[HN Gopher] Abandoned land drives dangerous heat in Houston, stu...
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Abandoned land drives dangerous heat in Houston, study finds
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 109 points
Date : 2025-10-19 13:35 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stories.tamu.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (stories.tamu.edu)
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Land value tax would fix this
| tirant wrote:
| How? If it's not profitable nor possible to build anything
| profitable right now, making it more expensive via taxing will
| make the situation worse.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Because a revenue neutral implementation lowers taxes on net
| on improved active sites that do something with land, and
| raises it on net for vacant abandoned sites that do nothing,
| shifting the incentive to do something with the land or sell
| it to someone who will.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Texas already has exorbitantly high property taxes, more
| than most, that's why perfectly good buildings are often
| torn down. Nice buildings where that would not happen in
| other states. Because it allows the appraisal value to
| plummet and the owner to continue to own the property when
| nothing other than a drastic reduction in this yearly
| siphoning (which never stops increasing) will do.
|
| Remember the purpose of property tax to begin with is for
| the owner to lose the property in case they are not as
| wealthy as someone else who might be interested someday. Or
| in case the property itself can not provide more than
| enough income to pay the tax in a timely way.
|
| Another problem is that taxes were always high but they
| didn't actually start skyrocketing until a few decades ago,
| after one of the key stabilizing anti-Carpetbagger laws
| which prevented home equity loans, was repealed.
|
| And the sky's the limit whenever untapped wealth is
| unleashed, to be audited and appraised.
|
| So it's been kind of a race between property appreciation,
| available equity to borrow against as values increase,
| versus tax rates and appraisals trying to capture more of
| that in ways that can only result in owners becoming less
| whole that it ever has been.
|
| Revenue-neutral or not, anything that makes it worse makes
| it worse.
| rafabulsing wrote:
| A land value tax is based on the value of the land only,
| with no input from whatever improvements are or are not
| built on it. So, with a proper LTV implementation (i.e.,
| one where LTV is the _only_ tax incurred on real state),
| there would be literally no tax incentive to tear down a
| usable (but unused) building. You would be paying the
| exact same amount of taxes on an empty lot as on a high
| end modern building on that same lot.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| What you say does make sense because it's got to be
| better than what things have evolved into in so many
| misguided places.
|
| But I forgot to add that the amount of revenue from
| property tax is only intended to act like collateral
| damage :)
|
| When you do the math it turns out anytime you start
| taxing anything but commerce, it is unsustainable because
| it accrues and accumulates disadvantage to the taxpayer
| until it is overwhelming. Plus the higher that taxes rise
| above absolute insignificance, the more likely a major
| upset occurs from just a slight lapse in overall
| prosperity, re-balancing to the further disadvantage
| against those who can afford it least. And that doesn't
| include the pulling of political strings by those who
| benefit most from that type activity.
|
| You don't sensibly tax people just for existing, even at
| 3/5 the amount per head. Likewise their property unless
| it is involved in commercial activity, nor wage income
| since the employer is the commercial enterprise they
| should have that all covered like it used to be when
| things were not so predatory.
|
| But they tax "rooftops" like a lot of other places based
| on square footage and now in Houston there has been some
| recent influence to demolish unoccupied buildings more so
| for appearance sake to the world for the upcoming World
| Cup as an excuse more than anything else.
|
| It appears the actual demolition of truly abandoned
| buildings can not be accelerated without blurring the
| lines between actual abandonment and merely unoccupied to
| some degree or another.
|
| But appearances can be deceiving.
|
| The big thing is there's enough people much wealthier
| than those who have the properties now, who want them
| either way, demolished or not.
|
| Under threat of forced demolition those having buildings
| suitable for rehab would need to sell for less than they
| would have otherwise. Who cares about the poor sellers
| who have been paying taxes on the buildings the whole
| time, working toward a financial turnaround? The idea
| seems to be to incentivize new buyers to have better
| opportunities by preying on previous owners' misfortune.
|
| OTOH, as soon as any property has had any nonproductive
| structures removed, its appraised value and tax levy
| drops like a rock, making it way more attractive for the
| same type buyers who could have already obtained all the
| lots having buildings they are willing to rehab.
|
| The new buyers can then afford many more vacant lots for
| potential future construction, which had always been a
| non-bonanza prospect otherwise, and with the newly
| lowered taxes afford to wait and see which might be a
| bonanza to build on someday. A lot more so than the
| previous owners.
|
| If a lot of this happens at the same time, then the
| market for reclaimed lots like this will have downward
| price pressure too until the effect runs its course.
|
| Too bad for the little guy either way.
| wffurr wrote:
| >> that's why perfectly good buildings are often torn
| down. Nice buildings where that would not happen in other
| states. Because it allows the appraisal value to plummet
| and the owner to continue to own the property when
| nothing other than a drastic reduction in this yearly
| siphoning
|
| This is exactly the problem that Land Value Tax proposes
| to fix. The tax doesn't go down if the land owner
| destroys their structures and ruins the site.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| See my other message.
|
| The owners don't want to destroy the structures at all.
|
| They've been holding onto the properties because
| appreciation was outpacing taxation, allowing a
| predictable path to remodeling and re-habitation.
|
| Until that changed. Primarily from greedier investors not
| having enough low-hanging fruit to pick from so they're
| shaking the trees for all they have until they can give
| no more.
|
| It's new buyers instead that want to swoop in if the
| landscape can be further tilted in their favor. Just a
| little bit is all it takes to yield a big return for a
| privileged few.
