picture by Erik Parker

Somilia, Katrina, Rita, Ike, now Haiti.

Another epic disaster strikes a population of desperately poor people.

Poor physical living conditions, makeshift homes, substandard materials. no building codes all magnify human suffering and deaths in each disaster.

God does not seek out the poor to punish with disasters, we are each responsible for accepting poverty and substandard conditions that expose the poor time and time again to preventable suffering and death.

We respond with compassion when it is too late.

The complete answer lies in the extensive comments that we have submitted on repeated occasions to the State of Texas and in our complaints to HUD.

Here is a summary of what we want:

1. Funds to be prioritized to help Texas families rebuild their homes.
2. Both housing and infrastructure programs to principally benefit low and moderate income persons.
3. Low income people, people with disabilities, people with children and people of color to have equal access to the funds in proportion to their needs.
4. Funds allocated and programs designed to achieve fair housing opportunities for persons with disabilities, families with children and people of color by providing desegregated housing options.
5. Allocate funds geographically based on the actual rebuilding needs between regions of the state.
6. Instead of holding meaningless public hearings and asking for HUD approval before a plan is developed, tell the public what the state and local governments plan to spend the money on. Make clear who will qualify for rebuilding help and who will not. Then give citizens a chance to say whether what their government is proposing to spend money on is the right thing.

There should not be controversy over any of these requests since they are explicitly required under the federal laws that govern CDBG disaster rebuilding funds. We have been asking the State unsuccessfully to follow the law in this regard for over a year, to no avail. There is no reason for surprise that HUD has rejected a plan that fails in each regard.

We supported the Governor’s Round 2 funding plan for Hurricane Rita because it had the potential to achieve these things. We opposed the Texas Hurricane Ike/Dolly CDBG rebuilding plan because that plan would have prevented these things from happening.

HUD agreed with us.

What does the State of Texas need to do in preparing a revised plan for CDBG funded rebuilding for Hurricanes Ike and Dolly? I cannot list all the aspects of a plan here, but let me mention a few highlights.

• Step back, evaluate and design a plan to affirmatively further fair housing. This means making sure that the state and local government organizations administering the funds understand what the existing impediments to fair housing are and design programs to overcome those barriers in both the housing and infrastructure programs. This includes giving people options to move to housing near better schools, job opportunities, communities with lower crime rates and areas not subject to environmental hazards such as flooding. It also means to allocate enough of the available funds to housing programs so that desegregated housing opportunities can be created.

• Prioritize the needs of Texas families by making at a minimum of 65 percent of all the Ike/Dolly rebuilding funds available for housing repairs and rebuilding.

• Prioritize public infrastructure funds so that at least 50 percent is used to address the community development needs of low and moderate income persons.

• Design programs that reach out to and serve people with extremely low incomes, people of color and people with disabilities and institute systems to ensure that these people receive assistance in proportion to their numbers in the population of people who cannot rebuild without public assistance.

• Revise the regional allocation formula to make funds available based on actual damages that homes and businesses suffered in the hurricanes instead of allocating the money to cities and counties based on the State’s flawed “weather model”. It makes no sense to divert rebuilding funds away from communities where homes and businesses were destroyed to allocate funds to pasture land that got a lot of wind and rain. Yet, this is what the plan Texas submitted to HUD did.

• Once this is done, create a plan that tells citizens how their government agencies propose to spend the funds, who will qualify for assistance and what portion of those in need will get help. Then hold public hearings, listen to citizens and consider their concerns. Only then send the plan to HUD for approval.

In sum, all we want is for the State of Texas to follow the law.

As for what we intend to do going forward, let me be clear about that as well.

We intend to monitor the programs the state proposes and challenge spending priorities and programs that fail to comply with statutory requirements. We will enlist the aid of local organizations and citizens to assess and monitor the disaster rebuilding programs. When we see something that does not comply with the law, we will bring that matter to the attention of the responsible state officials and then to the federal government and finally pursue the problems in court if no action is taken.

I will point out that bringing these matters up the chain of responsibility has been what we always do. We did not bring our concerns about the Ike/Dolly plan to HUD until we directed extensive statements of concerns to the State of Texas that were not acted upon.

We know we cannot monitor $3 billion in spending across a large part of Texas on our own. That is why we are establishing the Texas Disaster Accountability Project.

The Texas Disaster Accountability Project website will be online in a few weeks. We will enlist citizens impacted by the disasters to ensure Texas spends the federal grant in compliance with federal law and in furtherance of the needs of disaster survivors. We will monitor whether public funds are used to further fair housing and will also ensure that public works grants the State and the local governments claim will benefit people with low and moderate incomes (LMI) actually benefit those most in need from the disaster.

If a project does not claim to benefit low and moderate income persons then it must either aid in the prevention or elimination of slums or blight, or meet other urgent community development needs because existing conditions pose a serious and immediate threat to the health and welfare of the community where other financial resources are not available. We will monitor government spending to make sure that the spending meets these standards.

