Jose Guerra is ready to start his afternoon shift at a fancy wine bar downtown, shirt pressed, hair carefully combed, a shiny name tag on his standard-issue vest. There's just one problem: His 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis broke down, and there's no public transportation from the friend's house where he's staying, a fair shot east of Beltway 8.

"I'm very responsible, not the type to call and say I have car trouble," said Guerra, who has been getting rides from sympathetic busboys when he needs to go home late at night.

Still, it's a precarious situation, since living closer to his job and buying a better car are financial impossibilities right now. Rents in and around downtown, which average $1,750 for a one-bedroom, would seriously stretch his income of about $3,500 a month. And, Guerra says, he has it relatively easy: Housekeepers make less than half his earnings and those who find something close put up with crowded and unsafe conditions in boardinghouses. "They're constantly worried about how to pay their rent," Guerra says.

While Houston has worked to revitalize downtown by encouraging the development of luxury housing and other amenities to attract higher-income residents to the center city, it has largely overlooked the people who serve them meals, pour their drinks and clean their parks. With little affordable housing nearby, that is forcing service workers like Guerra to live farther and farther away.

That, in turn, is making it harder for restaurants, bars, hotels, retailers and other service businesses to grow just as downtown is beginning to thrive again. Increasingly, they say, bad weather or car trouble can leave employees with no viable route to work.

"It's getting tougher for candidates to live in the downtown area on lower salaries," says Amber Watts, the Houston Branch manager for the staffing firm Robert Half. "I've spoken with several candidates that can't afford a car and housing in the area."

That separation between service jobs and affordable housing has become a crisis in high-rent places like San Francisco, where workers sometimes commute as far as the Central Valley more than 100 miles away. That means parents spend less time with kids, young adults have less time for education, and roads become more congested.

Houston's not there yet. But if current trends continue, it's the kind of problem that could sneak up on the city, leaving downtown establishments without the workforce they need to stay open.

And it's one Guerra, who lived in Montrose and other inner Loop neighborhoods in the 1980s and 1990s, was surprised to encounter upon moving back to Houston last year after two decades in New York — which at least has an extensive transit system that lets people skip the expense of a car altogether.

"Living in downtown, or anywhere in Houston, is like living in New York," Guerra says. "Everybody's being priced out."

Revitalization, its discontents

Affordable housing is a citywide problem. About 435,000 Harris County residents make less than 80 percent of the area median income and spend more than 30 percent of it on housing, according to the Kinder Institute, a think tank at Rice University. But it's becoming a particular challenge for the new service workers needed for the burgeoning number of hotels and restaurants around downtown.

The shale boom brought both an influx of new transplants and a spurt of development inside Loop 610, demolishing older, but affordable dwellings and replacing them with blocky townhouses that sell for a pretty penny. The trend is starting to erode Texas' long-standing advantage of lower housing costs, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The union that represents workers at the biggest workplaces downtown, including the George R. Brown Convention Center and the Marriott Marquis Houston, where Guerra works, also has noticed a change. Willy Gonzalez, chapter president of UNITE HERE Local 23, says many of his members have been migrating south, past Gulfgate Mall, even past Hobby Airport, in search of housing they can afford.

"That affects the turnover in the jobs," Gonzalez says. "Because of the distance, it's harder to get to work. The farther away people live, the more likely they'll end up quitting."

That trend is starting to worry Houston First, the city's tourism promotion arm, which operates the convention center, the Hilton Americas-Houston, and most of the city's downtown arts facilities. Peter McStravick, Houston First's chief development officer, says his managers started to notice it becoming harder for employees to get to work.

Hoping to ameliorate the problem, he recently convened a group of developers and housing advocates to think through potential solutions, from subsidizing developments to offer below-market rents to building better bus lines - which he views as good for businesses, as well as for workers.

"If we have happy employees that can get to work easily, and they know their children are going to good schools, and they can pick them up right afterwards," said McStravick, "then you're creating a quality of life for your employees that we believe will help them love the job they have, and really provide the service that others strive to have."

McStravick hopes to present recommendations to City Hall by the end of the year.

A tricky fix

So, what might those solutions involve?

The most obvious is building more affordable housing downtown. To Guerra, it only makes sense for employers to keep workers close by, so they can enrich the neighborhood. He loves restaurants - there aren't many out where he lives - and would eat downtown more often if he lived closer.

"We're all working hard to make our money, but we all spend our money somewhere else," Guerra says. "Keep us here, we'll spend our money here."

Instead, the city has done the opposite in recent years, subsidizing market-rate apartment buildings for high-income professionals. Bob Eury, director of the Downtown Management District, argues the incentives were necessary in 2012 to attract residential development.

Any subsidies for affordable housing, he said, would get the most bang for their buck in neighborhoods next to downtown, such as the Northside and Third Ward, where land is cheaper and being rapidly snapped up by developers.

"Really, I think it's the only way," says Eury. "If you were doing any kind of incentive, you'd really be climbing uphill."

Still, the city has limited funding for subsidies, about $40 million in the coming year, according to the city's Housing and Community Development Department. Most of that is from the federal government — an amount that would decline if the housing cuts outlined in President Donald Trump's federal budget become reality. In addition, Trump's proposed corporate tax cuts would reduce tax credits that help finance low-income housing construction.

Making things more difficult, the state's system for allocating tax credit financing prioritizes projects near schools that score well on state tests. That's intended to make sure that poor children have access to good education, but it has constrained housing opportunities where their parents work since places like downtown don't usually have top-scoring schools.

"It all sounds great, putting people in better schools, but there's only 600 to 800 units a year that qualify in this region," says Barry Kahn, a Houston developer who specializes in affordable projects and is working to get that rule relaxed.

Integrating priorities

Another part of the equation is transportation. It would be easier to live farther afield if people had better access to buses and trains. Guerra, who lived without a car for 18 years in New York, says he'd love to have the option. "If there were trains, I would definitely take them," he says.

Houston First and other advocates emphasize an approach that integrates schools, transportation, and housing. Austin has undertaken something like that with its strategic housing plan, which aims to create 35,000 affordable units over 10 years, prioritizing proximity to good jobs and good schools.

In a similar spirit, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner plans to unveil an initiative to improve the quality of life of five low-income neighborhoods by bolstering transportation, schools, grocery stores and other amenities.

In the meantime, Guerra is still living in his friend's spare room, looking for a new place to rent. It's tough because he's still trying to get back on his feet after losing his job in New York during the 2008 financial crisis and falling behind on his bills.

"I never did recover from it," Guerra says. "Everything was ruined."

But Guerra is still hopeful for the city in which he lived comfortably for so long. He checked out a new loft building right behind the convention center. It's $1,350 for a one bedroom — out of his price range. Not what he expected in his old stomping grounds.

"What I'm surprised about the most is all the high-rise apartments downtown, which is really great to see," Guerra says, wistfully. "But I just wish I could afford it."