Buyout plan worries Jewish community
A proposal to buy out thousands of flooded Houston homeowners, tear down their houses and restore the property as green space concerns many in the tightknit Jewish population.
“If you saw widespread buyouts in Meyerland, that would have, sadly, a negative impact to the Jewish community,” Aaron Swerdlin of commercial real estate brokerage Newmark Knight Frank said Wednesday after a well-attended meeting with the city’s flood czar. “We want to try to make sure we don’t destroy this community.”
Swerdlin, whose home in Bellaire flooded during Hurricane Harvey’s devastating rainfall, said his concerns extend beyond whether the buyout prices would cover the cost to find a new home. He doesn’t want to leave his neighborhood, where his synagogue and his kids’ Jewish day schools are located.
Harvey had an outsized impact on Houston’s Jewish community, many of whom live in southwest neighborhoods like Meyerland, Bellaire and Braes Heights, which have flooded three times in as many years. Harvey was particularly devastating.
An estimated one of every 13 Jewish families in Houston had flooding in their homes. Three of the city’s largest synagogues — with a combined membership of 3,900 families — experienced significant flooding. The city’s major Jewish community center took
on about 10 feet of water, the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston reports.
“There’s no other Jewish community in the country that has faced such widespread disaster,” the federation’s Suzanne Jacobson said. “It will take many years to recover.”
On Wednesday, flood czar Stephen Costello sought to allay some fears during a meeting with 130 developers and brokers from the Jewish Federation’s commercial real estate society. He said local government has an interest in maintaining neighborhoods.
“If we did a massive buyout, it has a huge impact on county and city’s tax revenue and it has a detrimental impact to the community,” Costello said. “That’s what we don’t want to do.”
Costello, an engineer, former city councilman and mayoral candidate, was tapped by Mayor Sylvester Turner in 2016 to become Houston’s chief resilience officer, tasked with working with different government entities to solve the city’s flooding woes. Since Harvey’s deluge flooded more than 135,000 homes, Costello has met with dozens of community groups to explain Houston’s flood mitigation plans.
Harris County officials have approved $20 million to buy out more than 200 homes and are applying for federal grants to expand the buyout program to 3,300 at-risk homes at a cost of $800 million. Congress approved $15 billion for Harvey recovery efforts and is considering $30 billion more.
However, property torn down with federal funds could not be redeveloped. Costello said he has been meeting with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rewrite some of the rules to allow homeowners or the city to redevelop neighborhoods with elevated homes.
The concerns linger in Houston’s Jewish community.
“Once you start pulling down multiple homes, what does it do to the aesthetic of the neighborhood?” asked Lee Wunsch, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.
Dora Klaff’s home in Braes Heights took 2½ feet of water during Harvey. She had flood insurance, but she says the $250,000 maximum policy won’t cover the $500,000-plus assessed value of the house.
“You’re asking people to walk away from their most significant asset,” said Klaff, a Jewish Federation staffer. “We didn’t ask for this. When we bought here, our property had never flooded before. It’s the development around us that’s changed.”
After the Memorial Day and Tax Day floods, three of Klaff’s neighbors have taken buyouts, leaving behind vacant lots. Neighbors have taken turns maintaining those lawns to prevent blight, she said.
Costello presented several other ideas for mitigating future floods, including:
• Lowering the levels of Lake Houston and Lake Conroe before major storms so they can hold more rainwater.
• Increasing the stormwater capacity of Buffalo Bayou downstream of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs.
• Bolstering protections at water and sewer plants, two of which were inundated during Harvey.
• Creating detention ponds in Houston’s 350 parks and buying out and redeveloping golf courses for the same purpose.
“We never expected anything like this to happen,” Costello said. “We need to think about what we’re going to do moving forward to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”