Using the model established for citizen accountability in the expenditure of funds under the federal Economic Stimulus Programs at www.recovery.gov (without the PR spin), we will make available an on-line database of the details of all Texas disaster recovery CDBG grants. This will allow the public to learn about, monitor and direct their appropriate concerns about projects happening in their local communities. Through the Disaster Accountability Project, we will make public all findings of its analysis and help citizens to report any abuses of spending that they witness in their communities to appropriate state and federal government officials.

The bottom line is that we want to ensure that the national objective of helping people with low and moderate incomes, people of color and people with disabilities recover from disaster comes to fruition in Texas. The law requires that the process of recovery should further fair and affordable housing and provide community development projects to those most vulnerable to the destruction caused by disaster. The Texas Disaster Accountability Project will connect citizens, advocates and government to make sure that this objective becomes a reality.

Read HUD’s full letter to Governor Perry.

According to HUD, the state fails to provide detailed information on the COG’s methods of allocating funds to local governments. It also fails to make these methods available for the public to examine and critique. Other concerns brought up are the State’s failure to update its 2003 Analysis of Impediments for furthering Fair Housing and the State’s use of CDBG activity funds for mitigation of future disaster as opposed to recovery for direct damages. The State of Texas now has 45 days to provide information on the methods of fund allocation and to acquire adequate citizen participation.

Read TxLIHIS and Appleseed’s administrative complaint to HUD regarding Texas’s amended Ike plan.

TxLIHIS, Texas Appleseed, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition applauded HUD’s decision as it confirms the lack of accountability that exists in Texas’s disaster recovery effort. It re-emphasizes the need for clarity in fund distribution so that funds remain focused on the real needs of hurricane survivors. It also stresses the need of the State of Texas to reassess its current strategy for furthering fair housing in the wake of a disaster.

While the Governor’s press release asserts HUD’s action will delay recovery and cause Texas to “bear the brunt of the costs of recovery,” it is important to remember that the State of Texas has yet to obligate at least $476 million of unawarded funds from the first CDBG allocation of $1.3 billion.

Today’s web based public hearing conducted by ORCA to accept public testimony on the $1.7 billion Hurricane Ike/Dolly CDBG Disaster Relief Texas state plan crashed. Among others, I dutifully registered in advance and followed the participation instructions provided by ORCA to log into the meeting.

Public hearings are required by the federal government as a precondition to the State of Texas receiving the CDBG funds.

First problem – No sound was being broadcast from the hearing over the VoIP connection. I frantically typed messages in the questions pane on the web interface but no one at ORCA ever responded.

Working around that barrier, I called into a long distance number on a POTS line and finally got an audio connection and was able to join the hearing in progress. Although, if you could not afford a two hour long distance phone bill you would have been unable to offer your comments on this program intended to assist and presumedly seeking input from low and moderate income families.

Then, about 20 minutes into the hearing, while the ORCA staff was still explaining the program and before anyone in the public had a chance to offer testimony, the computer video froze and the phone line went dead. Calling back in connected got a connection to a dead phone line. A message from the GoToMeeting.com server on my computer screen said that GoToMeeting was “waiting for the meeting host (ORCA) to join.” Someone at ORCA clearly pulled the plug on web participation in the public hearing.

So I did not get to “GoToMeeting” with ORCA and TDHCA today nor was I allowed to provide the testimony I prepared regarding the state’s massive disaster rebuilding program. If this were just any old meeting the failure of the technology might be excusable. But this is a public hearing on a $1.7 billion government program and ORCA has allocated itself tens of millions in administrative funds to prepare plans, hold these public hearings and oversee the program. Like too many other aspects of the current Texas disaster rebuilding program the state’s administrative performance is simply not working.

Did ORCA staff call or email the registered participants who they required to register for this hearing in advance to apologize or offer an alternate way for them to participate in a public hearing? No.

Now I know how Texas hurricane survivors feel who are waiting for help from ORCA to rebuild — frustrated and ignored.

Little wonder then that there is widespread confusion and frustration among Hurricane Ike survivors about the FEMA temporary housing programs.

The first phase temporary housing program was the FEMA Hotel/Motel Program. This program was established a week or two after the hurricane. It reimburses households whose homes are now unlivable due to hurricane damage for the cost of staying in a hotel. Initially, as many as 24,000 households were staying in hotels. At the beginning of this week that number had fallen to about 7,000.

On Tuesday of this week the Houston Chronicle reported that FEMA cut off assistance to about 3,500 of the 7,000 households staying in hotels. One reason cited by FEMA was that on-site inspections by the agency showed that the condition of these 3,500 households was sufficient to allow them to stay in their homes instead of a hotel. The newspaper reports that many of the households cut off from the Hotel/Motel Assistance Program say that their homes are not habitable despite FEMA’s inspection findings.

Other hurricane survivors are reported to have been cut off from the program because they were living with someone else before the storm. The Galveston County Daily News reports that FEMA contends that only people who were paying rent or making mortgage payments before the disaster are eligible for FEMA assistance.  This policy was an issue of much controversy and litigation regarding the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The second phase of the FEMA temporary housing assistance program is known as the Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP). This program provides people assistance to rent an apartment while they make arrangements to repair their homes. FEMA will reimburse hurricane survivors for the full cost of rent until May 1 when families will be required to contribute $50 a month toward their rent.  That amount increases by $50 each month until the families are either paying all of the rent or until they move out into their repaired home.

