Dave Fehling's 11 News report

Chances are you’re watching 11 News while sitting in an apartment or a home that you rent.

That’s how more than half of us live in Houston: more renters than owners.

And when it comes to apartments, Houston has thousands of new units under construction.       

11 News

There's a move to slow the pace of apartment building construction in some Houston neighborhoods.

But is there such a thing as too many apartments?

Some people say yes and want restrictions that could mean fewer apartments and higher rents.

What does fourth-largest Houston have in common with the nation’s other three biggest cities?

More people here rent than own. More than 40 percent of us live in apartments.

“We’re over-built in apartments,” City Councilman Peter Brown said.

A new apartment building is going up inside the Loop, off Richmond. It will have more than 600 units on one block.

And there are similar projects all over: Clock after block, massive complexes dwarfing surrounding homes and not just in the inner city.

“Well, we’re all the way out to Beltway 8,” resident Susan Goree said.

In the Long Point Woods neighborhood in West Houston, rising up next to decades-old homes and big old oaks is a brand-new four-story complex.

“There’s 498 units,” homeowner Craig Adams said.

“It’s a terrible place to build an apartment complex that large,” homeowner Janet Wilkerson said.

For these homeowners, it symbolizes all that is wrong with letting developers determine how and where the city grows.

“These are our homes,” homeowner Craig Adams said. “That’s a business entity. It was brought in, not invited. We didn’t want it here.”

You don’t have to go far to find other cities that do things differently.

In Sugar Land, apartment developers are routinely turned away because Sugar Land has set strict limits.

“No more than 200 units in any complex, and no more than 300 units in a square mile,” City Manager Allen Bogard said.

Bogard said Sugar Land’s zoning laws keep complexes relatively small and few and far between.

“The guidelines have been very successful,” he said.

Sugar Land didn’t want thousands of apartments but few homes.

Like in the Gulfton area of southwest Houston where the mix is blamed for high crime and low property values.

“It’s like too much of something is a bad thing; that’s what we got out in Gulfton or these cookie cutter look-alike subdivisions,” Brown said. “We want mixed communities, including a mix of income.”

Brown is backing new guidelines for neighborhood planning that would lack the teeth of actual zoning laws but might have some impact on apartment development.

But back in that West Houston neighborhood, homeowners are deeply skeptical that city officials will ever say no to powerful developers.

“Big business drives it, but the government has to go along with it,” homeowner Donna Freedman said.

But those developers of big complexes say the lack of zoning allows them to quickly respond to market demands, keeps rents lower than many other major cities, and is quickly revitalizing rundown neighborhoods.

Some homeowners pretty much said just that about that huge complex going in on Richmond.

“I’m for it,” homeowner Jeffrey Kolb said. “Six-hundred units? A bit much.”

Big buildings, little houses and a debate over how many of each makes a better city.