A Couple Ran an Event Venue on a Homes-Only Street, Then Kept It Open Two Years After the City Wrote. A Texas Court Closed It.

In February 2018, a company a husband and wife had formed “to operate a venue for photoshoots and small, intimate gatherings” bought a house in a Houston subdivision whose deed restrictions allow homes, not businesses, and started running the business there. On November 9, 2018, after a complaint, the City of Houston wrote that all commercial activity had to stop.

It did not stop. Court records show the house kept operating as a business, not a home, until a judge ordered it closed in April 2021, about two and a half years after the letter.

A city investigator photographed the house from November 2018 to February 2020. He described activity consistent with “a wedding, workshop, and event venue business”: cars at the front and back entrances, drop-offs and pickups, guests parked along the street out front and a nearby side street, valet service for some large events, and a nearby elementary school’s parking lot used when attendance was high.