|
| Other costs have risen too but the taxes are so high
| that's what triggers the final destruction.
|
| Property tax has that extra-financial "property" that
| keeps your home positioned like dominos ready to fall.
| Like other skyrocketing costs don't do, even though the
| pressure from them is huge too.
|
| This is by design.
|
| LVT wont help you now. It's too late.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Something is more profitable than nothing, always
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| if it's truly not profitable or possible to use the land,
| then the land value tax would be $0.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Texas has some of the highest property tax millages in the U.S.
| they're closer to a land value tax than most other places
| potato3732842 wrote:
| This land isn't "abandoned". Nobody is sitting on vacant RE in
| Texas and getting fucked by sky high TX property taxes for the
| fun of it.
|
| It's fundamentally a long bet that basically the same people
| (demographically if not often individually) who are complaining
| about this will turn around and pass legislation that makes
| development even more onerous and therefore makes their existing
| cheap 30-60yo building with a simple uninterrupted parking lot
| and un-engineered drainage ditches (the typical form vacant
| commercial RE seems to take) even more valuable.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. Allowing people to build infinite
| height towers with no parking instantly makes land worth far
| more, and the people that pay for this "movement" are all
| large-scale landowners. Holding land and keeping it trash is an
| investment; they're sure that pouring money into YIMBY groups
| will eventually make them a fortune, and the fact that they're
| leaving the land trashed will just help YIMBY arguments.
|
| The people who fight it are the people who actually live there.
| You know, the "demographics."
| immibis wrote:
| The idea is to drive up demand for land in general, and then
| make _your_ piece of land the valuable one. Please note that
| we don 't live in a perfectly efficient market.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You can't build an infinite height tower with no parking if
| the market doesn't support it. You need to be building that
| in a neighborhood of half infinite height towers to make it
| make sense.
|
| But there are no neighborhoods like that because we have
| regulated incremental development out of existence. There is
| no gradual redevelopment anymore because nobody can afford to
| get kicked in the dick by huge amounts of of compliance cost
| bullshit (all of which the useful idiots and those with
| financial motive are more than capable of justifying in
| abstract, no one droplet feels responsible for the flood and
| all that) to just take an incremental step. The only way to
| make the math make sense is to go whole hog, seek a variance
| and put up something huge and make back the costs.
|
| This is why it "looks" like local residents care. They'd be
| fine with triple deckers organically filling in as well as
| subdivisions, back lot houses, etc, etc. They just don't want
| a N-over-1 in their suburban neighborhood. This is
| exacerbated by the fact that anyone who could be living in
| such a place at such a time when that conversation is happen
| is rich enough to have no other real problems.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Demand for floorspace is very large, but it is not infinite.
|
| Allowing more floorspace on a given lot of land in an in a
| place people want to live, increases land value solely
| because the status quo mandates floorspace scarcity in those
| places. In a world where everyone had all the interior
| floorspace they could ever desire, rezoning a random vacant
| lot for an infinite height building would have no effect
| whatsoever because there would be no demand the additional
| floorspace.
|
| Allowing vast quantities of floorspace on every lot within
| city limits would surely enrich some homeowner-occupiers who
| own land, but only those whose land was in locations ppl
| actually wanted to live. Those in other locations, whose only
| current draw is "you aren't allow to live/build in the place
| You want to be, so come here instead" would lose value.
| thfuran wrote:
| I'd assume that floorspace close to the ground would be
| worth more than floorspace that takes a half hour commute
| by elevator to reach.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| lol true :)
|
| Seriously tho, I once tried tracking all transactions in
| a nearby 4 storey condo building (these transactions are
| public where I live). I tried graphing $/sqft by the
| floor of the building and there was definitely a revealed
| preference in the form of higher $/sqft but it was for
| higher floors rather than lower. However on an infinite
| scale, I'm sure your point stands, that at some point the
| inconvenience would outweigh other considerations.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| 10,000 acres of abandoned buildings?
|
| That's 1/4th of a Liechtenstein.
|
| Surely no one can just simply be betting their vacant building
| will become valuable with so much competition?
| heartbreak wrote:
| Welcome to Houston, TX, a monument to urban sprawl.
| thechao wrote:
| > "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works,
| ye Mighty, and despair!"
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're not competing with each other. They're competing with
| the warehouses that blanket the industrial parts of LA and
| areas south of Newark.
|
| If they have low grade tenants off and on for 10yr they'll be
| in the black. The big money cash out is when some company
| who's expansion is being strangled somewhere else decides
| that they're gonna open a new site. And if you look at the
| macro trends this is slowly what's happening.
|
| It's like the big boy version of how self storage can be a
| speculative RE investment rather than a income stream
| producing investment.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| >10,000 acres of abandoned buildings?
|
| Since this is such a large contributor to the heat problem in
| the Houston area they should tear down the abandoned
| buildings and build Olympic-sized swimming pools on each of
| these locations. By my calculations, seeing that a pool
| occupies 0.31 acres, they could replace these abandoned
| buildings with up to 32258 swimming pools which would
| immediately improve the quality of life in the Houston area.
| The water is available if you just use one of those MIT
| condensation gizmos that passively pulls moisture from the
| air. That would mitigate some of the horrendous humidity
| issues that Houstononianites feel during their two seasons
| (warm and humid followed by hot and humid). Houston could be
| a veritable seaside paradise with this one simple change.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You might want to read up about what happened to swimming
| pools in the South after segregation
| mrits wrote:
| After segregation they were at their prime. You mean
| desegregation . 25% percent of Houston was born in
| another country
| selimthegrim wrote:
| In New Orleans they were filled in upon desegregation.
