We’re now well into 2018, but we are holding ourselves to the intention we set at our annual kick-off meeting in January, the one time a year when we gather ALL our agents and staff together in one place for intensive training and goal-setting as well as recognition for the past year of continued success. This year, Charter Title was kind enough to host us at Amegy Bank Tower, so we thank them once again for being such gracious hosts at a wonderful venue. It has become our tradition to use the annual meeting as an opportunity to get some insight and inspiration from very special guest speakers, like Mayor Sylvester Turner last year!
This year, 2018 HAR Chair Kenya Burrell kicked off our guest speaker line-up, carving out some time in her busy schedule to stop by and say a few encouraging words. HAR Executive Vice President Rene Galvan then gave a fascinating presentation on disruptions in transportation and technology and how they will greatly affect housing, home design, and neighborhoods moving forward.
We were lucky enough to cap off our meeting by having Danielle Bartz, Dr. Assata Richards, Nancy Sarnoff, and Holly Clapham-Rosenow sit down together on our Be The Changemaker panel to discuss various governmental, social, and market factors for the city we all love. This was a riveting open discussion between 4 bright, passionate Houstonians from different professional backgrounds and we naturally want to share it with you.
Below is the full discussion with the panel, split into two videos, but we’ve also broken the discussion out into specific parts if you want to skip around, or if you want to read some of the highlights.
For starters, more on the panel:
- Danielle Bartz is the Mayor’s Director of Boards & Commissions. That means she is the gatekeeper for citizen involvement in the Houston policy process, overseeing appointments for the over 150 City boards and commissions. Through her office, residents of the City of Houston can volunteer their time advising the Mayor and setting policy, among other functions. Danielle does all this with the goal of increasing diversity and community engagement.
- Dr. Assata Richards is the founding director of the Sankofa Research Institute, a community-based nonprofit with the mission to create knowledge to build community. As a scholar and community organizer, Dr. Richards can be seen at countless community events in areas like housing, the arts, and human rights, where she provides a much-needed voice for social change, equity, and justice.
- Nancy Sarnoff is the Houston Chronicle commercial and residential real estate reporter for both print and digital, and she previously reported for the Houston Business Journal. She is also co-host of the Chronicle’s Looped In real estate podcast, where she puts an entertaining spin on the dirt, the deals, the people, and the places of Houston real estate. Nancy is known as the journalistic authority in the business of Houston real estate, and she has won national awards from the National Association of Real Estate Editors for her reporting and podcasting.
- Holly Clapham-Rosenow is the Chief Marketing Officer for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, now known as Visit Houston, leading the strategic direction for marketing and advertising for Houston as well as the Houston First Corporation. Since assuming the role in 2003, Holly has led the brand position for Houston as a Culinary and Cultural Capital, in addition to serving as a world-class destination for everything from the NCAA Final Four to the Super Bowl. Under her leadership, the marketing team has received more than 60 awards.
Now, on to the discussion!
Introduction (Part 1 • Start-6:09)
Where you live & why (Part 1 • 6:10-16:13)
Q: Tell us where you live, why you live there, and what was the driving force of making that determination of where it is you live today.
Danielle: I’m a brand new homeowner…that was not an easy process. I primarily wanted a place where I could pay the monthly bills. I largely chose Eastwood though, because of its proximity to my job. I can drive to work (downtown) without getting on a highway. I also wanted a home with character, that I could see myself fixing up through the years.
Assata: I live in the historic Third Ward, the same place where I was born and raised. After moving away, I felt strong about coming back to Houston, and to the community that gave my life character, shaped it, and defined me. I wanted to live in a community with a heartbeat, a strong connection to people, a spirit of interdependence, I recently bought a historic shotgun house on Holman. In this community, the private space (our home) is our living space, but the public space (the parks, the front yard, the back porches) is the space we share with others.