This second phase temporary housing program is set to begin today. But it has been delayed. Families must be enrolled in the program through a local public housing authority. In order to enroll a family must be referred to a public housing authority by FEMA. While an estimated 6,000 households qualify, the Houston Chronicle reports only 500 families have been referred to public housing authorities.

FEMA claims it is providing direct funding to these families in the form of checks or bank deposits to bridge the gap until the families can be referred and enrolled in the DHAP program.

Other households have sought temporary housing assistance from FEMA in the form of trailers to be located next to their damaged homes. Extreme levels of anger and frustration both on the part of survivors and on the part of local elected officials have been directed at FEMA’s slow pace of providing these trailers. Lots of finger pointing has gone on between federal, state and local officials regarding who is to blame for the slow level at which trailers have been brought into the disaster area.

FEMA says 262 mobile homes are now occupied and another 350 are on individuals’ property awaiting sewer and power hookups. But local officials say thousands are needed.

If you put yourself in the shoes of a hurricane survivor you can imagine just how frustrating and confusing this process seems.

Watch my testimony before the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Financial Service Committee, or, better yet, watch the testimony of the panel of housing advocates from all the Gulf Coast states.

I was invited to Washington to testify on May 8 before the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing titled “Emergency CDBG Funds in the Gulf Coast: Uses, Challenges, and Lessons for the Future”.

I was the last panelist on a panel of housing advocates from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. As I sat at the witness table before the committee listening to my colleagues from other states review a litany of civil rights violations and maladministration that characterize their state’s management of emergency housing relief for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita I gained new appreciation for the fact that Texas has charted a better course.

Most egregious among the states is Mississippi. There $600 million of Community Development Block Grant funds, intended to aid low-income families whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina are being diverted to rebuild a port and to collaterally subsidize the construction of a luxury hotel and casino. While the state has been extremely generous with higher income homeowners, according to the advocates it has only provided assistance to a fraction of the low income African-American households devastated by Katrina and has helped very few renters. Committee chairwoman Maxine Waters vowed to do something to fix the problem in Mississippi.

Alabama, like Texas, relied on local government agencies to distribute housing assistance. According to Alabama Arise, the advocates on the ground, at least one low income African-American community was told incorrectly that it was “not eligible” for assistance by local administrating agencies

The size and the scope of the problems that have beset Louisiana’s efforts to rebuild housing for low income people have been well chronicled. The bottom line is that the money is not getting to the people who need it and rebuilding in not taking place at the pace needed.

While Texas faces huge problems with its efforts to help low income people left homeless by Hurricane Rita the State has, through trial and error, crafted a much more responsible approach than these other states. All of the federal funds are earmarked for critical government infrastructure and for housing. (Whether the government infrastructure is truly “critical” will be a subject of a future posting here). None of the funding is being siphoned away for private port facilities and the like. All of the housing funds will be spent to assist families below 80% of median family income and the bulk of funds will be spent to house families at far lower income levels. There is no two-tier homeowner assistance program, one for the rich and middle class and the other for the poor, as in Mississippi. And finally, based on the profile of applications that have been submitted to the state, a very high proportion of the families receiving housing assistance will be African-Americans. The advocates from the other states all felt that there were significant civil rights and fair housing violations occurring as funds were directed this proportionally to white families. That will not happen in Texas.

Since the first days following the hurricanes we at TxLIHIS have been working with TDHCA to ensure that those with the greatest needs, especially the poor and the elderly, get the help that they need. While the State did not immediately embrace all of our recommendations, after the experience of an initial round of housing assistance that did not go too well, the State has largely come around to embrace the principles we articulated from the beginning.

This is not to say that Texas adopted precisely the program that we first recommended. Initially we advocated a direct payment program to people whose homes were destroyed. The State opted eventually for a program through which the State would directly oversee the rehabilitation or reconstruction of homes — acting a the “middle man” between homeowners and contractors. The State’s approach in many respects is superior to our initial idea. Given the difficulty of hiring contractors, ensuring the quality of their work and holding them accountable, it is better to have the State overseeing the contracting rather than to place the responsibility on elderly or low income homeowners.

Yet, in other regards the State’s approach presents other challenges. Given the extremely low levels of public assistance available to rebuild houses ($65,000-$75,000 maximum) how does the State produce houses of sufficiently high quality and avoid a sterile and homogeneous appearance? How does the State logistically manage 4,000 clients, each with unique needs? Despite these challenges I admire the State for being willing to take them on.

Tomorrow I will post the recommendations I presented to the House committee in my testimony. In future postings I’ll expand upon the challenges Texas faces in implementing its disaster home rebuilding program.

But it was a nice feeling as a witness before a congressional committee last month to be able to testify that my State was honestly trying to do the right thing for its low income citizens.