Houston is the 4th best U.S. city for Black professionals, report finds

Black History Month

Houston ranks No. 2 in Texas and 4th nationwide. Photo via Getty Images

In acknowledgement of Black History Month 2024, a new report compiled by Black employees at online rental marketplace Apartment List has ranked Houston the No. 4 best U.S. city for Black professionals.

Apartment List reviewed 76 cities across four major categories to determine the rankings: community and representation; economic opportunity; housing opportunity; and business environment.

Houston earned a score of 63.01 out of a total 100 points, making it the second-highest-ranked city in Texas for Black professionals, behind San Antonio (No. 3).

The city earned top-10 rankings in three out of the four main categories:

  • No. 3 – Business environment
  • No. 4 – Community and representation
  • No. 10 – Economic opportunity
  • No. 21 – Housing opportunity

Houston is commended for its strong Black business environment and economy, but there is some room for improvement when it comes to housing. Similarly to Apartment List's 2022 report – which also placed Houston at No. 4 – a little less than half (44 percent) of all Black Houston households are spending over 30 percent of their income on housing, which has increased two percent since 2019.

Houston has a larger Black population than San Antonio, at 19 percent, but its Black population share is overall lower than other cities in the top 10.

"Furthermore, the community is well-represented in some critical occupations: 20 percent of teachers are Black, as are 21 percent of doctors," the report said. "Houston is also home to the HBCU Texas Southern University, helping a job market when the median Black income is several thousand dollars above average."

Houston also has the highest rate of Black-owned businesses in the entire state, at 18 percent.

"From the Mitochondria Gallery to Ten Skyncare and Wisdom’s Vegan Bakery, Houston has it all!" the report said.

Here's how Houston stacked up in other metrics:

  • Black homeownership: 42 percent
  • Black lawyers: 14 percent
  • Black managers: 14 percent

Elsewhere in Texas
Texas cities dominated the overall top 10. San Antonio ranked just above Houston, with Dallas (No. 6) and Austin (No. 7) not too far behind.

San Antonio came in less than 2.5 points ahead of Houston with a total score of 65.44 points. The report praised San Antonio's scores across its economic opportunity (No. 2), housing opportunity (No. 7), and community and representation (No. 10). The city ranked No. 20 for its Black business environment.

But like Houston, San Antonio also fell behind in its Black homeownership rates, according to the study.

"While the Black homeownership rate is higher than average at 44 percent, the homeownership gap (Black homeownership rate - non-Black homeownership rate) quite low at -19 percent," the report's author wrote. "Perhaps this could be explained by San Antonio’s overall homeownership rate, which is also lower than the state’s average. Additionally, the lower homeownership gap could explain the cost burden rate also being lower than average at 41 percent."

The top 10 cities for Black professionals are:

  • No. 1 – Washington, D.C.
  • No. 2 – Atlanta, Georgia
  • No. 3 – San Antonio, Texas
  • No. 4 – Houston, Texas
  • No. 5 – Palm Bay, Florida
  • No. 6 – Dallas, Texas
  • No. 7 – Austin, Texas
  • No. 8 – Colorado Springs, Colorado
  • No. 9 – Lakeland, Florida
  • No. 10 – Charlotte, North Carolina
The full report and its methodology can be found on apartmentlist.com.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Black business ownership is growing at the fastest pace in 30 years. Photo via Getty Images

Op-Ed: Black-owned businesses are making history in Texas, across America

guest column

In recent years, our small business community has weathered a global pandemic, persistent supply chain issues, sometimes volatile prices, and a tight labor market—and Black-owned businesses in our state have faced disproportionate impacts from these pandemic challenges.

Despite those headwinds, Black-owned businesses across Texas are fueling one of the largest and most diverse waves of new business creation America has ever seen—what President Biden calls America’s Small Business Boom.

As we mark America’s 48th national celebration of Black History Month, the SBA is highlighting Black-owned businesses’ achievements here in Texas and throughout the nation. The past three years have been the three strongest years of new business formation in American history.

The 16 million new business applications filed during this period show Americans starting businesses at nearly twice the rate—86 percent faster—compared to the pre-2021 average. During that time, U.S. small businesses have created more than 7.2 million net new jobs. And Black-owned businesses are responsible for some of the most significant gains.

