The Biden administration announced Tuesday that Houston and Harris County will receive a combined $382 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to assist in recovery from May’s flooding in Kingwood and Hurricane Beryl in July.
Houston will receive nearly $315 million. Harris County will get more than $67 million. The state of Texas, as a whole, will receive $555.6 million.
Mary Benton, Mayor John Whitmire’s spokesperson, said the city will assess how leaders plan to distribute the cash.
The funding is part of a $12 billion package being distributed by HUD to communities impacted by disasters across the country.
“Over the last two years, too many communities have been impacted by devastating disasters — damaging homes, destroying infrastructure, and stretching local capacity to recover,” said HUD director Adrianne Todman.
“This $12 billion in disaster discovery funds will help rebuild homes, develop affordable housing, assist impacted small businesses, and repair roads, schools, water treatment plants and other critical infrastructure. The impacts of these funds will be felt for years to come — especially for disaster survivors and communities in the most impacted areas.”
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Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said via email that it’s crucial for the county to receive funds directly from the federal government to speed up recovery projects.
“This direct allocation of funding is not only going to help us recover from past disasters, but to build up our resiliency against future disasters,” Hidalgo said.
That’s the best part of it, the money is coming straight here. We don’t have to kiss the Land Commissioner’s ass, or compete with Grimes County for whatever H-GAC decides to dole out. Sure seems to me to be the better way to do this. May it be a long time before we have to do it again.
I wonder if Whitmire will be whining about how he will use those funds to help balance the budget.