Houston held its tax rate at 51.9190 cents for a third year. The last time it did that, the average homestead bill went up $80.

Houston City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to leave the city property tax rate at 51.9190 cents per $100 of taxable value, the third straight year at that number. A flat rate is not a flat bill, and the city’s own notice form from last year shows why.

Why it matters

Harris County homeowners absorbed a county increase to 67.147 cents on September 17, and Wednesday’s vote keeps the city’s rate off that pile. The average Houston homeowner will still pay more than last year, because appraised values moved and the rate did not. The gap the flat rate leaves gets closed out of reserves, and reserve money spent is not there for the next storm.

By the numbers

$0.519190 per $100, adopted October 14, 2026, unchanged from tax year 2025 and tax year 2024.
$1,765.25 a year on a home with $340,000 in taxable value, per Community Impact. That is arithmetic on a sample house, not an average.
$80.01, or 4.72 percent, is how much the average Houston homestead bill rose the last time the council held this exact rate, from $1,694.89 to $1,774.91, because the average taxable value rose $15,411. All four figures are on the city’s own tax year 2025 notice form.
$30,868,000, or 2.17 percent, is the citywide levy increase that same flat rate produced, per that notice.
$0.528223 no-new-revenue and $0.553420 voter-approval, the tax year 2025 rates in Ordinance 2025-859. The adopted rate sat below both.
$4,905,979,086 in new improvements landed on the 2026 roll, per the city’s tax year 2026 rate backup. At the flat rate that is about $25.5 million from new construction alone.
$87 million is what Finance Director Melissa Dubowski said the alternative rate of 54.1650 cents would have generated. Council Member Edward Pollard asked for the figure.
$174 million was Controller Chris Hollins’s April projection, which he called the largest deficit in city history. Mayor John Whitmire disputed it and published no counter figure.

What the coverage buried

Community Impact printed the rate, the $87 million answer and a sample bill on a $340,000 house, which is more than most vote stories carry. What no coverage set beside it is the figure the state makes the city publish on its own notice form, the change in the average homestead bill. On the tax year 2025 form that was $80.01, under a rate that did not move. The 2026 form was not readable from here, so this piece uses last year’s and says so.

The other side

The case for the flat rate is real, and Whitmire made it: “This is no time for the city of Houston to raise taxes.” Residents just took a county increase, appraisals climb without help, a rate increase is permanent and a shortfall may not be, and the city has an outside efficiency audit in hand.

The answer is that holding the rate is not free, it is financed. When the council held this same rate in October 2025 the vote was 11-3, and the chair of its own Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee, Sallie Alcorn, voted no, saying the draw on the fund balance weakened the city. The Bond Buyer reported that flat rate opened a $53 million hole in fiscal 2026 on top of more than $70 million in deficit spending already approved, with baseline gaps projected at $227 million in fiscal 2027 even at the tax caps. This year nobody voted no.

The objection does not come from one direction. The controller and the budget chair are both Democrats. Critics who want spending cuts rather than new revenue disagree with them on the remedy and agree on the premise, that the published budget does not balance.

What to watch

2026 city bills are expected in October and November, due January 31, 2027.
Whether the city publishes a fiscal 2027 gap figure of its own, against the $227 million its budget chair projected a year ago. Fiscal 2027 began July 1, 2026.
Fitch and S&P Global rate Houston AA with a negative outlook. Moody’s has it Aa3, stable.

Bottom line

Keeping the rate at 51.9190 cents drew no opposition. It is also the third year running that the city picked a number that raises the average bill anyway and closes the difference with reserves. The figure that would settle whether that holds, what fiscal 2027 actually costs, was not on the table Wednesday.