The Invest in America agenda is powering the Biden Small Business Boom, and unlike many economic recoveries of the past, this one includes entrepreneurs of color. One of the reasons for that is the SBA’s Community Navigator Pilot Program (CNPP). This innovative hub-and-spoke partnership connected hundreds of community organizations around the country - like the U.S. Black Chambers of Commerce and the National Urban League - with entrepreneurs, helping them make the most of SBA resources. “The SBA CNPP allowed the

Houston Area Urban League Entrepreneurship Center to leverage existing partnerships with organizations that offered services to socially and economically disadvantaged business owners and women-owned businesses,” states Eric Goodie, Executive Vice President of the Houston Area Urban League. “Through the CNPP we provided comprehensive business planning and support, e-commerce technical assistance, financial and credit education, opportunities for business networking, access to capital and procurement opportunities,while providing assistance with obtaining various business certifications. We also found theSBA Lender match portal to be a critical resource in the capital acquisition process."

Under Administrator Isabel Guzman, the SBA has also delivered record-breaking government contracting for small businesses—including the most federal contracting dollars going to Black-owned businesses in history. And we’re addressing longstanding gaps in access to capital for Black entrepreneurs, more than doubling our small business loans toBlack-owned businesses since 2020.

These investments are making a big impact. Black business ownership is growing at the fastest pace in 30 years. The share of Black households owning a business doubled between 2019 and 2022. In 2023 alone, Census data showed Americans filed 5.5 million new business applications across the country, including over 500,000 here in Texas. That success is creating a rising tide. Black wealth is up a record 60 percent from before the pandemic, and Black unemployment has reached historic lows since 2021.

The SBA also understands that the work must continue. Black entrepreneurs and other historically underserved communities still face obstacles accessing capital. That's why President Biden and the SBA are committed to ensuring that anyone with a good idea can pursue that opportunity, and the Small Business Boom speaks to that success. We're helping more Americans than ever access the funds they need to realize their dreams of small business ownership – and that means more jobs, more goods and services, and more resilient communities, no matter the zip code.

To learn more about SBA resources, entrepreneurs are invited to join the SBA Houston District Office as it teams up with the Emancipation Economic Development Council and dynamic community organizations to celebrate Black History Month. The organizations will host the Resources to Empower Entrepreneurs event at the Emancipation Cultural Center on Wednesday, February 28, and will feature discussions surrounding resources, funding, and training available for small business owners.

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Mark Winchester is the SBA Houston District Office's acting district director.

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Pharma giant considers Houston for $1B manufacturing campus

in the works

Another pharmaceutical giant is considering Houston’s Generation Park for a manufacturing hub.

According to a recent filing with the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) program, Bristol Myers Squibb Co. is considering the northeast Houston management district for a new $1 billion multi-modal pharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

If approved, the campus, known as Project Argonaut, could create 489 jobs in Texas by 2031. Jobs would include operations technicians, engineering roles, administrative and management roles, production specialists, maintenance support, and quality control/assurance. The company predicts annual average wages for these positions to be around $96,000, according to the filing.

The project currently includes the 600,000-square-foot facility, but according to the filing, Bristol Myers Squibb “envisions this site growing in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

The Texas JETI program offers companies temporary school property tax limitations in exchange for major capital investment and job creation. E.R. Squibb & Sons LLC applied for a 10-year tax abatement agreement in the Sheldon Independent School District.

The agreement promises a $ 1 billion investment. Construction would begin in 2027 and wrap in 2029.

“The proposed project reflects [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] enduring commitment to bringing innovative medicines to patients and ensuring the long-term supply reliability they depend on,” the filing says. “The proposed project is purpose-built to support and manufacture medicines spanning multiple therapeutic areas and modalities, positioning the site as a long-term launch and commercial campus for decades to come. These medicines will provide therapies to the [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] patients located in markets both nationally and internationally.”

