Houston has deed restrictions, which effectively work the same as zoning.
There is zero land available for you to live in a safe neighborhood near downtown. All new housing is located in dangerous areas. You ABSOLUTELY MUST use a car to get around unless you want to risk being assaulted, robbed, or worse.
The homeless population in Houston is out of control and has gotten worse in parts of town.
Vehicle break-ins, burglary, rapes, and armed robbery are completely out of control. The only actually safe places in the entire city are Jewish neighborhoods such as Rice Village. The police are absolutely useless and crime is VASTLY under-reported. Police hung up on me multiple times and lost my reports each time after I was a victim of a hit-and-run, burglarized vehicle three times, my apartment door was kicked in, and my apartment was burglarized. My neighbor's guns were stolen from his truck and his apartment was burglarized. He was a Houston police officer at the time. Everywhere I lived the same things happened REGULARLY. My neighbor was a wheelchair bound young woman and her door was kicked in around noon, 6 feet across the hallway from the leasing office. All of these places I mention are in gated communities. I lived in three apartments less than a mile off the tram red line over three years.
Houston is a living hell for law abiding citizens. Not only is it incredibly criminal, ALL infrastructure is CRUMBLING and there is trash literally everywhere aside from Rice Village and River Oaks. Utterly disgusting.
Police and landlords have told me: "It's just a big city, crime happens. We can't do anything about it, just have insurance." (i.e., socialize the cost of having criminals around while doing NOTHING to reduce criminality). People who think like this deserve everything they get when it backfires on them. Maybe they enjoy being repeatedly raped like a form of Stockholm Syndrome. I, for one, do not enjoy being raped of my hard work and time by criminals or living under the constant threat of my hard work, time, and life being robbed from me. If you live in Houston and don't constantly carry a fully loaded handgun, you are taking your life in your hands.
Screw that. I don't want to live in a literal hell. Such is life in Houston.
