Trump blamed investors for Houston’s unaffordable housing. The data tells a different story.
Writing / A place to live
Houston Chronicle
16 March 2026 · Opinion
A good societyis builtup close.
Writer · Investigator · AuthorHouston, Texas
Photo from Charles’s brand archive
I investigate local power and write about the relationships and institutions that shape our lives. How do we make a society worth belonging to?
Public life / Private bonds / Shared futures
Writing, conversations & original research
What makes a place
worth belonging to?
A home within reach. People who show up. Institutions that earn our confidence. Follow the question across three works.
Texas boys and men are in trouble. Why aren’t we doing something?
Writing / A place for men
Houston Chronicle
19 November 2025 · Opinion
What Does Government Accountability Look Like When it Actually Works?
Listening / A public promise
Texas Tomorrow
27 August 2026 · Podcast
Why this connects
Belonging has a material foundation.
Housing affordability shapes who can put down roots. This essay tests a popular explanation against property and transaction data.
Original source
Read at the ChronicleThe
Brotherhood
Effect
Why All Men Need Real Friends
Forthcoming / 16 February 2027
A life with people
who count on you.
Friendship takes shared experience, accountability, and the effort to keep showing up. A practical book about rebuilding the connections that sustain men—and the people around them.
View the book at Johns Hopkins PressJohns Hopkins University Press
Publication date and description: publisher listing.
Editorial typesetting; not the official book cover.
The Civic Loom.
Chronology is only one way through the work. Follow a recurring thread to see how people, institutions, places, and questions cross writing, audio, and video.
Who Pays for Property Tax Fraud?
Investigation finds cheating on Texas homestead exemption is widespread
Trump blamed investors for Houston’s unaffordable housing. The data tells a different story.
Texas boys and men are in trouble. Why aren’t we doing something?
Who’s Responsible When Government AI Gives the Wrong Answer?
Police Could Get Your Location Data Without a Warrant. That Has to End
When technology outpaces the rules.
The 2017 essay argues for limits on access to cell-phone location records.
Read at WIRED ↗A different system. The same question.
Camera networks make everyday movement searchable and errors consequential.
Listen at Texas Tomorrow ↗No works match those filters.
PeopleInstitutionsPlacesQuestions
Close to the ground.
Open to the bigger question.
Charles J. Blain is a Houston-based writer, investigator, and author. His work moves between public records, the decisions that shape our cities, and the relationships that make a shared life possible.
In Blain Sight
Writing on social trust, community, and the institutions around us.
Keep following the question.
In Blain Sight carries the inquiry forward through new writing, evidence, and conversations.