HOUSTON
Support Our Initiatives
Make Your
Voice Heard
Join us as we come together to make our voices heard. Below is the online form to fill out so we can work on making Greater Houston a healthier, happier, and better city for everyone and leave a legacy that will last for generations.
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Here is OUR PROMISE TO YOU.
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The information you share with us below will be treated very sensitively. We will NEVER SHARE your information with anyone other than the county records offices of Harris, Montgomery, Fort Bend, Liberty, Brazoria, and Galveston, during the time we present the signatures for verification and to local municipalities that allow citizen-initiated referendums or initiatives and the Texas state legislature to show the public support for these initiatives.
Presently, as of 2024, Texas does not have a process for citizen-initiated referendums or initiatives statewide. And because counties in Texas are a local extension of the state government, any effective local and regional action must be taken within municipalities or with the state legislature itself.
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Our goal is to collect enough signatures to let the leaders of our communities know that there is great public interest and concern about this topic. The more signatures we can present, the greater our impact can be felt. We here at Urban Forest Houston (UFH) DO NOT MAKE ENDORSEMENTS TO POLITICAL CANDIDATES FOR ANY OFFICE, nor do we make any attempts to interfere or influence matters regarding elections themselves. We are non-partisan and neutral regarding elections and our supporters come from a diverse array of backgrounds.
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We are demanding action on several things. Given the complex nature of development in Greater Houston, we have broken our requests down into several petitions. Read each of our initiatives and on the petition form below, check the boxes that you support. If you don't support that one particular initiative or don't know much about it to feel comfortable to sign it, then leave the check box empty and we will leave your name off of our petition for that one initiative.
Here are our citizen-led initiatives.
END THE
RAZING
We aim to save as much of the existing and mature land, trees, and waterways as possible with a goal to have large sections around developments, both large and small, go 'untouched' and encourage 'build around' methods (working with the environment), NOT over the environment building methods.
As an example. For every acre on the property that gets developed, another quarter acre has to remain undeveloped or the developers face sharp consequences. In addition to building and design requirements that have the locally established and mature ecosystem incorporated into its design.
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We aim to see more land in our region saved for use as regional parks or nature conservation.
SAVE THE
SHADE
Save the natural tree canopy, and have requirements that keep a certain amount of continuous tree canopy across all development. Use penalties taken from careless or illegal development to pay for public property incentives to encourage this practice.
STOP THE
PARKING LOT
Favor higher density, mixed-use developments, like all-encompassing live, work, and play neighborhoods to put less stress on the local resources and leave less of a physical footprint on our ecosystem.
These neighborhoods serve the community by having places of employment, study, and entertainment closer to the residents who use them while offering more choices in the mode of transportation (walk, bike, ride, carpool, public transit, etc.) to get there with a closer and shorter distance commute. It allows for less space to be taken and used by roadway infrastructure for single-occupancy cars.
ITS EVERYONES PARK
End the culture that treats developers as the only voice that is worthy of listening to when large sections of land are being cleared and the unspoken immunity against the environmental damage they cause that is afforded to them. While our communities are left to clean up and pick up the pieces, poor planning and use of land continue to threaten them to repeat the process all over again.
Demand that ALL neighborhoods and communities, regardless of median income status, education level, and ethnic background demographics, are afforded the same protections. And that communities that have been underserved and overlooked get a renewed commitment to investment in their environmental health and protection needs.
The Bayous
By Me
We are working on an initiative to help protect the health of the waterways that connect all of us.
We have several initiatives and they each have their own petition. We are presenting you with the opportunity to sign in favor of the ones you want to support, using just one form.
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*We are a non-partisan, non-government affiliated, grassroots group of Greater Houston citizens, who are advocating for better development practices in our region. Your information will not be shared with for-profit or partisan groups.
