Lessons learned can help in post-Harvey rebuilding
When Houstonians faced a powerful and destructive storm — Hurricane Harvey — we did what we do best.
We couldn’t control the storm. So we prepared as best we could, rode out the worst of it and got to work cleaning up. We checked on our neighbors and worked together to make our communities safe and inhabitable.
Now we face a different kind of powerful and transformative force: a massive public investment in rebuilding our city. This time we are in control. We can decide how the $1.15 billion in federal funds sent to Houston will be spent. We can decide what ripple effects we want to create. We can decide whether this investment benefits everyone, by making our neighborhoods more affordable and more equitable. Or whether it increases inequality, by limiting the benefits to wealthy real estate developers and land speculators.
We would do well to consider a tale of two cities — New Orleans and New York — that faced similar storms and rebuilt in very different ways.
The devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was unparalleled. Lowincome communities and communities of color bore the brunt of the damage. But the rebuilding only intensified the struggles for working people, doing little for those who lived in the city. In fact, much of the rebuilding work was done by out-of-town firms that brought in their own labor force. New Orleans residents didn’t get the jobs, and many of them couldn’t afford to rebuild their own homes. Ten years after the storm, almost 30 percent of homes in some of the most affected neighborhoods were still unrepaired.
After Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2013, New Yorkers took a different path. The city government set up a comprehensive and transparent system for allocating federal funds. Community organizations, public housing residents, building trades unions and city officials worked together to develop a new program called “Build It Back.”
“Build It Back” targeted working-class neighborhoods to assist with home elevation and enlisted building trade unions to recruit and train job-seekers from those neighborhoods to do the work. The results? Good jobs for low-income workers in the construction industry and a program that ensured working-class renters and homeowners could afford to stay in their homes. What will Houston choose? As always, we will forge our own path forward. But we can take stock of how New York and New Orleans responded and incorporate their lessons into our strategy. The HOME coalition (Houston Organizing Movement for Equity), a partnership of community organizations and labor unions dedicated to ensuring an equitable recovery, has a great plan to do just that.
The HOME coalition jobs proposal would rebuild badly damaged residencies in under-resourced Houston neighborhoods quickly, safely and to be more resilient when the next extreme weather event occurs. It would ensure jobs in the rebuilding effort are good jobs that protect the health, safety and wages of those doing the work. And it would train and employ lowincome residents of Harvey-impacted neighborhoods for long-term careers in the skilled building trades.
Contractors and construction workers would come to an agreement on good jobs standards, including safety, wages, benefits and working conditions. This agreement would also provide for apprenticeship readiness training for local residents and enforce compliance with city building codes. In addition, we could advocate for targeting 30 percent of the jobs created toward unemployed and underemployed job-seekers in Houston neighborhoods hit hard by Harvey, turning an investment in rebuilding into a real investment in the community.
The HOME jobs proposal would elevate developers with Better Builder certification, which ensures higher wage and safety standards, as well as accredited on-site monitoring, to address labor violations and produce the best quality results. This means we can be confident our community is being rebuilt ethically, and that the city doesn’t give taxpayer dollars to contractors that don’t do good work or treat construction workers fairly.
We have a chance to do more than rebuild our neighborhoods. We have a chance to build something stronger, better, more beautiful than what was destroyed — a healthy economy and environment, more resilient buildings, and a more just and equitable city. The choice is ours.