Nancy: I was a longtime renter, moving from one neighborhood to the next, inside the loop, wanting to experience as many different neighborhoods as I could. Then I moved to Spring Branch, had a child, and about 5 years ago, bought a home in Spring Valley, which is not too far from there. We originally wanted to buy inside the loop, but after losing a bidding war for a home in the Heights, that sold for well over the asking price, we decided we weren’t getting inside the loop. So, with a little girl, we focused on schools, knowing that they would be good for her and would also help maintain the value of the home.
Holly: I also was trying to hold on to that inner loop dream. I did not want to deal with that long commute. We had lived in a townhouse on Washington, but after having a child, I realized walking up and down all those stairs wasn’t going to work. But I wanted to hold on to that inner loop concept, especially working downtown. We discovered this small neighborhood, Timbergrove (just before the housing boom), and fell in love with it. On our street at the time, it was probably 80% original homeowners. You could tell that there was such a sense of community and small town feel, while still being literally on the edge of the loop. It also offered the diversity of urban Houston that we all know and love.
Houston Real Estate in 2017 & 2018 (Part 1 • 16:14-31:03)
Q: Nancy, let’s get your take on where the Houston real estate market is today, and where it’s headed in 2018.
Nancy: It’s difficult to answer for Houston as a whole, because we have so many different, disparate neighborhoods that were affected in so many different ways by the flood. More than half of the city is fine, has for the most part forgotten about Harvey and moved on living their lives, but there are many others who didn’t have flood insurance, are just trying to hold on to their existing properties, pay their mortgages, pay for separate housing, or don’t have the means to move out and are living upstairs, using hot plates. On the positive side, the Federal Reserve said that Houston could gain 75,000 jobs this year so that’s really good news for the housing market. Another concern is about communities where most of the homes have been hit and investors are already coming in…that they will essentially become rental enclaves, and how will this affect the schools, HOAs, etc.
Q: Where do you see us going with affordability and gentrification in Houston housing?
Assata: There’s a spotlight on Houston after Harvey, and it’s important for us to respond in the right way. We are not going to become a zoning city, but what can we do that’s practical, and creates sustainability, and also greater equity? We need to have a conversation with the real estate community, the development community, with the finance community, and with neighborhoods about how we can move forward in a way that keeps the economic engine moving, but also has a consideration for communities and what communities want. I think the superneighborhoods, by sitting with the civic associations, do a good job of letting it be known what the communities really want, and the kind of people they want to attract, which is best for our communities and our city.
Perception of Houston, Pre- & Post-Harvey (Part 1 • 31:03-end, Part 2 • Start-3:07)
Q: Holly, you’re tasked with increasing the visibility of our city around the state and the nation; what are we going to do differently with our messaging this year to people thinking about moving their business or family here, or having a convention here?
Holly: I’m going to tell you something I even have a hard time believing…four years ago we were booking around 575,000 hotel room nights for conventions in future years. We ended 2017 with 810,000 hotel room nights booked for conventions in future years. Public relations and tourism, we ended at record levels, so we have 13 research studies going on trying to find the problem with public perception. In an omnibus study, over the past 7 months, the percentage of Millennials looking at Houston as an interest has doubled, so we’re trying to figure out, through more studies, if who specifically is interested in Houston has shifted over the past 7 months. We all know that Millennials are compelled by authentic spaces, and authentic experiences, and my theory is that Harvey created the authentic messaging for Houston that we never could have created ourselves. It was the first time in 10 years of documenting this data that we have seen a gigantic move.
Assata: I think the test will be when we do the year out…if the issues around rebuilding the neighborhoods are not addressed, and Houston has not created a plan to address all these neighborhoods, then the authenticity that we got from that moment will not hold up.
Q: We spend a lot of time on food, culinary capital of the world, and art…do you see us continuing that message or do you see it changing to transportation, accessibility, or something else?
Holly: Our research continues to show us that Houston’s attributes that have peaked over the past 7 years are culinary and culture. And culture means different things to different people. That means multicultural, art, and so many different words are attached to that.
City Involvement & Community Engagement (Part 2 • 3:08-15:00)
Q: So Danielle, how can we engage younger people, the Millennials, and let them be decision makers of our city?
