Texas, Our Texas: Come back

 My love affair with Texas started 45 years ago

I grew up in Salt Lake City, in an ultraconservative, religion-infused, and patriarchal culture. I was the daughter of a ranch-family career woman and a Lebanese blue collar worker who were not, um, mainstream. With my olive skin, brown eyes and preference for more diverse lifestyles, I did not fit in.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there, and Texas was my first stop. At 22 years old, my husband and I moved to Houston at the same time the rest of the country (seemed like) did, in1976. Our welcome ceremony included a car fire 30 feet away from our overloaded U-Haul on the gridlocked I-45 South freeway. I loved it immediately.

Over the next few months, we settled into jobs, found housing, bought automobiles and made lifelong friends. The contrast to safe, stolid, Utah was clear. Here was a BOOMING economy, people that were a lot bolder and wilder than back home, and the entire place boasted a pretty cavalier attitude about “the ways things ought to be done.”

The oil was pumping, the Oilers were winning, and everyone — including me, an English major with no other skills — could find a good job. That starter job turning into a 45-year entrepreneurial career was not unusual here, while was hard to imagine in Utah or anywhere else.

The feeling was palpable: this was a land of opportunity. It had the air of the Wild West.

A melting pot of energy

Even though everyone back home meant to scare us off with tales of the heat and the bugs and the craziness, I fell for Texas hard. I loved being able to be outside year-round, I loved the range of skin colors and the cacophony of languages, I loved the arts & culture, I loved the professional sports, I loved the nonstop hustle.
The activity was constant, and it was all accessible. Where else could you get tickets to an off-Broadway play and park right outside on the street? Where else could you drive on the beach?
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The people, at least the ones who stayed, were friendly and on the hunt for new friends and connections. The people who arrived in Houston in the 1970s were modern day pioneers — mostly smart and enterprising, most with recent diplomas and a high dose of ambition.

Plus, it took a certain amount of grit to thrive in a climate that mercilessly broiled you for six months of the year and then literally blew you away. People wanting more predictable lifestyles couldn’t hack it, so Houston defenders were a hearty bunch. Everywhere else literally paled, in looks, in personality, and in business attitude.

Business-wise, it appeared there were no barriers here. You didn’t have to be born in a certain part of town, or have a certain family name to start a company or create a dynasty. Not that Old South prejudices weren’t in the wings, mind you, but for 70’s refugees, the welcome mat was out, new possibilities were sprouting, and everything was made easier by enough general wealth to cover any blunder.

Risk-taking was rewarded; in fact, it was expected. Houston and Texas were legendary for being outrageous, bursting with relentless, can-do sprit. Sculpt a city out of swamp? That’s Houston’s legacy, and, thanks to the weather, you can never forget it. Build a 70,000-seat stadium for a kick-off game in three months time? No problem, still seen at Rice University. Engineer a sea wall to put a 100-year hurricane in reverse? Done, in Galveston, in 1902.

Add to this the heady atmosphere created by the red-hot oil and gas industry following the oil embargoes of the 1970’s. Oil companies were money-making dynamos, rewarding enterprising people with impressive careers, big budgets and salaries.

That rising tide raised the everyone’s boat: legions of suppliers and vendors and laborers needed office space, housing, transportation, healthcare & entertainment. By-product industries like advertising, hospitality, real estate benefited from larger-than-life projects, impressive budgets, and, always, that entrepreneurial spirit.
This was the energy capital in more ways than one.

Who needs rules? Turns out, we did

With nothing but clear Texas blue sky ahead, the no-zoning laws of Houston did not seem foolhardy, they seemed like the cornerstone of a vibrant economy. Who needed a bunch of busybody technocrats slowing things down? The developers had their run of things, but their schemes often produced landmark architecture, and some of the most noteworthy environments in Houston.

Obviously, we had our share of questionable situations (homeowners having no protection from what was built next door, for example, and flooding that pummeled the city after jungle-worthy rainstorms), but things were more right than were wrong. We felt like the civic push was to make Houston more livable, more beautiful, more respectable.

And as far as the hurricanes that pummeled the city regularity — we endured, we repaired, we went on.

If you’d lived in Houston for a while, you knew that we weren’t really dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s when it came to growth management. We all watched while foundations were poured, towers went up, apartments were built, freeways expanded, flood plains disappeared.  We had to know — we should have known — that it would be costly to have so much concrete, so few codes, and a flood mitigation system that was aging in place.

Yet when Houston-defenders did the risk assessment, the gamble seemed worth it: you could make a lot of money here, things were affordable, taxes were minimal, and the optimism was relentless. It was easier to just assume that the guys in charge knew what they were doing when 500,000 new apartments per year starting tapping into the same water supply, and weather events worldwide grew more extreme.

Turns out, nobody was really doing the math.

Broken levees and promises

As of 2024, the dike has broken in Texas, and I mean that literally (as in the basic civic infrastructure has failed) and metaphorically.

Since 1976 I have lived through five named hurricanes, and a stop-the-world-in-its-tracks freeze — and every single weather event has been worse than the one before in terms of damage and deaths. Also in terms of disheartenment. Now I, along with lots of other people, have come down with a certifiable case of storm-related PTSD. Anxiety sets in when the storm forecasts begin.

Recent major wind and rain episodes have seen the ground literally shift beneath our feet. As always, following each storm there are heartwarming hordes of people helping others, donating generously, saving lives and boosting morale — that’s who we are. But, suddenly, a line has been crossed, and many are saying being #HoustonStrong just isn’t good enough. We have a strong case of storm fatigue.

Exactly why must we be so resilient? Where are our city and state leaders and their reserves when these disasters hit? Where, in this wealthy, resource-rich and blustery state, are the resources, the preparedness, the solutions?

Why must we rely on nonprofits and faith groups and communities to pick up the slack, in a city that should, based on history, be hurricane-hardened? Where is the confidence that we live in a place where people are provided for and taken care of when emergencies occur — as they are known to do, with regularity, on the Texas Gulf Coast?

And beyond the immediate emotional impact of these disasters, are we really pretending not to see how costly these disasters are to businesses, how expensive it is to repair property, how devastating rising insurance costs can be, and how totally destructive it is to the both employers and employees to be without income repeatedly after a storm? These cumulative setbacks break budgets — and hearts.

We love to say Houston is business-friendly, but at what cost? Constantly asking citizens and business owners to absorb these recurrent losses amounts to failed human policy. And asking people to live and work in a place that doesn’t protect them and help them thrive — and compensate them in any way — is not only bad business, it’s public betrayal.

It’s time for a reckoning

So, Houston, I have a question for you: At what point did we cross the line from being bold and freewheeling to being dangerous and irresponsible? When did being pro-business start to mean taking risks with public health and safety?

Something fundamental has changed in Texas, and it’s got me feeling like I did in Utah, just outside of a great divide. We’ve let our bravado get the best of us, and greed has played a part. Another set of barriers has emerged: today’s Houston is attractive only to those who can afford generators, second homes, and eject buttons when the going gets tough.

My concern is that without a change in the current attitudes, Houston is in danger of losing its status as a world class city that appeals to the pioneering, smart, can-do types who made this inhospitable environment work.

We are at a turning point. We need to capture and apply big, bold ideas to address how to, not just rebuild, but reinforce, protect and improve our city to withstand the ever-intensifying storms and support the people who live here.
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In keeping with our reputation, we’re called to do the impossible once again, but when we’re doing our best, as we loyalists know, Houston’s worth it.