Eye on the ball
Ken Hoffman puts little stock in Houston 'wealthiest suburbs' report
Ken Hoffman has fond memories of coaching West U Little League.
A report just came out saying that West University Place and Bellaire are among the wealthiest suburbs in America.
A website called GoBankingRates rated hundreds of suburbs based on household incomes and housing prices. West U came in No. 3, while Bellaire was No. 25. The survey had Scarsdale and Rye, N.Y. at Nos. 1 and 2.
There is so much wrong with this list but let’s start with … suburbs?
Every definition I can find says suburbs are “outlying districts of a city.” Or “a residential area on the outskirts of a city or large town.” Or “an area lying immediately outside a city or town.”
Which tells me that GoBankingRates did little more than click on ZIP codes, punch in some Census demographics, and spit out its rankings.
A little research or even a phone call would have told them that neither West U nor Bellaire is a suburb. Both are fully independent cities that are completely surrounded by Houston on all sides. West U and Bellaire have their own mayors and city councils and police and fire departments and tax collectors.
The moment you step outside West U and Bellaire you step inside Houston. If anything, Houston lies on the outskirts of West U and Bellaire.
So I put no stock in GoBankingRates survey, but since it has West U ahead of Bellaire, I’ll take it. Yeah, I hold a grudge. You’ll see why.
The GoBankingRates Hot 100 chart focused on the least most important thing about West U. Let me assure you, there are plenty of not-rich people who live in small houses on small incomes in West U. When people tell me that everybody in West U is wealthy, I ask them, “Have we met?”
Not a suburb, but still pretty great
I put more faith in an equally spurious 2019 report by 24/7 Wall Street that ranked West U as the “Best Place to Live in Texas.”
I didn’t know anything about West U when I got to Houston and rented a house off Gessner and 1-10. Soon I heard wonderful things about West U Elementary School and that was enough for me to head straight to West U. I was a great believer in public school. (Not so much now, at least with the state and that new guy in charge of HISD.)
Now I can list 100 reasons why I made the right decision to live in West U. It’s like living in Mayberry inside Gotham City.
I can have breakfast with the mayor, who listens to residents and answers questions personally on social media. I can stop by city hall and say hello to the city manager. Several years ago, I was run over by a lunatic driving a Volkswagen van. Within two minutes, a West U cop car and fire department ambulance scraped me off the pavement and took me to the hospital. When I got out of the hospital, a police officer stopped by my house, nothing official, just to check on me.
A few years before that, while I still lived in Houston, my car was stolen out of my driveway. I called the police right away. A recording told me to leave my name and number. I’m still waiting for them to get back to me. If you see it, it was a black Toyota Celica convertible with a leaky roof.
I loved my time as a coach in West U Little League, one of the biggest and best-run Little Leagues in the world. Our biggest rival, of course, was Bellaire Little League. One year, John Granato and I set up a summer game - my team of West U superior athletes against his Bellaire kids. I scouted his Bellaire team. Apparently a former coach had taught them how to get caught in a rundown and get tagged out on purpose. Weird. This was going to be easy.
When we showed up for the game, Granato had his players wearing a jersey that said “Hoffy Sucks.” These kids were 10 years old. Five years later, I was downtown and saw an adult wearing a “Hoffy Sucks” T-shirt. I thought, is Granato selling merch off of me?
By the way, my West U kids beat his Bellaire team.
West U always beats Bellaire. Winning!
