I don't know anything about Houston, but compared to the issues faced by car-sharing companies in some other large cities, Houston's government seems remarkably sane.
I used to live there for some years in the '90s and still visit semi-regularly because family live there, and in my own experience (which may not to apply to all neighborhoods), nobody cares about this market in Houston, because everyone drives their private cars. So it's kind of a meh, do what you want. There is a very small public-transit system, and a smallish number of taxi drivers who mainly serve business travelers (there's a fairly big convention business, and a lot of oil & gas business travel). I never once took a taxi in 4+ years living there, and nobody else I knew did either. I rarely even saw a taxi, much less contemplated something as New-Yorkian as trying to hail one on the street. So I think the average Houstonian has basically no opinion on "disrupting the taxi market", because the Houston taxi market is not a major player in Houstonians' lives. I'm sure the taxi drivers do care about this kind of thing, because the business-travel market is non-negligible, but that's more of a back-room lobbying kind of discussion; the average Houstonian doesn't take taxis and won't take Uber.
Speaking as someone who who lived in Houston for the last two years, I disagree about Houstonians not wanting Uber/taxis. Yes, we all have cars, but I can't tell you how many times I would have preferred not to drive on Friday/Saturday nights (as a 20/almost 30-something). We wind up driving because, as you say, taxis were rare, and when they were around they were all pretty awful. Not living there now, but I'm very much looking forward to visiting Uber/Lyft.
Also, as an aside, I knew someone in Houston who was in city government, and it's amazing how some of these dynamics work. Basically, this change was blocked by the yellow cab lobby for the last two years, and only for the price of about $5,000 of campaign contributions per city council seat. Local politics are insane.
I don't think it's taxis being rare that's the problem. You could always call a taxi or a car service, and occasionally I'd see people do that from bars. Which seems to be the basic model here too, call a vehicle to a location and wait for it to arrive. And business travelers already take car/limo services to the airport when they're being reimbursed. But most people avoid taxis/cars because it's expensive, and because you've always got your own car anyway (and parking is easy/free). Maybe in a smallish area around Montrose or Rice Village it'd work, but I don't see people taking Uber/Lyft to most of the city, unless they really cut the prices (which doesn't seem to be their strategy). If you're going downtown and live in Clear Lake or Bellaire, you could today avoid driving and pay ~$100 in round-trip taxi/limo fare. But nobody does. Or, you could in the future pay ~$100 to Uber/Lyft for the same thing. Will this entice more people? My guess is not many.
Their prices are actually pretty low in Houston, lower than I expected. E.g. Bellaire to Downtown $12-$17; Clear Lake to Downtown, $28-$37 estimate. Not that bad. I could see myself (and other people) using it, even for crosstown trips.
Edit: The base fare is $1.90 and $0.19/min, $1.48/mi - minimum $5.70. Compare to NYC where it's $3 base fare, $0.40/min and $2.15/mi with an $8 minimum. That's quite a difference.
Suburban commuters of course won't use taxis or Uber. But Houston is experiencing an urban revitalization. Almost everybody I know either lives in the loop or wants to.
For folks in the loop, having easy transportation to/from bars, for instance, makes Uber pretty attractive.
Interesting; I haven't seen an in-town movement in my social circles. If anything the opposite: big movement outwards, to areas that used to be considered way out but are now becoming part of the city in a huge exurban development boom. People who used to live inside Beltway 8 are moving to areas that I used to think of as farmland but are now apparently big growth areas, along the I-10 corridor towards Katy in the west, and along the I-45 corridor towards League City in the southeast. The "energy corridor" around the Westlake area in particular seems to be an center of activity pulling growth out along I-10 westwards.
It's happening both ways. The finance and finance-related things are all downtown and the inner-loop is gentrifying. So is the East End (in a BIG way).
BUT because the oil companies are moving their operations west (BP and others) and north (Exxon) people are also migrating those directions.
You would think this would mean that real-estate prices in the donut between the loop and the beltway would be pushed downward but it's not happening. The population seems to be growing faster than the "city" expands so prices are going up everywhere.
A number of the oil companies have left downtown in the last few years and moved to the Westlake energy corridor along 10. As a result, their employees have moved out to Katy, Sugarland, etc.
Shell and BP have both built huge new campuses in West Houston. BP even claims to have built the world's largest commercial research supercomputer in their Westlake campus.
I agree with this for the most part; another problem is the vast distances (30+ minutes) many people travel to and from the entertainment districts. Very few people live within a 10-minute drive of, say, Washington Street, so taking a cab is prohibitively expensive (and cabs don't like taking people on 30+ minute rides to suburbia as the ride back is not monetizable). I'm not sure if Uber can create a new market here, because Uber drivers would face the same issues (long, non-monetizable trips to pick up / drop off riders).
Sure, but I'm talking more about people that live in eg. Jersey Village, Champions, the Woodlands, Sugarland, etc. -- either they drive into the entertainment districts (because cabs won't come get them / drop them off) or they go to their local bars by car (because there are no cabs out there). I don't know if Uber will change this.
Generally, the opposition to Uber/Lyft is driven by the taxi firms, not consumers. It's an interesting observation that Houstonians might care less about taxis, Uber and Lyft than the average city-dweller, but regular political analysis would suggest that this would give taxi firms (who cares a lot) more, not less, clout in the decision.
My guess would be that the reason for this decision not being controversial is that the supply of taxis in Houston isn't strongly limited the way it is in NYC and SF (some Googling didn't turn up much evidence either for or against this hypothesis). Which of course, again, would mean that Uber/Lyft would be competing on a level playing field and not just be scooping up heaps of customers who hate the entrenched taxi firms with a vengeance.