 2006 International Residential Code.
Builders can choose from a variety of options to meet the 15 percent goal.
(snip)
Rodney Lewis, a CIC member who represents the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, opposed the changes. He said some of the requirements are "too costly."
"We have scarce resources. Why should we be forcing everybody to do things that are uneconomical?" Lewis asked.
(snip)
The Greater Houston Builders Association approved of the changes, but wants to see the city add some incentives, said Adam Aschmann, the group's government affairs director.
For example, he said, the group would like the city to pay for the cost of energy compliance inspections for homes that sell for less than $175,000.
Aschmann said the energy goals could add between $1,000 and $2,000 to the construction cost of a median-priced home.
The new energy code also would apply to home additions of 500 square feet or more.
Barry Klein, president of the Houston Property Rights Association, said he feared the regulations would hurt homebuyers.
"For new construction, the cost becomes more and more prohibitive for people to purchase those new homes," Klein said. "There is a long established pattern of people moving out of the city to escape the city's regulations. I'm sure this is the kind of thing that will accelerate that."
White said homeowners will recoup the added costs on their utility bills within four or five years.
The problem with the "recouped costs" argument is this: There will be no recoupment of costs by the poor and middle class if entry into the market is priced out of their reach. It's happened European cities with overly-restrictive land-use policies, which have served to push the poor to the suburbs, forcing them to drive (or ride) into the City to work, often in low-paying service jobs catering to the wealthy that are lucky, or wealthy, enough to reside inside the central core. This works out OK when things are going well, not so OK when things aren't.
The issue becomes one of resource allocation. Already the City of Houston and Metro have made it clear that public transportation is going to be mostly limited to a geographic area inside Loop 610 with the rest of the City (outside the Loop) being forced to rely on a rapidly contracting bus service with rising fare structures designed to supplement the unprofitable MetroRail system and, possibly, pay off dodgy lease-payment agreements and loans that are in default.
Consider this, London, has one of the world's most fully developed transit systems, yet its still considered one of the World's most congested cities. Many London suburban dwellers are finding that they can't afford to work in the City Center. This is causing widespread devaluations of property in the suburbs, areas populated primarily by the middle class and the poor.
Even though it doesn't sound like it, I approve of the idea that new construction be completed in a more energy efficient manner, with technological advances designed to lower energy bills and reduce pollutants released into Houston's dodgy atmosphere.I WANT people to live in homes that are cheaper to live in long term, cost less to maintain etc. What I don't want is Government placing artifical targets on energy efficiency that might not be attainable at current price points. Especially not a Houston Government that has been slow to respond to the growing needs of a poor and middle-class populace increasingly being priced out of their homes due to raising property tax appraisals. Add to that the Administrations' failed floodway ordinance which only served to decimate the home values of thousands of middle class Houstonians and you have a Government that's unintentionally working to hurt poor and middle-class homeowners. I say "unintentionally" because I don't believe for a minute that Mayor White and Co. are evil politicians who get joy out of watching the middle class and poor suffer. As a matter of fact I believe that politicians (for the most part) honestly believe that their policies will help their less fortunate citizenry. The problem is they never allow the thought enter their mind that they could be going about it the wrong way.
In Sci-fi movies that pretend to show visions for future cities there are typically two contrasting visions that are offered. On the one hand you have the City where Brutalism runs rampant, people are stacked like bees in hives, forced to live in squalor where clean water, personal space and privacy are unkown quantities. Outlying areas are typically grafitti-filled slums where "outlanders" (or worse "anarchists") inhabit the land often cast as good-hearted miscreants who have revolted against their city-core bretheren due to envy. On the other hand you have a futuristic model of cities where streets are pedestrian in nature and spiderwebs of transit branch out to carry people to their homes in disparate locations. Buildings are light, airy, and secure, green-space abounds.
Amazingly in Houston the 'planning' seems to be more toward the brutalist future of cities. Transit is designed to service a limited area, plans to relocate people into a geographic area are encouraged and now there seems to be a move to make houses less affordable. The result of this will be to move more people into high-crime area apartments and dwellings where privacy and security are lessoned by proxemity. A better plan would be for the Mayor to encourage redevelopment of depressed areas, maintenance and upgrade of existing greenspace, construction and repair of vital infrastructure items such as roads, sidewalks, water and sewage while applying pressure to the (majority mayoral appointed) Metro Board to develop mass transit plans designed to move people from suburbs to key points in the City, and then shuttle them around the City Center in an efficient, flexible, reliable manner.
Of course, this would involve taking a look at pretty much everything that the City is doing and (almost) reversing course, admitting that the 'planning' that got us here was wrong, and swallowing some political pride and working to make things better.
How much would you like to be this isn't going to happen?
