HUD has allocated Texas $1.3 billion of the $2.1 billion in Community Development Block Grant funds that Congress has recently appropriated for disaster recovery. Major allocations also went to Louisiana for Hurricane Edwardo recovery ($438m) and Iowa for flood recovery ($125m). Texas officials had submitted to the feds estimates of about $27 billion for Ike-related [...]
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Archive | November, 2008
Reforming FEMA alone won’t fix the problem
November 26, 2008
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There are hopes that a structural reform and management reorganization of FEMA under the Obama Administration will solve the problems that emerged in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Dolly and Ike. There is a lot of important work to be done with reforming FEMA but even a perfect emergency management agency won’t provide the [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/25/2008
November 25, 2008
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Among the many daunting tasks for the Obama Administration is the revamping of HUD that has languished under poor leadership and neglect for eight years. The muddling of missions was also repeated by federal oversight agencies that assumed roles of consultants. Meanwhile, sales of existing and new houses hit new lows as nervous lenders freeze [...]
Read moreTexas must learn from Mississippi CDBG fund misuse
November 24, 2008
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Abdicating its responsibilities and caving to political pressure HUD has allowed the State of Mississippi to redirect $570 million of Community Development Block Grant funds earmarked for housing to be used to build new private seaport facilities at Gulfport. This means low income families who suffered housing damages from Hurricane Katrina will be passed over [...]
Read moreNorth Texas emerges as ground zero in newly energized fight against racial housing segregation
November 22, 2008
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North Texas is becoming ground zero in the fight against residential racial segregation. This thanks to the experienced and increasingly aggressive advocacy of civil rights attorney Michael Daniel and Inclusive Communities Project director Betsy Julian. Consider what these two, who share offices in downtown Dallas, have done in recent weeks: Filed a federal lawsuit against [...]
Read morePresident Bush considers pardoning former Texas housing agency board member
November 21, 2008
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ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, is reporting that President Bush is considering a pardon for former Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) board member Florida Bell Griffin. Griffin was convicted and sent to federal prison in a bribery scandal surrounding the Texas Low Income Housing [...]
Read moreStories of eleven Texas families document FEMA’s illegal and systemic discrimination against the poor
November 20, 2008
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It has become abundantly clear that FEMA does not treat low-income disaster survivors right. Consider the stories included in a lawsuit filed against FEMA in Federal District Court in Brownsville today by attorneys with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid (TRLA). The lawsuit cites the tragic stories of eleven low-income hurricane survivor households denied assistance by [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/19/2008
November 19, 2008
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Foreclosures continue to soar across the nation as housing starts dwindle. Cities are laced with vacant, unaffordable houses as the homeless population grows. The dilemma seems unsolvable by Washington or private corporations but HUD has finally owned that more could be done to educate low-income home owners about mortgages. On the Texas coast, towns and [...]
Read moreHouston uses local housing funds to replace disallowed federal housing funds
November 18, 2008
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Houston Chronicle reporter Mike Snyder has uncovered a move by the City of Houston to repay over $15.5 million of disallowed HUD housing funds with housing funds the city collected from local tax increment refinance zones (TIRZ). I have been digging into the story a little to try to uncover some details. The explanatory documents [...]
Read moreSeeking solutions to providing low-income housing in rural Texas
November 17, 2008
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Hereford, a Texas Panhandle community of about 15,000, will host an important meeting today to consider how to overcome the barriers to getting affordable housing developed in small towns and rural communities across Texas. While population growth rates in rural communities are often slower than those in urban communities housing needs in these communities are [...]
Read moreWhat’s with FEMA’s high denial rate of Galveston area requests for help?
November 16, 2008
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Anger is widespread over the fact that people are still living in tents in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Data just obtained from FEMA shows the agency is approving less than 10 % of the applications for help from hurricane survivors in Galveston. Hurricane Ike was a huge storm that destroyed homes across the Southeast [...]
Read moreNew Dallas Housing Authority leader needs to focus on the best interest of the tenants
November 15, 2008
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Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert has appointed a new chair for the Dallas Housing Authority (DHA) which got me thinking about what it takes to be a good public housing authority leader. The new DHA board chair is Terdema Ussery, whose day job is president and CEO of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team. The Dallas Morning [...]