| Yes I meant after the end/after the period of
| segregation.
| chao- wrote:
| I am familiar with what you are referring to.
|
| However, as it often is, Houston is a weird outlier
| because its development is so recent. The majority of its
| current footprint was built after 1970, with many
| neighborhood pools and community pools. Some are limited
| to residents of the area and their guests, others are
| fully public, such as this one:
|
| https://epconservancy.org/aquatics-center/
| csvance wrote:
| I live in Houston and would rather it be 10 degrees warmer
| than have to deal with 32258 additional mosquito spawning
| pools. The heat isn't the worst part of Houston, most long
| term Houstonians are used to it. You never get used to
| mosquitos, especially Aedes aegypti.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I think that the post I made, which I should've used a /s
| tag (sarcasm) on probably needed a /sh tag (shitpost).
|
| Your thoughtful reply made me reconsider what I posted as
| if I had been serious. Seeing another instance of someone
| attempting to build a coherent picture in the reader's
| minds eye about the size of one thing relative to another
| (10000 acres is roughly 1/4 of a Lichtenstein), dredged
| up the recurrent memories about the all-too-commonly
| misused Olympic swimming pool comparison. I felt
| compelled to to reply and ended up building an
| implausibly plausible narrative about mitigating some of
| the issue with the overheated abandoned buildings by
| repurposing them as community improvements.
|
| I am surprised that you would prefer the temperature
| there to be 10 degrees warmer. This reminds me of a time
| when I was out of state, in Mississippi, on a wellsite
| and I had picked up a copy of USA Today at the hotel
| before I left. I read the interesting parts and finally
| got to the weather forecasts on the back page for major
| cities across the US. As I scanned the forecasts they
| were all positive - Sunny, Breezy and Nice, etc until I
| got to Houston. For Houston their forecast header said
| "Oppressive". I checked all the other headings for all
| the other cities listed and none had negative
| connotations, only Houston. That gave me the chuckle I
| needed to get through that shitty day on muddy the
| wellsite and it continues to provide a pleasant memory
| all these years later.
|
| I lived in Houston and the Houston area for 10 years and
| commuted for work to Houston for another 16 years. I'm
| pretty familiar with most of the pros and cons including
| the climate, the traffic, many of the communities, the
| abundance of delicious food options for any price range,
| the stormwater drainage issues due to over-development,
| problems created by lack of zoning, etc. and being a
| geoscientist, I can see advantages to repurposing these
| abandoned buildings for community use.
|
| I don't picture any of the swimming pools as outdoor
| pools. They would all be built as indoor pools where
| families from the neighborhoods around these abandoned
| buildings can bring their kids on those hot spring days.
| In many cases it would probably not be necessary to
| remove the existing building, only to gut it and add pool
| facilities. I have my doubts about whether functioning
| outdoor pools are significant sites for mosquitoes to
| breed due to the agitation of the water surface from the
| pumps and the chlorination so I don't think your concerns
| about Aedes aegypti and the pathogens they spread are
| worth worrying about. For control of that problem you
| have to look at how Houston and other municipalities
| handle their stormwater retention ponds, their
| channelized creeks and bayous, and storm drains across
| neighborhoods in the city. Storm drains that are not
| regularly graded tend to have water pooling due to debris
| traps and that water becomes the breeding grounds for
| mosquitoes. It is also a huge hill to climb to get people
| to manage standing water on their property by dumping
| accumulations after rain events.
|
| We looked at buying homes when we lived there and
| frankly, Houston will always have issues with water
| because of the gulf coastal plain geology which left them
| with wide areas of very clay-rich soils which have low
| permeabilities and thus it is imperative for runoff to be
| a critical part of every infrastructure project in the
| region. Even knowing all this they still sold off all the
| Katy Prairie land where rice and sugarcane was grown and
| which regularly flooded for generations. That land was a
| winter ground for migratory birds from all over North
| America until they turned it into poorly-drained
| subdivisions with homes on concrete slabs that crack and
| buckle and keep foundation repair contractors busy.
|
| I think it would be a useful project for a GIS pro to map
| these abandoned properties and short-list some of them
| for repurposing as described in communities where kids
| have few options for recreation. It would provide
| facilities for people of all ages to learn to swim,
| practice diving board skills, remain physically fit, and
| some of them could be fitted with wave pools to simulate
| beach conditions and make it more fun. Jobs for young
| teens in the neighborhood, community building, physical
| activity that one can do on a hot Houston day, etc. I see
| nothing but positives here. Maybe my whole post needs a
| /sh though.
| csvance wrote:
| A more generous interpretation of your grandiose vision
| would obviously include some way to make the water not
| into a breeding ground, like what you mentioned here. But
| seeing as this is hacker news, I felt like playing into
| the respective stereotypes of an interaction between
| someone living in the Bay Area and Houston completely
| talking past eachother.
|
| And yes, the lack of planning does cause problems. It
| also has obviously has some benefits, like affordable
| housing. I live in a suburb (Sugarland) and while it's
| not particularly exciting, it has everything I need for
| my family... and yes, it absolutely would be better 10
| degrees cooler ;)
|
| Re: one swimming pool per child project: when can you
| start?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I am sure Houston has a mosquito control board.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "I don't picture any of the swimming pools as outdoor
| pools. "
|
| Like https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/houston-
| underground-th...
