Houben has been a member of the FDP since 1983. On a local level, he served on the city council of Cologne from 1989 until 1994 and from 2009 until 2017. Houben became a member of the Bundestag in the
2017 German federal election. From January 2018, he was a member of the Committee for Economic Affairs and Energy, where he was his parliamentary group’s spokesperson on economic policy. In the negotiations to form a so-called
traffic light coalition of the
Social Democratic Party (SPD), the
Green Party and the FDP following the
2021 German elections, Houben was part of his party's delegation in the working group on economic affairs, co-chaired by
Carsten Schneider,
Cem Özdemir and
Michael Theurer. In September 2024, Houben announced that he would not stand in the
2025 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term. == Other activities ==