Harvey-related good news and bad news

Good news.

An additional $90 million was approved Thursday to help expedite debris removal from Hurricane Harvey along Texas’ devastated Gulf Coast regions, including Houston.

Gov. Greg Abbott and House and Senate leaders announced that the additional “emergency funding” from the state’s General Revenue Account would go to counties to help pay for the removal of storm debris and help speed up the removal process.

They said the additional funding will lessen the burden for debris cleanup on local taxpayers , who now must pay for 10 percent of the total cost. The rest is paid for by the federal government.

“In most cases, even with federal assistance, cities and counties in the impacted areas are responsible for ten percent of costs associated with debris removal,” Abbott’s office said in a statement. “Today’s funding allocation will help alleviate that burden for communities as they continue to rebuild.”

Abbott called the additional funding ” just one more step in a long process to help our cities and counties recover.”

No detail on where the $90 million will be directed was immediately available.

I approve of debris removal, and Lord knows there’s still a lot of it to be removed. Kudos all around.

Bad news.

Houston could be ineligible for future federal housing grants, including disaster recovery funds for Hurricane Harvey, because it has not resolved a federal finding that its housing practices violate civil rights law.

The city has yet to come into compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act nearly a year after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found it in violation, making it automatically ineligible for certain federal housing programs and potentially imperiling its ability to qualify for others, an Austin housing advocacy group said in a demand letter sent to HUD last week.

The Oct. 31 letter alleges Houston’s recent certifications of compliance with civil rights laws – prerequisites for receiving federal funding – are “inaccurate and unsatisfactory,” adding that HUD must withhold funding until the city cooperates.

Such an agreement should include commitments to build more affordable housing in affluent neighborhoods, and train elected and appointed officials on handling community opposition, among other steps, attorney Michael Allen wrote on behalf of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service.

“Unless and until voluntary compliance has been reached, HUD must reject any submission or certification by the city regarding compliance with Title VI because, by HUD’s own determination, the city fails to comply with Title VI,” Allen wrote. “HUD is therefore not authorized to continue funding or grant new funding to the city or mayor until the existing findings are resolved and the city is able to make accurate certifications.”

[…]

HUD faulted Mayor Sylvester Turner in January for rejecting a proposed subsidized housing complex near the Galleria, saying his decision “was motivated either in whole or in part by the race, color or national origin of the likely tenants.” HUD also criticized city procedures more broadly for perpetuating segregation, in part by giving to much weight to racially motivated opposition aimed at keeping affordable housing projects out of wealthier neighborhoods.

Turner has sharply criticized the finding, and his legal department in February went as far as asking HUD to withdraw its letter. That has not happened.

“We’re still discussing and going back and forth, but there’s been no final conclusion on it,” the mayor said Wednesday.

Turner, through a spokesman, also doubted HUD actually would pull the plug on funding.

“The mayor is confident HUD realizes the importance of supporting the housing of people displaced by the disaster,” communications director Alan Bernstein wrote in an email.

I hope that’s right, but I’d rather the matter get settled so that it’s not a question. Seems like resolving this ought to be a pretty high priority.

Related Posts:

This entry was posted in Hurricane Katrina and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Harvey-related good news and bad news

  1. Bill Daniels says:

    How is it that HUD is still harassing Houston for discriminatory policies now that the racist Trump is in office? You’d think that Trump and Ben Carson would be pro-discrimination and that this would all be dropped by now.

  2. Jason Hochman says:

    I just read this, and hadn’t noticed too much media attention, but Mayor Turner started the Statue Wars with his comments about doing a study to remove Confederate monuments (nothing more has been heard about this, fortunately), and, as we now find, Mayor Turner is a racist. As President Trump said, there were some good people there, some fine people, among those white supremacists.

Comments are closed.