Lawsuit claims plan for aid after Harvey favors whites
A new lawsuit alleges that a plan for $5.6 billion in post-Harvey federal aid favored white homeowners over renters who tend to be minorities.
Lone Star Legal Aid filed the lawsuit Friday against the Housing and Urban Development Department and the Texas General Land Office. The GLO administers the federal funds.
“Especially in the Houston area, a majority of the Houston renters are minority households,” said Ashea Jones, a staff attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid. “And under the current regulations, there are no programs that give direct assistance to the renter households.”
Neither HUD nor the GLO have responded to requests for comment.
About three-quarters of the federal funding are for homeowner-only programs, and the rest of the money is for renters. The lawsuit alleges that the funding setup will steer money to non-Hispanic white neighborhoods and does not offer enough funding to low-income minority neighborhoods. Lone Star Legal Aid also believes that the government overinflated the needs of white households who had other means, such as renter’s insurance, to recover.
Renter families have fewer options and less money than homeowners, but black and Hispanic families are more likely to be renters than white families.
“There were similar effects after (Hurricane) Ike in terms of assisting renters,” Jones said. “We’re seeing it become a systemic issue with each disaster.”
Homeowners are able to get reimbursed for temporary housing as their homes are repaired. While recovery programs offer incentives to landlords — public and private — to build new apartments for renters, there’s no equivalent direct-to-renter assistance.
This is the second lawsuit alleging that post-Harvey aid distribution discriminates against low-income renters. The first was filed in October by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. One of the named plaintiffs in that lawsuit, who lived in Victoria County when the hurricane hit, couldn’t stay in her home after the storm. Her rent rose from $750 to $1,000 when she moved. She couldn’t afford to stay in her new home and moved again.
After Hurricane Sandy, a New Jersey group filed a complaint with HUD that its plan for distributing aid discriminated against blacks and Hispanics.
Ultimately, Lone Star Legal Aid hopes to force the government to create better guidelines for the next disaster — and for the ongoing Harvey recovery.
“This is not just a Houston or a Texas problem,” Jones said. “It affects anywhere that continually has natural disasters, whether it be a hurricane or wildfires or flooding.”