A crippling choice: Live in floodway or lose funding
Arbor Court is 1 of 8 complexes in predicament
Images of residents escaping rising floodwaters at Houston’s Arbor Court apartments in April — riding inflatable rafts, dump trucks, even a refrigerator — stunned many after a deadly storm soaked the city in up to 15 inches of rain.
But that scene should have come as no surprise to the federal government, which began subsidizing the Greenspoint-- area complex long after it was deemed to be at a high risk for flooding.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development started providing rental assistance at Arbor Court in 1991, six years after the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s first detailed floodplain map of Hous-
ton listed the property in the 100-year floodplain.
Yet that knowledge did not factor into housing officials’ decision to subsidize the 232-unit complex or renew its assistance contract nine times, as recently as last summer.
Federal regulations that discourage investing taxpayer dollars in buildings in the 100-year floodplain do not cover privately owned apartments like Arbor Court, where the government essentially pays a portion of residents’ rent.
Now, as Arbor Court continues to be rebuilt in what is now mostly the floodway — more at-risk than the 100-year floodplain — 129 displaced lowincome families are faced with a crippling choice: return to an apartment likely to flood again or forgo their housing subsidy.
Housing officials said they are “deeply concerned” about the residents’ predicament but emphasized the need to maintain what scarce subsidized housing options exist in Houston.
“We simply have no choice — people need a roof over their heads,” HUD spokeswoman Patricia Campbell said in an email. “While the risk landscape is dynamic, housing is fixed, and there’s precious little of it, especially for those who need it most.” 900 families affected
Advocates, meanwhile, said the impact of the city’s recent deluge underscores why poor, subsidized residents living in flood-prone areas should be relocated.
“No development should be located in the floodplain, but certainly not our most vulnerable households,” said Shannon Van Zandt, director of Texas A&M’s Center for Housing and Urban Development. “If there is an opportunity to move it to a better location, then they ought to take it.”
Arbor Court is one of at least eight privately owned, federally subsidized low-income housing complexes in Houston located within the 100-year floodplain, meaning they have a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year.
These apartments — part of a program known as project-based Section 8 — serve roughly 900 low-income families, some elderly or disabled, and are located throughout the city, from the edges of Brays Bayou in Braeburn to the blocks surrounding Hunting Bayou in Northshore.
The apartments generally are reserved for families earning 50 percent or below of the area’s median family income. That equates to $34,600 per year for a family of four, though some complexes have higher income limits. Residents are required to pay about 30 percent of their household income in rent, and the government covers the gap.
Unlike public housing, which typically is owned and managed by a local housing authority, projectbased Section 8 complexes usually are privately owned.
Therefore, unless the federal government was involved in constructing or rehabilitating the building — which it does for some complexes housing the elderly and disabled— officials do not consider whether a property is located in a floodplain when deciding whether to subsidize rent. Instead, they require owners of at-risk properties to maintain flood insurance.
Government-financed buildings, on the other hand, undergo an environmental review, as mandated by a 1977 executive order that directs federal agencies to seek alternatives to investing tax dollars in areas at high risk for flooding.
Other than Arbor Court, Houston’s most floodprone project-based Section 8 apartments were designated in the 100-year floodplain after the federal government began subsidizing them.
They gradually became engulfed, however, as the footprint of Houston’s 100year floodplain grew.
Meanwhile, the complexes’ multi-year housing assistance contracts that originated in the 1980s and ’90s were renewed. In all but one case, the most recent contract extension came after the property was designated in the 100year floodplain.
HUD also does not consider floodplain status when reviewing renewal applications for projectbased Section 8 contracts or require owners to tell tenants that the property is at a high risk for flooding.
These rules meant that Jaz Green, who lived at Arbor Court for about four years, learned the property was prone to flooding only when it took on water last year.
“I was thinking, ‘ OK, one time,’ ” recalled Green, a 23-year-old emergency medical technician.
But when the complex flooded a second time, in April, it was too much, Green said. She and her fiancé opted to move with their two children to the Northshore area, in northeast Houston.
“Nobody likes to start over completely,” Green said. “We had plans on moving out, but we wanted to at least move out with our furniture and our clothes and our possessions.” Contract up for renewal
Housing advocates questioned why HUD would conduct an environmental review for certain types of low-income housing but not others.
“It should be treating all its tenants with the same degree of care,” said Madison Sloan, director of disaster recovery and fair housing for the nonprofit Texas Appleseed.
HUDphased out most of its project-based Section 8 programs by the late 1990s, meaning it is continuing to fulfill existing rental assistance contracts but not issuing new subsidies at private complexes.