Read moreTexas cities should place derelict apartments in receivership
November 14, 2008
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Heather K. Way, director of the Community Development Law Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, read my comments about Mayor White’s recent efforts to stop a Houston landlord from abandoning 1000 low-income renters living in a run down Houston apartment project. Her reaction was that Houston needed to more aggressively use receivership [...]
Read moreSlow expenditures, questionable priorities plague Houston and Harris County administered hurricane relief efforts
November 13, 2008
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We have been critical of the decisions of the City of Houston and of Harris County so far as their uses of federal CDBG funds intended to assist victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.On top of the inappropriate use of the funds it now seems the city has been extremely slow to put the funds [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/12/2008
November 12, 2008
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As the general economy sinks, foreclosures continue to soar and new housing starts dwindle. In California, foreclosures devastate whole towns. No evidence of the $700 billion bailout has reached Texas’ grassroots. Meanwhile, FEMA’s terrible performance has fueled a Congressional investigation and possible corrective legislation. Two years after Hurricane Rita, less than 10 percent of the [...]
Read moreHouston Chronicle urges prioritizing rebuilding Galveston public housing
November 11, 2008
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Amen! House poor Make restoring Galveston’s public housing a priority Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Nov. 10, 2008 More than three years after Hurricane Katrina, some 4,000 low-income apartments languish unrepaired, vacant and shuttered in New Orleans. It’s a lesson in how not to deal with a city’s poor that Galveston would do well to learn. [...]
Read moreRough outlines of Texas $178m Neighborhood Stabilization Program emerge
November 11, 2008
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In an attempt to deal with the foreclosure crisis Congress has allocated substantial funding to cities, counties and states to buy up for close to an abandoned properties to prevent them from further depressing property values and causing neighborhoods to deteriorate. We will soon learn whether cities, counties and the state of Texas can successfully [...]
Read moreCorrecting Houston’s extreme shortage of government subsidized housing should be top priority
November 10, 2008
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Traditionally public and Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers play a major role in providing affordable housing within major US cities. This is not the case in Houston however. In excess of 60 percent of the affordable housing stock in Houston is privately owned unsubsidized housing. Only about 10 percent is Section 8 subsidized and less [...]
Read moreMayor White saves 1000 renters from eviction but fundamental low-income housing issues remain
November 9, 2008
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Houston Mayor Bill White acted quickly and responsibly in preventing the owners of the 600 unit Houston La Casita apartment project from abandoning the property after collecting the rent money. (Read story from the Houston Chronicle). But the underlying question remains: what is the city going to do to address the massive affordable rental housing [...]
Read moreThe Federal Reserve presents a tale of two Texas poverty neighborhoods
November 8, 2008
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The Community Affairs Offices of the Federal Reserve System and the Brookings Institution have issued a report, “The Enduring Challenge of Concentrated Poverty in America: Case Studies from Communities Across the U.S.” that profiles 16 high poverty communities in the US, including two in Texas. The two Texas poverty communities profiled are East Austin and [...]
Read moreTexas State officials and FEMA in open war over Ike recovery
November 7, 2008
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It sounds increasingly like open warfare has broken out between Texas officials and FEMA over the Hurricane Ike recovery efforts. As evidence consider these quotes from state officials from an AP story last week… “It’s a tragedy, what’s going on down there,” Jack Colley, the state’s director of emergency management, told the Senate Transportation and [...]
Read moreMy hopes for the Obama administration’s housing policy
November 6, 2008
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I fancy myself a political realist. A person who spends their life working on social justice issues in Texans either tempers their expectations for rapid change or becomes very angry and frustrated. My expectations for the Obama administration’s housing policy is thus restrained based on my experience. Nevertheless, I’m cautiously (and perhaps irrationally) hopeful. On [...]
Read moreLouisiana extends its sympathies to Texas regarding FEMA
November 5, 2008
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Our neighbors from Louisiana have offered some sympathy to Texas in the problems we have been experiencing with FEMA. Here is an editorial from yesterday’s New Orleans Times-Picayune. Let’s hope that the new administration gives prompt attention to reforming the way that FEMA does business. Old FEMA redux The Times-Picayune editorial staff November 04, 2008 [...]
Read moreBo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/5/2008
November 5, 2008
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The consequences of an unregulated housing finance industry continue to hammer the American middle class: soon a quarter of the nation’s homeowners will owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. While the government bailout focuses on preventing more foreclosures, the finance barons who authored the debacle remain rich and unhampered. The damage [...]
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