Program looks to rid city of blue tarps, save homes
Nearly $2 million of federal disaster funding is being redirected to repair storm-damaged roofs
Head tilted upward, Spot Williams could see through where his dining room ceiling used to be, to the blue tarp stretched across his rotting roof, too feeble to block the weather. By his feet, gaping floorboards gave way to dirt below.
Williams, who was incarcerated when Hurricane Ike tore across Houston, returned home to find a hole blown through his roof, one of more than 150,000 Houston-area homes damaged by the Category 4 storm. Eight years later, he still lacks the money for repairs, and his house down a dead-end street in Acres Homes is crumbling.
“Man,” he said, as scrawny cats and dogs scrambled about. “I live in hell.”
Blue tarps capped thousands of Houston-area roofs in the wake of Ike, becoming an iconic post-storm sign of widespread damage, and eventually a measure of the city’s slow recovery.
Now, Williams, 59, lives in one of roughly 550 Houston homes still covered by a blue tarp, according to the city, many of which were damaged during Ike.
Urged by Mayor Sylvester Turner to repair the salvageable roofs by the end of the year, the city’s housing department has redirected nearly $2 million in local affordable housing dollars to the so-called blue-tarp program. City Council signed off on the move last week. “You cannot have complete communities without working to rebuild neighborhoods, and, in this case, these homes with those blue tarps on them,” Turner said. “That was a priority of mine before I got here; it’s a priority of mine now that I’m here.”
Preliminary city data culled from aerial imagery and in-person inspections suggested about 200 of these blue tarp homes could be eligible for the program.
To qualify, a house must require repairs of $25,000 or less and be occupied by owners who earn 120 percent or less of the area median income — $83,050 for a family of four. Rental homes are not eligible.
Councilman Steve Le worried that income limit is too high.
“This place here ain’t really fit to live in, to tell you the truth.” Spot Williams, whose roof was damaged by Hurricane Ike
“I just want us to be cautious in not allowing these people with money … to come in and game the system because one of our definitions says it’s up to 120 percent of the area median income,” Le said.
Houston’s blue tarps are dispersed in a crescent around the eastern half of the city, with the highest concentration in Kashmere Gardens in the northeast, followed by Sunnyside and Southpark to the south.
All but two of the 23 ZIP codes with blue tarps have a median household income below the citywide median, about $45,700 in 2014. No Ike? No worries
Although the roof-repair effort is being billed as an Ike recovery program, the city is not requiring homeowners to prove the destruction occurred during the 2008 hurricane.
In fact, interim housing director Tom McCasland acknowledged that many Ike-damaged homes may not be eligible for this round of funding due to the $25,000-per-house funding cap.
“The fact of the matter is, that eight years after Ike, many of these homes have sustained so much damage, either in the storm or due to water damage and other decay after the storm, that they will not be good candidates for this particular program,” McCasland said. “We are aware of that, and this is an effort to prioritize homes that can be saved by getting a new roof.”
Wendlyn Hill, 69, is among about 20 homeowners who had applied for the program as of last Wednesday.
Hill, a retired Houston Independent School District food service worker, said her roof began leaking earlier this year, exacerbating pre-existing plumbing problems and a buckling floor. She applied for the blue tarp program after city inspectors visited earlier this month.
“When it rains, I know the water’s coming here. It’s coming in the bathroom. It’s coming in the back bedroom,” said Hill, who lives on about $19,200 a year in Social Security and retirement. “I’m putting down pans and buckets for the water, trying to absorb it so it won’t make the floor any worse.”
Rather than simply soliciting applications — as typically happens — the housing department is sending inspectors door-to-door in neighborhoods where aerial imagery or community members have identified blue tarps.
“If there’s a blue tarp on a home that we think is eligible, we’re going to keep knocking on the door until we make contact,” McCasland said.
The housing department aims for its nonprofit partner, Rebuilding Together Houston, to begin roof repairs within two weeks of receiving an application. Final portion of fund
The blue tarp program comes as the city prepares to allocate its final portion of $287 million in federal disaster recovery funding for Hurricane Ike, which damaged more than 150,000 homes in the Houston metropolitan area, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
City housing officials said they did not know how many homes within city limits suffered damage.
That federal funding has been used in part to renovate more than 3,500 multifamily units, construct or repair about 480 single-family homes and provide down-payment assistance for roughly 280 homeowners.
Williams, the Acres Homes resident, said he did not apply for assistance in Ike’s immediate wake, but he has been working with the nonprofit Texas Organizing Project in recent years to try to secure help.
The damage to Williams’ home, where he lives with his brother, cousins and two grandchildren, is too extensive for him to receive funding through this year’s blue tarp program, McCasland said.
Come January, however, the city plans to shift its focus to homes that require more substantial rehabilitation or demolition.
Williams remained hopeful as he looked out on his scruffy acre-and-a-half chockablock with half a dozen cars, three boats, five horses and a smattering of dogs and chickens.
“This place here ain’t really fit to live in, to tell you the truth,” he said.