Advocates therefore focused on contract renewals, arguing that officials should consider floodplain status when deciding whether to continue subsidizing a property.
Contracts for two of Houston’s eight projectbased Section 8 complexes located in the 100-year floodplain are up for renewal this year, including Arbor Court.
John Henneberger, codirector of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, agreed with HUD that Houston cannot afford to lose subsidized housing.
But, he added, “we need to be able to selectively decide which of those properties should be renewed for another 10 years or 20 years ... and which of those properties the subsidies need to be extracted and redistributed among other apartment properties that are in a better location for the tenants and that aren’t in a floodplain.”
HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan pointed to HUD’s funding limitations.
“We have budget authority to house families in that environment, and we don’t have the money to move them to another subsidy stream, because these programs are maxed out on both sides of the ledger,” Sullivan said. “You can’t just say well, we’ll give them this form of subsidy because it doesn’t exist. All of these are scarce resources.”
Demand for affordable housing in Houston far outstrips supply, with upward of 100,000 families in need of affordable options, according to the Houston Housing Authority, on top of the roughly 78,000 households already living in subsidized units. Residents returning
Van Zandt of Texas A&M pushed back, saying HUD ought to seek opportunities to change the policies that govern subsidized housing located in a flood zone.
“It seems very logical … to say rather than putting money back into a structure that is very likely to be flooded again, let’s take that money and convert it into vouchers, which allow people to move into safer areas. It’s a matter of a policy change,” Van Zandt said.
Housing Choice Vouchers are an alternative to project-based Section 8 and subsidize families to find an apartment in the private market.
Following a disaster, federal housing officials said HUD has three options: authorize temporary vouchers that allow residents to live elsewhere but continue receiving housing assistance until their unit is repaired; suspend the complex’s subsidy; or, if the damaged building is not going to be rebuilt, permanently move the Section 8 contract to another building or convert the subsidies into mobile vouchers.
However, HUD officials said rules block them from moving the subsidy or converting it to mobile vouchers if the owner has plans to renovate.
For Arbor Court, located just southwest of Bush Intercontinental Airport, HUD signed off on 60 temporary vouchers, though just 13 of them were used.
Three months after the April 18 flood, rebuilding of the damaged complexes is well underway, with roughly 24 of 116 flooded first-floor units already rehabilitated at the same height. Maps show Arbor Court’s property ranges from 3 to 7 feet below “base flood elevation.”
Among the first flood victims to return to a remodeled apartment was Cleo Joseph, 63, who lives on about $730 per month in disability payments.
Joseph didn’t know Arbor Court was prone to flooding when she moved in 19 years ago, but she recalled the complex flooding twice before April.
“This time, it got me,” Joseph said, sitting in the armchair she bought to replace what soaked up 2 feet of floodwater.
Joseph was relieved to be back in her apartment after more than two months of living with her son in East Little York, but she wasn’t sure it made sense to have rebuilt it.
“It’s pretty good, but should they lose their money?” Joseph said.
Renovations on the remainder of Arbor Court’s first-floor apartments are scheduled for completion by early November. Finding funding
Arbor Court’s owner, Morgan Cox, projected the insurance claim for April’s flood damage will be roughly $3.5 million.
City rules dictate that owners must raise the lowest floor if the cost to rebuild after a flood reaches 50 percent or more of a building’s pre-damage value, but Houston’s public works department said Arbor Court is not thought to have hit that threshold.
Cox emphasized the need to preserve affordable housing in Houston but said a conversation “has to happen” about Arbor Court’s high flood risk.
“The inventory today of affordable housing is nowhere close to what the demand is, and so while it might not be ideal to the families that so desperately need housing, it’s an answer for them,” Cox said.
One option, Cox said, would be for another entity to purchase Arbor Court and convert it into a detention basin, potentially allowing HUD to transfer the housing subsidy elsewhere.
City flood czar Steve Costello pointed to HUD disaster recovery money as a possible funding source for such a buyout, though the nearly $67 million the city received in March is tied to areas damaged by last year’s Memorial Day flooding.
Costello said the city is planning to submit another disaster recovery funding request for this year’s flooding, perhaps in conjunction with the state.
As contractors lugged sinks into renovated Arbor Court apartments across the courtyard, Raymond Holden’s kitchen table leaned against the wall in a box, one of the last pieces of new furniture to be unpacked after the flood.
Management warned Holden when he and his wife first moved in that Arbor Court had flooded once before, and he might think about flood insurance. But Holden didn’t view the extra bill as an option on an annual income of $13,260.
“Did I worry about the flood? Yes, it crossed my mind,” said Holden, a 61-year-old disabled veteran. “But sometimes when you can’t do anything about it, you just go along with it.”