| trentnix wrote:
| I'd bet the farm the land in question is Ag value land. Property
| taxes are significant in Texas relative to most states, as there
| is no income tax. Consequently, it's hard to sit in property
| indefinitely if you're paying taxes on its fair market value.
|
| But land that is classified by each appraisal district as "Ag" is
| only taxed on the value it derives from agricultural activity.
| Consequently, you'll see large plots of land in the middle of the
| suburbs and the city that are bailed for hay or that contain a
| corn field. So then the owner is only subject to pay taxes on the
| amount the hay or corn produced.
|
| This is meant to protect and encourage agricultural operations,
| incentivize the maintenance of rural land, and shield residents
| that are subject to being overtaken by sprawl. But it's also used
| to protect land investment, including large ranches owned by
| hedge funds and foreign nationals.
|
| If the land is sold and developed, some back taxes are owed when
| the land is no longer city considered Agricultural. But that gets
| passed on the purchaser and is rarely assessed against the
| seller.
| Polizeiposaune wrote:
| The second paragraph of the article attributes the hot spots to
| abandoned buildings and parking lots; vacant lots with
| vegetation are not the problem.
| trentnix wrote:
| I'd like to see how the land is classified, regardless. If
| it's genuinely urban land, it should be taxed heavily enough
| to make it hurt if it is appraised correctly.
|
| It's possible this land is subject to delinquent taxes that,
| in Texas, incur significant interest.
|
| Also, I'd want to know about zoning to see if the city has
| restricted the use of the land. Zoning is a double-edged
| sword as well.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| If land is actually abandoned, taxation makes no
| difference. Land with abandoned biuldings can often cost
| more to redevelop than green fields (asbestos remediation,
| buried oil tanks etc). An owner dies, a holding company
| folds, and land sits vacant. Tax it all you want, nobody is
| around to pay. Of course the city or other government can
| take the land, but they dont want it either.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Tax it all you want, nobody is around to pay
|
| Why wouldn't this land immediately be forfeited to the
| city?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Nothing in land is ever immediate. Is it worth the legal
| efforts to force throufh a forfeiture? Does the city even
| want the land? Perhaps the land is tied up in a disputed
| estate. Such things can take a decade to resolve. Perhaps
| some holding company is using the land as an investment
| vehicle and is paying the taxes, if any are due. Owners
| have the right to let land sit.
| acdha wrote:
| > Owners have the right to let land sit.
|
| Yes, hence the point of a vacancy tax, but that's not
| relevant in the scenario here where they're not paying.
| Having a short period, especially for non-residential
| property, is a good way to discourage tax cheating and it
| also helps with cleanup: the best time to deal with toxic
| waste was when it was generated but the second best time
| is now and absentee owners aren't going to volunteer to
| do that. Seizing the land at least lets the government
| plan to do something useful with in an orderly manner
| before it starts causing problems too big to ignore.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even if it does escheat to the city, the city has to pay
| for the various abatements.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >Also, I'd want to know about zoning
|
| There is no zoning, that would be kind of dumb and self-
| defeating in Houston.
|
| Houston was a planned industrial community.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Too late to edit now, but it might help to remind that
| it's always possible for people to indicate they are not
| very aware of a subject by their superstitious or
| misleading behavior, without having anything factual to
| add whatsoever, or even anything at all.
|
| Which is well recognized as even dumber.
|
| You don't see anybody trying to point out when actual
| zoning was enacted, or that Houston was founded where it
| was when it was for any other reason than to be the
| industrial powerhouse of the independent nation of Texas.
|
| Except to serve as the Capitol of the new Nation too, but
| those guys moved to higher ground one day, I wonder why.
|
| No brag, just fact.
|
| Enquiring minds wanted to know.
|
| Remember what Davy Crockett said when he was going back
| to Texas that time?
|
| To some people it applies more than others.
| shawn-butler wrote:
| here you go.
|
| https://mycity.houstontx.gov/MYCITYDOCS/documents/map-
| LandUs...
| paulcole wrote:
| No, no, no. You don't understand. He wanted to see
| something that validated his completely unresearched yet
| strangely strongly held theory.
| Fomite wrote:
| One of the problems Boston had a couple decades ago is
| actually figuring out who owns those abandoned lots.
| photonthug wrote:
| If we fill those abandoned buildings with people, air-
| conditioning the inside of the building for them will
| obviously add even more heat to the outside? Parking lots
| that are full of cars aren't going to be that much cooler
| than empty ones?
|
| Basically the real story is just that trees make shade (yes,
| we know already) and "vacant or abandoned" isn't much
| involved (yes, but we want to discuss zoning/taxes/urbanism
| things)
| acdha wrote:
| There are complex trade offs there: housing uses more power
| than a parking lot but it also provides far more
| significant social goods, housing can be built with very
| different levels of energy usage and external heat
| emissions, and while people need housing they don't need
| cars the same way so you can offset a substantial fraction
| of the pollution from housing by reducing the number of
| cars used by residents.
|
| The main lesson I draw is that everything would improve by
| taxing externalities: the land is vacant because the
| property owners doesn't have enough incentive to do
| something useful with it and we have a lot of inefficiency
| in our housing and transportation which a carbon tax would
| go a long way towards reducing.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >the land is vacant because [of some imaginary
| occurrences]
|
| Texas is bigger than that.
|
| They have always taxed more carbon and more land in ways
| that make them rich as hell, at the average citizen's
| expense.
|
| To the envy of other states' greedy taxing entities.
|
| That wasn't so bad when there was still enough widespread
| prosperity for the average citizen to be able to afford
| it.
|
| The land is vacant after they tore down the buildings
| because the taxes were already too high, and rising too
| fast.
|
| No brag, just fact.
|
| "How far up is the river now, Ma?"
|
| "Six feet deep, and rising . . ."
