Houston residents filed thousands of 311 service requests about missed trash pickups over the past three years. Now customers pay a new $5 monthly administrative fee to help cover missed pickups.
The ENOUGH team mapped those service requests to see where complaints were concentrated, then visited those areas to ask residents whether service has improved.
See where missed garbage-pickup complaints were most concentrated.
The map below shows 311 service requests for missed trash pickup from 2023 through August of 2026, right after the $5 fee took effect.
Some hotspot neighborhoods with missed trash pickups included the Woodland Heights area, with 80 missed pickups in 2026. Another part of Houston Heights, from West 15th through West 25th streets between Rutland Street and North Shepher Drive, recorded the highest total, with 132 service requests. The Gulfgate Riverview/Pine Valley area also recorded 85 requests.
The ENOUGH team also visited these three neighborhoods to speak with residents who made 311 requests and to see whether problems with missed trash pickup still exist.
In Woodland Heights, Kathleen Boyd described a different history. She said her street used to be skipped frequently, but pickups have become more reliable in recent months.
“There’s only two houses on this street; I understand how that could happen,” Boyd said. “Now that you mention it, I realize it seems like it’s really resolved; we’ve had timely pickups for several months anyway.”
Boyd’s next-door neighbor, Pat Rutledge, also called 311 in 2026 to report missed pickups, and Rutledge says things have gotten better.
“It was bad for several recent years,” Rutledge said. “Almost every month we’ve had to call at least once and complain, but in the last three to six months it has improved significantly.”
Similar experiences were shared in the Gulfgate area, with customers saying they either weren’t experiencing trash issues or that trash pickup improved.
However, their experiences do not erase the earlier complaints shown on the map over the last three years. Instead, their responses show how conditions may have changed between the time residents contacted 311 and when the ENOUGH team visited the neighborhood.
Putting the complaints in context
The timing is also important. The data analyzed covers service requests filed before and around the time of the city’s new $5 monthly fee.
A handful of conversations with residents in hotspot neighborhoods for missed pickups cannot tell us whether service improved across Houston. The city’s 311 service request data is our baseline to see whether missed trash pickup requests decline and whether the trend in repeated hotspot neighborhoods changes.
If you are a City of Houston solid waste customer and you have a missed trash or recycling pickup, report it to Houston 311. You can also tell the ENOUGH team how trash collection has held up in your neighborhood using this link.
About the data: ENOUGH analyzed City of Houston 311 reports of missed garbage pickups from January 2023 through August 2026 and mapped records with usable location information. The totals represent service requests, not confirmed missed pickups, and do not capture incidents that were not reported to 311.
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