County ramps up flood plain buyouts
$2.5B bond tapped to purchase 12 homes; 512 more in process
Fifteen months after Hurricane Harvey flooded more than 200,000 area homes and apartments, Harris County has begun purchasing homes in the flood plain using funds voters overwhelmingly approved in this summer’s $2.5 billion flood infrastructure bond.
Using matching funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Harris County in the past month has purchased 12 homes. For this program, which combines local and federal dollars, the Harris County Flood Control District has used $53 million in bond funds to secure $159 million from FEMA. Another 512 homes are in the buyout process, and up to 400 more could be purchased using this funding source.
James Wade, director of the flood control district’s buyout program, said his staff aims to leverage local funding to secure federal dollars, which lessens the burden for Harris County taxpayers. Homes the county is targeting for buyouts are so susceptible to flooding that engineers have concluded the cost to protect them cannot be justified.
“There’s no practical flood control project that can save them,” Wade said.
Over the course of the decadelong bond program, the flood control district plans to use around $180 million in local funding, plus
$550 million from federal partners, to purchase as many as 3,600 buildings in the flood plain. That total would more than double the number of homes the flood control district’s buyout program has purchased in its 33-year history.
Harris County plans to focus many of the buyouts on the San Jacinto River watershed, though the dozen homes purchased to date include properties on Vince Bayou, White Oak Bayou, Cypress Creek and Vogel Creek.
‘Right solution’
Melinda Rockwell and her husband, Erick, took a buyout after the San Jacinto, swollen by Harvey’s record rainfall, destroyed their town-home complex in Kingwood. The couple and their two children had lived there for four and a half years and flooded three times.
The family purchased a larger home in Humble and agreed with county engineers that the Kingwood complex, perched precariously on the river’s sandy north bank, should not be rebuilt.
“It is the right solution,” Rockwell said, adding that the land should be returned to the floodway.
Gaye Thurman was ready to move after her home near Brickhouse Gully, in the White Oak Bayou watershed, was swamped for the fourth time in the 2015 Memorial Day floods. She remodeled the home, which she and her husband had lived in for 40 years. Dozens of prospective buyers toured the place and complimented Thurman on the shaded backyard. None made an offer.
“The first question is, has it ever flooded?” Thurman said. She was upfront about the home’s soggy history.
The only buyer willing to pay market rate was Harris County. In August 2017, the flood control district made a formal offer to Thurman, and she accepted. A week later, Harvey flooded the property for a fifth time.
She urged homeowners in the flood plain to rid themselves of the idea that Harvey was a one-time event.
Buyouts, she said, are a way out of nightmares like hers.
“If you flooded once, you’re going to flood again,” Thurman said. “I don’t care what the politicians tell you. I’m living proof.”
Vicious cycle
Wade, of the flood control district, acknowledged some residents criticize buyouts as a bailout for homeowners naive enough to buy in a flood plain, but he said some homes predate the county’s flood maps. Razing flood-prone homes also saves taxpayers in the long run because of a well-intentioned federal program gone awry.
Homeowners inside the 100year flood plain are required to purchase subsidized insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program. When these homes flood, however, owners often find themselves with properties that have sharply devalued, and can become trapped in a cycle of repeated floods and governmentbacked insurance payouts.
A Houston Chronicle investigation found that seven Houston homes in the flood plain racked up $9 million in federal insurance payouts, even though the combined value of the properties was less than $500,000.
“There’s not a mechanism to prevent paying those damages through the Flood Insurance Program,” Wade said. He added that buyouts erase “those repeat homes that should have never been built.”
Though Wade and the flood control district are hiring additional staff to manage more than 200 flood bond projects, the year that has elapsed since Harvey swamped 11 percent of the county’s housing stock has been too long a wait for some buyout-eligible homeowners. In the spring, the Chronicle found that private buyers already had purchased 5,500 homes that flooded.
Wade said that in this latest round of FEMA buyouts, about half the applicants have either dropped out of the program or sold to private developers. When firms flip homes to new buyers — who may be unaware of a property’s flood risk — Flood Control District Executive Director Russ Poppe said they hamper the district’s goal to protect Harris County from future storms.
“We have investors come in, and then an unsuspecting renter moves in, and the structures are stuck in the vicious cycle of flooding again,” Poppe said.
More than 1,000 eligible homeowners have signed up with the flood control district, which still is accepting applications. To be eligible, homes must in a 100-year flood plain, where they are subject to repetitive flooding that is unlikely to be prevented by any flood mitigation project.