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >air-conditioning the inside of the building for them will
| obviously add even more heat to the outside?
|
| Roger?
|
| Well, if Roger's not here somebody's going to have to do
| the thermodynamics their own self, and it's good to take
| the initiative plus show it can be done wihtout scaring
| anybody by using equations or any of that complicated stuff
| :)
| lukan wrote:
| Is that a sort of joke?
|
| If not, you cannot make the land cold with air condition.
| You can just move heat around, with AC from the inside to
| the outside, but that costs extra energy -> more heat
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >Is that a sort of joke?
|
| Yes!
|
| But only if your name is Roger :)
|
| >you cannot make the land cold with air condition. You
| can just move heat around, with AC from the inside to the
| outside, but that costs extra energy -> more heat
|
| Which is exactly what I've been saying since I was a
| teenager.
|
| According to thermodynamics anyway . . .
| LamaOfRuin wrote:
| This is still just moving the heat around, but with
| metamaterials you _can_ now passively convert the heat
| energy into wavelengths that do not get absorbed by the
| atmosphere and beam a decent chunk of it back into space.
| stackskipton wrote:
| They may not be paying taxes. When I worked with this in other
| states, most of time, it's commercial property that property
| owner LLC just walked away from because it's worthless. LLC
| exists on paper owning the land but has no money/assets besides
| the land so nothing for government to take. Bills just go into
| shredder and arrears continuing piling up.
|
| County does not want to seize the land because they know they
| can't get tax amount owed and would be stuck with worthless
| property it has to maintain.
|
| Probably need some form of tax amnesty system where counties
| can seize these properties, sell them off for any amount and
| wipe tax bill clean. However, that's process would be ripe for
| corruption which thinking about TX, I'm surprised they haven't
| allowed that.
| njovin wrote:
| Somebody needs to compile a database of these and let people
| start actually taking advantage of the adverse possession
| laws.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Varies state to state, as usual, but 'round here:
|
| The taxing authority (city or county, generally) maintains
| a list of all the property in tax arrears. Once a year,
| there is an auction where they go around the room and each
| bidder can bid a rate for each property; the lowest rate
| wins a coupon that entitles the bearer to collect the tax
| plus the rate from the property owner, but requires the
| bearer to pay the base tax to the taxing authority.
|
| If a few years go by without the property owner retiring
| the debt, the holder can send a notice with some time
| requirements and after that, they can sue for the title and
| then they own the property. Usually the owner pays at the
| last moment but then they owe attorney's fees.
|
| Adverse possession is completely different and would
| require living in the tax-delinquent property for several
| years.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Whole problem is likely the value of the land is less
| than taxes owed. So any system where county is HAS to get
| the taxes owed means no one will touch the property.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Probably need some form of tax amnesty system where
| counties can seize these properties, sell them off for any
| amount and wipe tax bill clean. However, that's process would
| be ripe for corruption which thinking about TX, I'm surprised
| they haven't allowed that.
|
| In Washington state, tax foreclosure has a minimum bid of the
| taxes due and if there is no bid, the county takes title.
| Then there are procedures to sell those 'tax title'
| properties, my county says typically the minimum price is 80%
| of assessed value ... which would typically be more than the
| tax debt, so maybe better to participate in the tax
| foreclosure auction.
|
| I don't know that the county has a duty to maintain tax title
| lands. Vacant land is probably going to get emergency
| maintenance by a government agency of last resort anyway.
| jdeibele wrote:
| There might not be a duty but I would say it's good policy.
| Tall grass is a fire risk and often a place to dump things.
| Also a source of weeds that spread to neighboring
| properties.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Worse than vacant land will be land with abandoned
| structures, which would need to be demolished at someone's
| expense. Especially industrial sites where there may be
| hazardous waste, underground tanks, etc. present as well.
| dkarl wrote:
| Beekeeping is popular, too. I know some wealthy people who pay
| a beekeeper to keep bees on their land and receive jarred honey
| with personalized labels as a little bonus on top of their tax
| break. "<Name>'s Honey" with a head shot.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| yes i also know people who do that
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's extremely unlikely the land in question (paved lots and
| abandoned buildings) is agricultural.
|
| "finds that vacant lots with vegetation can help cool
| surrounding areas. Abandoned buildings and paved lots do the
| opposite"
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| We keep the happiest pet cows in the old field in front of the
| family farmhouse after the farm downsized and sold most of the
| land so the city and state wouldn't try to include it in the
| house plot sorts front yard acreage.
|
| Different state but I think a similar conundrum. They're old
| dairy cows living their best life.
| skopje wrote:
| >> including large ranches owned by hedge funds and foreign
| nationals.
|
| Hedge Funds and Foreign Nationals owning large american
| ranches???
| paulcole wrote:
| Did you even take a cursory look at the article?
| bob1029 wrote:
| I recently moved to the more forested biome just north of Houston
| and the difference in the actual temperature is remarkable. The
| city core area inside 610 loop is sitting at 77F right now. My
| back porch is right at 68F. I am not even 60 miles away.
