Not really. Many of the Southern / Midwest / Western cities are less expensive to live in than those on the coasts. On the coasts housing is more crammed in and with limited space, costs rise. (I realize I am making an oversimplifed generalization.)

I have lived in MCI, STL, and currently DFW. (As well as briefly in IAH.). People moving from the coasts are amazed at how low real estate prices are and how spread out the metropolitan areas are. (In DFW I think nothing of driving 35 miles from my home up north to downtown Dallas. Except at rush hour I can drive it in 30 minutes.) These are correlated.

Specifically about IAH, my great uncle was an electrician forman who put in the first dial telephone system. That was before the war (One not Two). He told me Galveston was bigger than Houston at the time. He said Houston was 35,000 people. Today at 6 + million, it is amazing how much it has grown. Oil, air conditioning, and draining the swamps have transformed it. Pre Civil War there was an outbreak of Yellow Fever. Over one third of all Houston citizens died from it, in that single year.