Harris County considers more buyouts of homes that repeatedly flood.

Residents give in after Meyerland swamped again

For the third time in as many years, a line of friends staggered out Stathy Demeris’ house, its guts in their arms.

The third pile of sodden furniture at the curb. The third stack of nail-studded baseboards. The third heap of soggy drywall.

The lesson of Tropical Storm Harvey for Demeris and many of his Meyerland neighbors, who also flooded on Tax Day last year and on Memorial Day the year before that: There won’t be a fourth.

“I’m not rebuilding. I’m done,” Demeris said, his voice catching. “I can’t. I can’t take it anymore. I hate to say it, but I’m out of here.”

As tens of thousands of Houston and Harris County residents drag their belongings to the curb, many are weighing what to do when the floodwaters come again: Sell? Seek government help to elevate their homes? Or take a buyout and walk away?

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said the county will consider increasing buyouts of homes that repeatedly have taken on water.

“Certainly, that’s going to be part of the discussion, particularly homes that are in places that you look at and you say, ‘Gee why was that built in the first place?’ ” Emmett said.

The Harris County Flood Control District has purchased 3,000 homes since it began administering a buyout program in the mid-1980s.

Today, those efforts fall under a Federal Emergency Management Agency program that aims to reduce payouts from the National Flood Insurance Program, which backs close to all the flood insurance policies in the country, by reducing the risk of flood damage to properties that repeatedly take on water.

Those without flood insurance — including 85 percent of Harris County residents — cannot participate.

“It was an expensive program,” said Larry Filer, an economics professor at Old Dominion University. However, he added, “Cities will eventually realize the longterm savings outweigh the short term costs.”

Homeowners must volunteer for the program and must qualify for funding based on a cost-benefit analysis. The primary efforts are buyouts and grants that help residents elevate their homes.

That process is underway for several dozen Meyerland residents. It may not be a cure-all, however.

After Tropical Storm Allison, Jeffrey Tarrand raised his Meyerland home 42 inches. Harvey matched that and then some, pouring another 22 inches across his floors.

Buying out all his neighbors probably would be too costly, he said. Improving Brays Bayou would be better.

A few streets over, Bernadette Yin, 45, was piling her possessions on her front lawn to dry out in the afternoon sun Friday.

Yin said she would like to elevate her house, but getting the required FEMA grant would be “like winning the lottery.”

‘I am so done’

A key challenge to preventing future flood damage is that 107,000 homes in Harris County sit in the floodplain, many of which were built decades before modern development rules.

“We are correcting the problem for areas that really shouldn’t have been developed for the first time,” said James Wade, the Flood Control District’s property acquisition manager.

Wade said the district targets about 5,500 parcels, including some inside the city of Houston, for buyouts. Purchasing all of those would cost $600 million.

The district spent roughly $11 million after the Tax Day Flood to buy about 60 homes and is compiling a $20 million proposal to fund 100 buyouts, Wade said. That package could grow with the FEMA grants to come, Wade said, adding he anticipates Harvey will create a surge of homeowners seeking buyouts.

Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer, said the county’s buyout efforts are “nowhere close to adequate.”

“Are we going to be willing to spend more money locally to frankly fix this mess after Harvey?” said Blackburn, who has sued the county over how it development regulations. “We need more room for the bayous to flood, and the only way that we’re going to open up the land is the remove that house, really the legacy development that’s there.

Meyerland, largely, is not in the county’s highest priority area because it does not meet the cost-benefit ratio, and many community members there have resisted buyout programs, Wade said.

“They don’t want those areas to be checker-boarded,” he said.

Becky Edmondson, a civic leader in oft-flooded Westbury neighborhood, shared that concern. She said her neighbors’ views on requesting a buyout largely are driven by their age.

Those in their 40s have stripped their carpets and knocked out soggy sheetrock, ready to rebuild. Those in their 80s do not want to leave thomes they have lived in for decades.

“Sixty-year-old people,” she said, “are like, ‘I am so done with this.’”

Councilman Larry Green, who represents Westbury, said many residents there have inquired about buyouts in the last week. Green said he plans to raise the issue when discussions begin on how to allocate the city’s recovery funds.

“Before, the neighborhoods weren’t interested in buyouts,” he said. “Now, they may consider doing that. Everything is on the table.”

Edmondson, however, is not ready to endorse widespread buyouts.

“You don’t really want every third house vacant. That doesn’t really solve

your problem. It just means somebody’s not flooding,” she said. “It needs a real plan. Does it make more sense to buy up everything in an area and create a reservoir to hold the Brays (Bayou) watershed water back?”

Probably not, said Jerry Wood, who spent many years in Houston’s planning department.

After Allison, he helped produce a study recommending changes to the county’s program to buy homes that repeated flooded, but the ideas ran afoul of restrictive FEMA rules and went nowhere.

Expensive options

Still, Wood said, buying out or elevating houses would be more efficient than spending billions to try to remake the region’s floodplains — even though he is not wild about elevation grants.

“That’s a very expensive step to take to make an old house a little more safe. Maybe keeping that house from flooding is costing as much as it would cost to buy two families out or to provide housing to get people out of Arbor Court,” Wood said, referring to a federally subsidized apartment complex in the Greens Bayou floodway that flooded again Sunday, and whose owner said he is in buyout talks with the city. “There’s no simple answer. Anybody who says ‘all you need to do is —’ should be slapped.”

In northeast Houston’s Lakewood Park, Robert Douglas recounted how he, his wife Tracy Hall, and their 12-year-old chihuahua had fled the floodwaters that had rushed under their back door, which looks over Halls Bayou, and left a water line five feet up the wall.

Their frantic calls to 911 went unanswered, so spent 90 minutes slogging through chest-deep waters to Mesa Drive, where they were rescued by a tractor trailer driver. The couple and friend Maryland Whittaker still are sleeping on air mattresses at their civic club’s community center.

They flooded during Allison in 2001, too. But abandoning the neighborhood? No chance.

“He doesn’t want to move. He’s been knowing his neighbors for years and years,” Hall said. “So, why can’t we elevate it up five feet so that we can survive the next flood?” Whittaker agreed. “Where are we going to go,” she said, “that’s not flooded?”