|
| The hottest temperatures get to be about the same, but the trees
| don't hold heat like the concrete does. It falls off so much
| faster up here. It seems you can cool these houses with barely
| half the HVAC capacity that the other ones tend to require. Which
| is wild because the power grid up here is also much cheaper.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Welcome to real Northern Living :)
|
| >On a scorching Texas afternoon,
|
| Something I'm very familiar with, and the drone data speaks for
| itself as far as what it's like in the hot sun of southeast
| Texas.
|
| Then how about at night?
|
| Those buildings can then act like heat islands that can take
| more than one night for the heat to dissipate too.
|
| Some cool off that much, some don't. Thermodynamics at work.
|
| Based on heated mass is how long it takes to cool back off to
| ambient temp by morning. Good air circulation can help a lot
| too.
|
| If everybody's roof is soaking up heat all day, the structures
| underneath that are being actively cooled at the same time are
| not expected to have nearly as much heated mass that needs to
| dissipate, and the only time for that might be at night.
|
| But maybe that same amount of heat was actively dispersed into
| the surrounding air all day by the air conditioning units of
| the cooled structures, plus some of the night. And how
| efficient are A/C units anyway? That's got to make a difference
| too so it's not just abandoned buildings but any time people
| are not running A/C even while dwelling there. At least the
| windows are open then.
|
| So the drone data on the buildings looks realistic so far, but
| everything else is just beginning to trickle in.
|
| Regardless, I'm just fine without A/C in the summer in Houston
| if I'm in a proper place like a 100-year-old home that was
| built for it.
|
| But I grew up in Florida when about the only places with A/C
| were supermarkets and banks, not even most college dorms or
| classrooms had it when I got there.
|
| You just sweat more in Florida, because it may not reach 100
| Fahrenheit all summer but the humidity makes Houston feel like
| a desert by comparison, and it sure doesn't cool off as much at
| night like it does in Houston with its milder type of "Northern
| Living" :)
| joloooo wrote:
| Fancy way of say The Woodlands?
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| The Mincraftification of language...
| bob1029 wrote:
| The Woodlands has become part of the concrete blob which is
| now in the process of assimilating Conroe and Willis. You
| need to go further north.
| tiahura wrote:
| When I lived near downtown Houston, during the summer, I had to
| change into my work clothes after I got to the office. Just the
| 100 yd walk, at 8 am, from my house to the bus stop, left me
| sweaty. The city definitely holds a lot of heat.
| modeless wrote:
| I would never expect the temperature 60 miles away to be
| anywhere close to mine. Is that normally the case in Texas?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Really? Assuming similar elevation, I'd expect the
| temperature of two points 60 miles apart on earth to average
| the same with fairly low standard deviation.
|
| Is there something specific to your geography that leads you
| to assume the temperature 60 miles away wouldn't "be anywhere
| close to yours"?
| jacobolus wrote:
| In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the temperature
| commonly varies dramatically between some places which are
| a quarter mile apart. And one side of a hill can be
| persistently foggy while the other side is usually sunny.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Daly City never ceased to baffle me whenever I'd drive
| through from the valley to SF.
| tesseract wrote:
| That is true but it's also an infamously unusual aspect
| of the Bay Area.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The whole region is relatively flat swampy area, so probably
| moreso than in more mountainous places. The soil and
| vegetation is quite varied though.
| usefulcat wrote:
| San Antonio and Austin are around 80 miles apart and have
| nearly identical climates. But they are both about the same
| distance from the coast, which is probably the main driver of
| climate in TX.
| d_sem wrote:
| You sure? Thats the case for areas the size of entire states.
| You can look at any weather temperature map to prove this.
| modeless wrote:
| 60 miles is the distance between downtown Seattle and the
| peak of Mt. Rainier. Downtown Tokyo to the peak of Mt.
| Fuji. The highest and lowest points in the contiguous US
| are Death Valley and Mt Whitney, only 80 miles apart, yes
| that's 20 more than 60 but you get the point here.
|
| Even between places at roughly the same elevation, the
| climate can vary hugely within 60 miles of a coast. And a
| majority of the population of the US lives within 60 miles
| of a coast.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Urban Heat Islands are far stronger than people generally
| realise.
|
| I live in a forest. When it's 28C here, it'll be 36C in the
| village a few km away. It'll drop to 16C overnight here but
| they have a low of 28C.
|
| All that masonry, concrete, blacktop, the absence of shade, and
| you basically just have a great big passive thermal
| accumulator.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Greenery not only lowers temperatures, it also creates a sense of
| calm, is more beautiful than concrete, and results in less crime.
|
| Plant.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6950486/#sec5-ijerp...
| "Based on the 45 quantitative and qualitative papers summarized
| here, we can deduce that the presence of parks and other green
| space reduces urban crime."