The Fortune 100 company is considering 16 other cities for the new manufacturing facility in the Central and Eastern markets in the U.S. According to the Houston Chronicle, Bristol Myers Squibb Co is still in the “evaluation process” for its potential manufacturing site.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

Houston health tech co. lands NIH grant for AI cancer prediction tool

fresh funding

Houston-based CellChorus and Stanford Medicine were recently awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant for the company's AI platform to test how certain cancer patients will respond to therapies.

The funding comes from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. According to a filing, the grant totaled just under $400,000.

CellChorus, which spun out from the University of Houston’s Technology Bridge, has developed TIMING (Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids), which analyzes the behavior of thousands of individual immune cells over time and can identify early indicators of treatment success or failure.

The company will work with Stanford's Dr. David Miklos and Dr. Saurabh Dahiya, who have built the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy Biobank. The biobank manages and stores biological samples from patients treated at their clinic and in clinical trials.

"Predicting which patients will achieve durable responses after CAR-T therapy remains one of the most important challenges in the field,” Miklos said in a news release. “We aim to uncover functional cellular signatures that can guide treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes.”

The project will specifically profile cells from patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (r/rLBCL). According to CellChorus, only about half of r/rLBCL patients who receive CAR-T therapy "achieve a durable, long-term remission." Others do not respond to therapy or experience relapse.

“The sooner we know whether a cancer therapy is working, the better. To maximize patient benefit, we need technology that can provide a robust and early prediction of response to therapy. The technology needs to be scalable, cost-efficient, and capable of rapid turnaround times,” Rebecca Berdeaux, chief scientific officer of CellChorus, added in the release. “We are excited to work with Drs. David Miklos and Saurabh Dahiya and their colleagues on this very important project.”

CellChorus has previously received SBIR grants from federal agencies, including a $2.5 million award in 2024 from its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and a $2.3 million SBIR Fast-Track award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 2023.

Houston museum showcases America's founding documents in rare exhibit

Experience History

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Houstonians have a chance to see rare documents from the founding of the nation. Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents That Forged a Nation, presented by the National Archives Foundation, will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through Monday, May 25.

The collection includes a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence; official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton; a draft of the Bill of Rights; the Treaty of Paris, the documented that recognized America's independence from Great Britain; and the tally of votes approving the Constitution.

The National Archives specifically chose Houston as one of only eight cities in the country to host the exhibit as a means to help the documents reach a wider audience outside of the main hub of semiquincentennial events in New England and the Washington, D.C. area.

"One of the things we decided when we put the tour together because we wanted to be off the East Coast," said Patrick Madden, CEO of the National Archives Foundation, who was onsite for the exhibit's opening in Houston. "There's a lot of 250th celebration stuff happening in the original 13 colonies. How do we get it to major markets where larger numbers of people can see it? So in the case of Houston, obviously, [is a] major market in this part of the country, but also we've partnered with the museum twice before with National Archives exhibits, so we knew that they would be up to the task of handling the exhibit and the crowds."

The star of the collection is a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence. Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams commissioned 200 exact replicas of the document from engraver William J. Stone in 1823. Less than 50 now remain. Madden joyfully pointed out that there are errors in this document, a potent reminder that the men who forged a nation made mistakes.

"There's a couple of typos in it where they had to make corrections," said Madden. "So even the founders, you know, they're all human. That resonates because here these people are making this move against the most powerful nation in the world and putting their lives on the line for a country based on ideas."

Other impressive parts of the collection include official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, as well as one of the drafts of the Bill of Rights. Many states would not ratify the Constitution until certain rights were included in the document, leading to Washington going on a national tour assuring state leaders enshrining protections was first on the list. The draft copy on display specifically shows the First Amendment in progress.

Houston is the fourth stop on the exhibition's tour, which will take the documents to Denver, Miami, Dearborn, and Seattle through the summer. Freedom Plane is just one part of a larger patriotic celebration at the HMNS, which includes a film series celebrating American science and culture and general Americana decoration throughout the main hall.

Admission to Freedom Plane is free to the public, but separate from general admission to the museum. Space is limited, and passes are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Non-members should expect long waits or the possibility that the day's passes are sold out. Only museum members can reserve passes for specific times. Flash photography is prohibited due to the fragile nature of the documents.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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