re: The average sewer fee in EBR is $49.37 per month

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States like La. that have a high poverty rate, means that the working middle class have a higher tax burden relative to other states with similar "per capita" numbers. 

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The rates are the rates right? Some pay 0% but it's not like there are middle class people paying 20%. It's negligible imo. I've been offered jobs in TX and honestly the tax rate was a wash. It had no bearing on my decision.

Our last bill for the sewer portion was $7.38. It does vary upon water usage, so I checked past bills where we high high water usage. Those charges were never more than $18. We reside in Katy, TX.

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If I were to buy the apartment I live in instead of rent it the property tax I would then pay is a lot higher than the part that is theoretically built in to my rent.

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What? How can you know this?

Especially considering most complexes it would be <200 dollars. Most rental estimates online I see have the property renting for almost that much over the mortgage+escrow price

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Our last bill for the sewer portion was $7.38. It does vary upon water usage, so I checked past bills where we high high water usage. Those charges were never more than $18. We reside in Katy, TX.

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That's pretty good. Our water and sewer is around $32 per month and HOA pays trash so not sure. In Copperfield

There's a reason that EBR pays that much. The EPA inspected EBR's sewage system and said it needed to be upgraded, so we all pay more for that until at least 2020.

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The rates are the rates right? Some pay 0% but it's not like there are middle class people paying 20%

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All studies have there shortcomings because its so difficult to compare apples to apples due to individual/convoluted state tax structures, which make the "per capita" number so distorted.

The annual DC tax burden study goes a little deeper by comparing Hypothetical Family incomes in larger cities by state.

For example, when looking at the simplistic 7.6% number of TX vs LA, then comparing a $100k income family burden in 2016 yields
Houston = 6.1% New Orleans = 9.0%

and a $25k income family burden yields
Houston = 9.5% New Orleans = 11.3%

So the middle class New Orleans family tax burden is ~50% higher than Houston. That is fairly significant.
And the percent gap is also increased substantially from the $25k family (1.8%) to the $100k familty (2.9%)

2014 Poverty rate
Texas #38
LA #49

DC Study pdf

Our Electric plan in Houston for this year. If you use over 1,000 kwhr you get an 85 bill credit. With smart meters can track daily usage to use 1,000kwhr. Starting in March will conserve and use a max of 2,500 kwhr in summer. We change electric providers every year though and never used the same provider twice.

Yeah I couldn't handle that commute, especially with an infant spending 12 hours a day at daycare.

Most of my friends have settled in the loop, they paid out the arse for their house and send kids to private school but they live 10 minutes from work

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Most of my friends have settled in the loop, they paid out the arse for their house and send kids to private school but they live 10 minutes from work

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That's the case for most cities, particularly in the South. Inner city schools are shite so you send them to private school or move to the burbs. My sister's kids go to public in Austin but that's really the only exception I can think of. She also lives in a house worth north of 1 million so maybe it's the area in general. Lance Armstrong's kids go there too. I wouldn't put my kid in Houston or Dallas public schools.