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Would say blacktop rather than concrete.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Tree cover has come way down in New Orleans after Katrina so the
| city is much hotter as a result
| ciconia wrote:
| I've been having this idea of designing a neighborhood where the
| proportions of natural and built-up areas are reversed. Instead
| of having a basically artificial setting where trees live in
| little holes in the sidewalk, the basic setting is natural soil
| and vegetation, and the buildings are situated between _and
| under_ the trees.
|
| This brings up a lot of other questions: what about water and
| sewage infrastructure, electrical and fiber? What about
| maintenance of the vegetation? But it seems to me like a really
| cool idea, maybe even within the setting of a single homestead,
| where the basic setting is a forest, with some buildings nested
| within it.
| jezzamon wrote:
| You haven't explained what you'd do for the car-based
| infrastructure, which seems to be the main problem here
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Having a lot of buildings under trees brings up a big problem
| when heavy rainstorms, wind, or hail occur. Texas has all
| three. Old trees are particularly troublesome since heavy limbs
| can snap off with very gentle stimulation.
|
| It's nice to build a house under a tree. It's a bad idea to buy
| a house that was built under a tree.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Removing trees adjacent to a house is also surprisingly
| expensive.
| pbalcer wrote:
| This exists in many parts of the world. And is usually reserved
| for the ultra wealthy, especially if you want it to be near a
| big city. One famous example is Karuizawa.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| One of my neighbors has a sycamore tree that practically covers
| the entire house. It does look really nice, but I'm glad It's
| not my house, because the tree is constantly dropping debris on
| the roof, and if a branch fell of in a wind storm, it could do
| significant damage to the house.
| verisimi wrote:
| Oh lord...
|
| "Sir, your house is too hot, which makes you subject to the 'hot
| house tax'", coming to a road near you in 2028.
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| ".. and your smart watch detected that you've exceeded the
| methane footprint quota this month, here's your fine and please
| consider upgrading your greenhouse gas tier, otherwise we're
| disabling the bean buying flag in your CBDC UBI"
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"Houston is famous as an unwalkable city," Ren said... "Google
| Maps said it was a five-minute walk from my hotel to a pharmacy,
| but it took me 30 minutes with no shade, no red lights and no
| safe place to cross,"_
|
| This sounds like a Google problem as much as a Houston problem!
| But it's amusing (and sad) to read about the Democrat mayor of
| Houston removing bike lanes and trying to ban electric
| scooters[1].
|
| It sounds like they want to make the city even more car-centric,
| not less.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/us/politics/houston-
| mayor...
| alexpotato wrote:
| Reminds me of the quote:
|
| One of the best things you can have on your property is a large
| deciduous tree on the south side of your house.
|
| - In the summer, it shades your house (specifically the roof) so
| you spend less money cooling it
|
| - In the winter, the tree loses its leaves so you get more
| sunlight (again, on your roof) which helps heat your house when
| it's cold but sunny
| pfdietz wrote:
| This is becoming obsolete with roof-mounted PV. You'd want it
| exposed all year.
|
| The PV panels, with the air space above the roof, would also
| act as a bit of insulation.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| The summer shade makes sense, but a tree without leaves in the
| winter does not provide more sunlight than no tree at all.
|
| We could also talk about the potential for the roots of the
| tree crawling under the foundation and wrecking it or the tree
| itself falling on the roof of the house.
|
| But it is a very nice quote if you don't think too much about
| it.
| giardini wrote:
| Any tree will eventually extend roots beneath your foundation
| and do damage. They will shift and crack the foundation (unless
| you use pillar construction), break pipes and structures and
| will penetrate your sewer lines. If you're lucky you will kill
| them before they do any severe damage.
|
| Though it sounds absurd, rather than a tree, it might be better
| to put up a shade (i.e., two poles and a sail cloth between
| them) to block the lith/heat. It would definitely be cheaper
| than having a tree although your neighbors might not like it.
|
| A tree must be trimmed annually once it reaches a certain size;
| eventually it must be removed. But then a new problem arises:
| the dying tree roots, which extend entirely across and below
| the land, and which had previously remained placidly
| underground and invisible, now begin to rot, swell and rise
| irregularly _everywhere_. They thrust upward at random ruining
| the lawn 's former level appearance. You can no longer mow your
| lawn: the lawnmower strikes the rising roots and either breaks
| the blade or the lawnmower stalls. The surface is no longer
| level. You can let your lawn lie fallow for 20 more years until
| the roots rot completely or...
|
| ... you pay someone enough to remove _all_ the roots and fill
| them in with soil, then re-level and re-sod the lawn. That
| likely triples the cost of removal.
|
| Trees look great - from a distance.
|
| It is a tribute to the old "pier and beam" construction
| techniques that their use evades these problems somewhat by
| allowing you to raise/lower the piers in response to tree
| growth/intrusion, thus maintaining a level house (so your
| grandkids can play marbles on the wood floor in the living
| room).
|
| Root barriers may be a reasonable solution too, but they must
| be maintained. I am unfamiliar with their success rate.
|
| I recently saw an 11-story high-rise whose foundation is
| endangered by the "nice trees" that were planted at its base to
| form a park for the building's inhabitants decades ago. The
| trees are moving everything: the building, the streets around
| the building, *everything!! Imagine having bought a condo in
| that buiding! What a disaster.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How long is eventually, because in the Pacific Northwest,
| there are 100ft+ trees every which way and lots of houses
| built in between them. I have never heard of this lawn issue,
| nor any foundations ruined by the trees (not planted directly
| next to the house).
|
| Lots of houses have decorative
| maples/plums/cherry/crabapples/fig in their front yard within
| 30ft of the foundation. I thought the rule of thumb was roots
| go as far as the circumference of the tree branches.
| giardini wrote:
| My experience is mostly in the southeast region of Texas
| where the land is flat and fertile. This would be
| considered good farmland by most people. It is in these
| regions, separated by mostly pine forests, that I have seen
| considerable housing development.
