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 more
Tag Archives: Houston
Homeowners rebuilding from Hurricane Ike have basically no consumer protection in Texas
October 18, 2008 
2 Comments
Houston Mayor Bill White threw in the towel this week, ending his modest effort to provide rudimentary consumer protections to Houston homeowners who must hire contractors to repair their homes damaged by Hurricane Ike. White proposed an ordnance that would have required all contractors doing work in Houston to register with the city. The proposal […]
Read moreOur ten point plan for rehousing low income Hurricane Ike survivors
September 14, 2008 Comments Off
There are many critical housing needs facing Hurricane Ike survivors of all incomes. Our focus is on the area of housing for low-income families. This is our ten point plan to rehouse low income Hurricane Ike survivors. We learned a lot about how low-income families fare in the wake of natural disaster through the Hurricane […]
Read moreHouston: The Real Texas? I pray not based on these attitudes
September 3, 2008 Comments Off
In the late 1990′s the marketing motto of Houston was “Houston: The Real Texas.” Based on what I have been reading lately I hope that’s wrong. At the risk of seeming like a voyeur of Texas hate speech I’m going to point out the reader comments on Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg’s column titled Has […]
Read moreHouston’s fair housing failure segregates Katrina evacuees in SW slum apartments
July 21, 2008 1 Comment
Today’s dangerous housing problems in the Southwestern part of Houston have been greatly exacerbated by the actions of Houston city government in the settlement of large numbers of Katrina evacuees in the area. But the problem does not lie solely in past actions. The City of Houston, in violation of provisions of the 1968 Fair […]
Read moreTwo proposed tools to get aggressive with slum landlords
July 20, 2008 1 Comment
For the past two days I have been exploring in this blog ways to deal with the massive problem of substandard apartments that has emerged in Houston. The challenge is to get the land(slum)lords to repair and maintain their property. The current approach taken by the City of Houston, whereby the city issues citations that […]
Read moreHouston Mayor Bill White tells Houstonians not to worry about substandard apartments
July 19, 2008 1 Comment
I was proud to present Houston Mayor Bill White an award in 2007 on behalf of the National Low Income Housing Coalition for his work on behalf of the survivors in the early days following Hurricane Katrina. I am sorry to say the mayor’s response to the death of two children from a collapsed staircase […]
Read moreIt is too late for two children but now is the time for Houston to act on slum apartments
July 18, 2008 2 Comments
It happened again last night. More kids were hurt, this time killed, in the slum apartments the city of Houston tolerates in the Southwest section of the city. It should not have happened. The City of Houston has long known about the deplorable living conditions in this area. The Houston Chronicle has splashed it over […]
Read moreBooks we are reading
No data found
