Houston could definitely do a lot more to mitigate than it currently does. And it used to build a lot smarter. In the neighborhood where we lived, all the yards had a good slope down to the street and the houses were pier and beam on top of that meaning that in total there was typically a four foot elevation change between the gutter and doorjam. Plus a good bit of setback meant that there was plenty of space for water to go and yard to absorb some before it could get up toward the houses. The streets would flood and if we had enough warning before a nasty storm blew in we'd park some of the cars in the parking garage at the university for the duration but the houses pretty much never did.

Unfortunately the newer construction has a much larger amount of pavement and much less porous surface or exposed dirt/vegetation. There has been a general level of disregard across the city even for what could be done easily. When new construction takes runoff and flood prevention into account it is in the form of culverts and holding ponds and cisterns which have specific limits to their capacity and as far as I am aware (and I did some study on this as a social issue while I was in grad school) there is not much being done beyond that.

I find it super frustrating that so much of what should have been done all along to prevent and mitigate these issues would have been relatively simple "common sense" kinds of things that mostly just require a dose of good planning.