Not sure that late is actually better than never in this case, but here we are.
A complaint stemming from the Texas General Land Office’s allocation of Harvey disaster recovery funds, which originally awarded no money to Houston or Harris County from a $1 billion distribution, has been escalated to the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development asked the Justice Department on Wednesday to take action against the GLO after finding that it had violated the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against Black and Hispanic residents when it designed a competition to allocate the relief money.
HUD’s review of the GLO’s funding process revealed that the state agency had engaged in a pattern of “discriminatory actions based on race and national origin,” wrote Ayelet Weiss, assistant general counsel for HUD’s Office of Fair Housing Enforcement, in a letter to the Justice Department.
In a separate letter sent to state officials, HUD told the GLO that it knowingly denied communities critical funding, and “compounded the harm” that residents suffered from Hurricane Harvey.
The new correspondence affirmed HUD’s previous finding of discrimination in 2022 against the GLO. At that time, the Justice Department said it would defer consideration of the matter until HUD wrapped up its fair housing investigation.
[…]
Former mayor and now U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner said Wednesday that while he was glad the findings were being sent to the Justice Department, he was frustrated by the amount of time it took to hold the GLO accountable.
Houston residents whose lives were devastated by Harvey should have received federal aid years ago, Turner said, and instead the GLO diverted those funds to communities in lesser need.
“What do you say to these communities in Houston who have gone without the resources that they need to mitigate flooding in their very own communities?” Turner said. “HUD is doing the right thing in referring this matter to the DOJ, but it just should’ve been done more than two years ago.”
See here for the previous update. I’m with Rep. Turner on this: It’s nice to be validated, but it would have been way nicer to have gotten our fair share of the cash and/or this finding and request for action much sooner than now. I assume the Trump “Justice” Department will trash this as soon as it crosses the Attorney General’s desk. I don’t know what else to say. The Trib has more.
Whaaa.. ? Mayor John Whitmire wasn’t all over this on January 1st, 2024, 381 days ago ?
Has he been “all over this” about anything?
He was all in with getting HFD their $650M backpay and pay increases for five years, stopping work on N. Shepherd’s roadsite vitalization project, and throwing a monkey wrench into Montrose’s attempt at same – does that count ?