Mayor Sylvester Turner and supporting council members say the new designation will serve as a tool to combat gentrification in the neighborhoods, where residents have sought added control to protect their communities. The pilot areas include Independence Heights, Freedmen's Town, Acres Homes, Magnolia Park/Manchester, Pleasantville and Piney Point.
Critics and land use experts, however, say it is unlikely to achieve that goal and may even make the neighborhoods less affordable by constraining the housing supply.
"There is an urgent concern in Houston neighborhoods, particularly among historical neighborhoods of color that do not have established deed restrictions," Turner said in a statement after the vote. "These neighborhoods are rapidly losing their character and historical significance from demolition and increased development that conflicts with the look and feel of their community."
The 13-4 vote Wednesday begins the process of establishing conservation districts. Councilmembers Amy Peck, Dave Martin, Mary Nan Huffman, and Mike Knox voted against the measure.
The Planning Department now will work with residents in those neighborhoods to review options and engage homeowners before the property owners vote to establish a zone. Then they would need approval from the historical commission and City Council to finalize the conservation district.
The mayor has said his administration will not oversee the creation of any other districts during his last year of office, beyond the original six neighborhoods.
City Attorney Arturo Michel said City Council would have to hold a public hearing and vote to amend the ordinance if it ever wants to expand the program beyond those neighborhoods.
The program is designed to be less onerous than other options available to Houston communities, such as historic preservation districts and deed restrictions. A conservation district would require a lower share of owner support, 51 percent, than the historic option, which needs 67 percent, and deed restrictions that require 100 percent.
The list of items residents can regulate under the ordinance includes: building height and number of stories; building size; lot size and coverage; front and side building setbacks; off-street parking; roof line and pitch; paving and hardscape covering; general site planning; architectural style and detailing; building materials; exterior alterations; garage locations; fences and walls; and building relocation or demolitions.
At-Large Councilmember Michael Kubosh failed to win approval of an amendment that would let affected property owners opt out of the conservation district. The council rejected the idea on a 15-2 vote. Turner said it would undermine the policy, allowing anyone to opt out and develop a property as they see fit.
The policy could face a similar challenge in the Legislature, though. State Sen. Joan Huffman, R- Houston, and state Rep. Mano DeAyala, R- Houston, have proposed bills that would have the same effect, allowing property owners to opt out of the districts and any related restrictions. Huffman's bill passed out of a Senate committee on Tuesday.
Knox, an at-large councilmember, expressed concern about the new districts' effects on existing deed-restricted neighborhoods. Could a cohort of homeowners use conservation districts, with their lower approval requirement, to circumvent that process and add new requirements?
District I Councilmember Robert Gallegos, who grew up in Magnolia Park, argued that will not be case. He said he currently lives in a community with deed restrictions.
"There is no way that this conservation district would come into the neighborhood and change things," Gallegos said.
One expert, Anika Singh Lemar of the Yale Law School, has said conservation districts in other cities have not made gentrifying areas any less desirable to newcomers, and can even hurt affordability due to new constraints on the housing supply. Lemar has researched the concept in Dallas, Nashville, Cambridge, Miami, Boise and Chapel Hill.
Supporters and some residents say the program could provide critical, and more accessible, tools to preserve their neighborhoods, which do not have deed restrictions.
In Freedmen's Town, representatives have come down on both sides of the issue. Charonda Johnson of the Freedmen's Town Association and Zion Escobar of the Houston Freedmen's Town Conservancy both have spoken in support of the district.
They point out that most of the contributing structures to Freedmen's Town have been lost in recent decades, despite federal recognition in the National Register of Historic Places. That designation did not impose any limits on homeowners. Less than 10 percent of the 500 original contributing structures remain.
"Those were federal protections. We had no local protections," Johnson said. "What this conservation district will do, it will give us local protections so we can save what is left."
Freedmen's Town also was named the city's first heritage district in 2021, which allows nonprofits to pay for upkeep.
The support is not unanimous in the neighborhood, though. Gladys House-El, who helped spearhead the effort for federal recognition, asked City Council to remove the neighborhood from its plans. That led to an exchange with Turner during Tuesday's council session.
"This is another tool to preserve historical communities, historical neighborhoods, historical features, so that we don't lose them," the mayor told House-El. "It's important that we preserve historical communities, just like those bricks."
House-El responded: "Since your administration, we've lost 11 buildings. ... You're the mayor and you couldn't stop it."
Turner later added: "It's always good to see you. Always good to hear from you, and I know this will provide you with an opportunity to be right there in Freedmen's Town expressing your view, and then we shall see whether or not your view is consistent with everybody else is Freedmen's Town, because no one person speaks for the whole community."
Perata Bradley, a native of Freedmen's Town, said the focus should be on keeping the neighborhood's residents in place.
"People need to be preserved as well, not just the brick streets that y'all know nothing about," Bradley said. She was referring to brick-paved streets in Freedmen's Town that were laid by freed slaves in the early 20th century, after the city refused their request to pave streets.
A city contractor dislodged a car-sized segment of them during a drainage project in 2016. They were reinstalled in 2018.
Councilmember Abbie Kamin, whose District C includes Freedmen's Town, said she hopes the new framework takes some of the onus off residents fighting to save their neighborhoods.
"Far too often there is an unfair burden falling on residents in Freedmen's Town when it comes to protecting this area and community that for decades has been ignored," Kamin said.
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