Tomlinson: Flood threw rich and poor together

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.”

Harvey damaged or destroyed hundreds of these units, sending hundreds into shelters. And with so few apartment owners willing to accept Section 8 vouchers, these families will be the most difficult to relocate, especially since many are senior citizens or disabled.

Families with Section 8 vouchers will also have to compete with the thousands of middle-class families that lost their homes to the flood. HUD will issue emergency vouchers to these families, but they are easily distinguished from people who rely on long-term aid.

The key question for Houston is whether apartment building owners, who suffered from high vacancy rates before the storm, will change their policies and accept low-income, government- subsidized tenants. Or will they only accept the middle class, and force the poor to seek out sub-standard housing in the city’s more dangerous parts?

If you own or operate an apartment building in a good neighborhood, nothing you could do following Harvey would help more than renting to a low-income tenant. Because nothing does more to lift a family out of poverty than moving into a better neighborhood.

Poor children who moved into a low-poverty neighborhood were more likely to go to college and they earned 31 percent more later in life than children who stayed in a poor neighborhood living in government-owned housing, according to a 2015 study by Harvard economists.

“The results of this study demonstrate that offering low-income families housing vouchers and assistance in moving to lower-poverty neighborhoods has substantial benefits for the families themselves and for taxpayers,” the authors concluded. “It appears important to target such housing vouchers to families with young children — perhaps even at birth — to maximize the benefits.”

In normal times, the rich and the poor rarely interact, or even see one another. About a quarter of high-income families live in high-income neighborhoods, while 37 percent of low-income families live in lowincome neighborhoods, making Houston the most economically segregated city among the country’s 10 largest metro areas, according to the Pew Center. Disaster changed that. Houstonians from all walks of life pitched in when Harvey’s floodwaters drove tens of thousands of people from their homes, both rich and poor. People who normally would never encounter each other in their daily lives were thrust together and equally humbled by nature’s power.

If Harvey burst the bubbles that we live within, then can we agree not to build them back up? If capitalism allows the rich to gentrify poor neighborhoods, can compassion integrate those displaced into high-opportunity neighborhoods?

Many states make it illegal to discriminate against someone based on their source of income. Houston and other cities have talked about introducing such ordinances in Texas, but the Legislature stepped in to make that impossible.

That leaves it up to the owners and managers of rental properties to do the right thing. To make a contribution to making our city stronger, both in the short and long term. Yet another test of whether #HoustonStrong is a slogan or a promise.