Houston Leadership Vacuum: The definition of downtown insanity.

Houston's Courtier class, between rounds of desperately seeking attention from Ma Parker, is flummoxed.

For year's now Houston has been stumbling down the road of downtown development. The idea being that by priming the pump (in the form of TIRZ and tax abatements) the City could increase the number of creative class residents which would be a boon to those who think their social standing and party invitation counts could be increased by more exposure to the Millennials who primarily make up this group.

Despite these efforts, Houston's Downtown, urban population has not exploded as developers experts predicted they would. This is a problem for the good folks in the party scene because they feel they might just be missing out on something trendy and hip, possibly even an elbow-rubbing with Beyoncé and Jay-Z.  The horror.

Amazingly, the answer to all of this is MORE downtown subsidies.

So, to recap.  The Millennial groups are angry that there are not enough loft-apartments downtown for them to live and play reindeer games.  To fix this they are demanding that more City tax money be spent on developing high-end, luxury apartments downtown.

And if you don't?

Not world class.....or something.

Of course, they pay lip service to so-called "affordable housing" but in reality they only want that housing to be built in approved areas. It's just like the Ashby High-Rise folks who, while demanding urbanization for others, grouse loudly when the urban dream interferes on the wrong part of town.

Downtown Houston already has TIRZ and other mechanisms which drain tax money from the remainder of the city proper. This is done because some developers, and wealthy Millennial groups have decided that they want to live a certain way on the public dime.

To accomplish this goal they will generate maps and provide non-sequitur data from other cities to somehow show that Houston is "falling behind". Never mind that Houston's current environment generates jobs and growth.  What they really want is a gate to be built around their idea of Utopia, and some facsimile of foreign cities that never really existed.

Oh, and they want you to pay for it. Never mind that it hasn't worked historically. This time will be different.

The really sad thing is that what passes for leadership in Houston is running right along with this madness....because world classiness or something or other I'm not sure what.  Meanwhile, Houston is devolving into a pock-marked, flooded mess and the same officials who green-lighted this removal of monies from the general fund are crying poor and fiscal calamity.