|
| Pricier homes of the Pacific Northwest are usually well-
| clear of the larger trees that challenge foundations. And
| I'm sure they're usually built by people knowledgeable
| about tree intrusion. By well-clear I mean half a football
| field away. I don't know about more densely-populated
| areas.
|
| Smaller decorative trees are not usually a problem but
| nonetheless are best kept away from structures. It's the
| "nice old 50-year old oak tree" or the "30-year old pine
| tree" that is within 20 feet that will ruin your lawn and
| house.
|
| I have a neighbor who simultaneously removed an oak tree
| from his back yard and a rather large young pine from his
| front yard ~12 years ago. The back yard is just starting to
| settle down. The front still looks bad. He mows his lawn in
| shifts: part at a time until he tires. During the rainy
| season you can still easily trace the oak tree's rotting
| roots as they steer the rainwater through the back yard. He
| saws and hacks at the roots, trying to keep the general
| flow toward the front yard and the street (as drainage is
| supposed to be in these neighborhoods). I know that he
| would be happier with a simple flat backyard of grass for
| his grandchildren to play on.
|
| Every old tree near our lovely family home eventually had
| to be removed. This, despite the classic pier-and-beam
| construction. The shifting had gone too far to adjust the
| piers. It was time to adjust the trees: and my father,
| being an engineer, had to run the operation himself.
|
| What an eye-opener that was: who knew that when an inch-
| thick braided steel cable holding an oak tree in suspension
| as it is sawed down could break, whip backward, slash and
| tear a 3-inch deep by 3-foot wound across the side of an
| even-larger pecan tree in less than the blink of an eye?
| Thank God no one was standing in the open area when the
| cable broke!
| madaxe_again wrote:
| "unless you use pillar construction"
|
| And no good reason not to, generally. Our house is elevated
| on 18 concrete piers, anchored onto the bedrock - because the
| soil is shallow and not stable. We have trees growing inches
| from the house.
| goda90 wrote:
| A similar tirade can be made about rain, wind, sunshine, heat
| and cold. Entropy happens. I think the nature of what you're
| saying isn't universal. Different style foundations,
| different kinds of ground and different kinds of trees will
| mean different things. Some issues can be avoided with
| minimal foresight. Some won't happen for decades at which
| point the balance of benefit vs cost comes into question.
| Some issues are really just expectations that many would
| consider unnecessary, like having a flat lawn.
|
| Where I live in the Midwest, trees around houses is
| incredibly common. I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood
| without them.
| giardini wrote:
| Didn't intend to make a tirade but:
|
| Yes! Search for a house without a tree in a neighborhood
| full of trees. Enjoy!
|
| Having a flat lawn may be unnecessary, but generally, most
| people want a lawn that a lawnmower can cross w/o self-
| destructing [or that their oft-drunken uncle can walk
| across after dark without tripping on a root and passing
| before his time.]
|
| A lawnmower blade is usually not adequate for a 4-inch root
| knuckle risen from the depths - that requires a chain saw.
| But then you're chain-sawing in dirt, mud and root, so
| neither safe nor easy. This is a contest the homeowner
| cannot win, merely survive.
| shwaj wrote:
| If he's that drunk all the time, the uncle might want to
| wear a helmet.
| mmooss wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience with many trees and homes.
| Lots of people live with trees around - maybe most people who
| are in houses. I don't personally know of anyone with these
| problems, though I've heard of things like it.
|
| Maybe the tree doesn't need to be right next your structure?
|
| > A tree must be trimmed annually once it reaches a certain
| size; eventually it must be removed.
|
| Definitely not my experience!
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| In Houston, any tree over your house could lead to much worse
| hurricane damage, or damage when there would otherwise be none.
| armenarmen wrote:
| "Low-income communities lack trees and green space,"
|
| I lived in 3rd Ward Houston for years, it was very well treed. As
| were most of the other inner loop "hoods"
| jeffbee wrote:
| The gradient should be pretty obvious here
| https://www.google.com/maps/@29.7512376,-95.5104388,10129m/d...
| wartywhoa23 wrote:
| Paving way to future land grabs with the climate change strawman.
| mmooss wrote:
| Can you name a time this has ever happened?
| metalman wrote:
| I use this
|
| https://weather.ndc.nasa.gov/goes/
|
| as my go(es) to weather "app", billion dollar live sat feed on my
| phone, for lots of things, other than just local
| weather,including general investigation into *stuff(tm) such as
| finding citys, of which huston is easy, cause it glows in the
| infrared like nothing else, with the major ring roads and
| highways clearly visible from geosyncronous orbit at I think a 1
| km/pixle resolution, in hot dry high pressure weather huston is
| clearly an oven. today is cloudy there, but watch for "better",
| ha!, weather
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| When I was younger (in the 1970s), I lived in the DC area (East
| Coast, USA). The summers were always tough, but they weren't
| obscene. We also got some _really cold_ winters, with lots of
| snow.
|
| During the 1980s, there was a _huge_ development surge, all up
| and down the East Coast. Basically, the whole coast got paved.
|
| The summers really seemed to get crazy hot, and we stopped
| getting extreme winters.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I went into a "bamboo maze" the other day and it was wild how
| dark and cool it was under all that dense bamboo, it grows super
| fast, they should plant bamboo forests on the vacant lots to
| promote cooler air.
| inetknght wrote:
| Solution: put green spaces with solar panels. Fairly cheap to do,
| contributes to cooler temperatures, and contributes to renewable
| power.
|
| Alas, bunches of people would rather see a rotting city instead
| of solar panels.
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