Danielle: Mayor Turner stresses the importance of getting the “next generation” involved. We think it’s important to train Millennials in how to have these conversations, and make sure that they are asking questions, and speaking up so that their voices are heard. When we look at a board for Mayor Turner (and there are 150 of them), we can look at anyone who has applied for a position, but then we also reach out, to council members, to active community heroes, and ask who do you know on this side of town that has knowledge of x, is interested in y, and knows this is for free. We’re working on getting them seats at the table of boards and commissions that are turning over or have vacancies, but also encouraging them to just start showing up.
Q: So Assata, if you could implement one piece of public policy in 2018 to help neighborhoods like the Third Ward, what would it be?
Assata: We would revise the financial policy ordinance (which has expired and is due to go back before City Council), and we would include in that ordinance some language to strengthen local hiring, to strengthen the language about using those development deals to provide training, living wages, and also to provide affordable housing units in the deals in which the city is putting forth. We’d also put in a process that accounts for a public hearing so that communities and neighborhoods can know what’s happening with these deals.
Life After Harvey for Owners of Homes that Flooded (Part 2 • 15:01-22:17)
Q: Nancy, the first round of letters went out, around 2,000, where the city has determined those houses cannot be rebuilt…do you see this as an issue, especially in the poorer neighborhoods?
Nancy: Yes, I think people are just going to walk away from those homes in the poorer neighborhoods. A lot of people are racing to get permits because they don’t want to have to tear down and build a new home, or can’t afford to do that, even with flood insurance. I work with someone who is going through this, and although their home has flooded 3 times in 3 years, and their flood insurance policies have paid a million dollars to this house…it’s easy to say let’s do the responsible thing, but when you’re in it, and it’s your home, and it’s all you have or what you know, if you have the chance to rebuild, it’s what you want to do.
Assata: Individual rights do not supercede the collective good. As attached as you are to that place, if it is not in the best interest of the city and the community for people to be allowed to have residence on the property, then you cannot rebuild. And these are tough decisions to make, but we’re going to have to make them now.
Q & A with Agents/Staff & Visit Houston AR (Part 2 • 22:18-End)
All in all, it was a phenomenal and thought-provoking discussion. We brought these individuals together because they are each local changemakers in their own way. Through education, research, promotion, reporting, government, policy, and even just their love of Houston’s neighborhoods, they represent an exceptional level of engaging with their hyperlocal communities as well as the community of Houstonians at large. We continue to believe that the role of the realtor today really isn’t just to sell houses, and it never really was. That is but one very important aspect of our calling. The value of a realtor today is in helping turn housing consumers, homebuyers, sellers, property owners, and renters into activists by sharing with them the resources and knowledge that will help them choose, and set root in, the neighborhood where they want to have an impact. Tied closely to this is our ability to educate housing consumers on how they can amplify their voice.
To many residents, the concept of community organizing or neighborhood-level planning seems reserved for someone else entirely: the municipality, the management district, the non-profit or faith-based sector, the civic association of property owners, or the commercial developer. Truly, should individual renters or owners in an area assume the mantle of “neighborhood changemaker” they can make their voice heard. Through active and proactive participation in the local governing process, these individuals can together form an undeniably formidable interest group in land use, local legislation, and development patterns. Ultimately, we took away a wealth of lessons on how we can continue to be changemakers in our own communities (of course that’s why we’re so invested in the Heights!), and even more importantly, lessons about how we can help you find your voice too.
This entry was posted in Rediscover, Reinvent, Resources- affordable housing
- amegy bank
- Amegy Bank Building
- Assata Richards
- charter title
- Danielle Bartz
- Eastwood
- flood insurance
- HAR
- Historic Third Ward
- Holly Clapham-Rosenow
- Houston Association of REALTORS®
- Houston Chronicle
- Houston Real Estate
- hurricane harvey
- Kenya Burrell
- Mayor Sylvester Turner
- Nancy Sarnoff
- Rene Galvan
- Sankofa Research Institute
- Spring Branch
- Spring Valley
- Superneighborhoods
- Sylvester Turner
- Third Ward
- Timbergrove
- Visit Houston
- Visit Houston AR
