Fifth Ward project a balancing act
Redevelopment of St. Elizabeth Hospital raises concerns of gentrification, segregation
St. Elizabeth Hospital once bustled with activity along one of Houston’s busiest streets, caring for generations of black Houstonians, who, into the 1960s, had few other options in a segregated city with a severe shortage of hospital beds for people of color.
Today, shattered glass from broken windows litters the ground near the abandoned hospital. The derelict building, 115,000 square feet, still towers over the Fifth Ward, the onetime haven now the face of desolation in a struggling neighborhood largely passed over by the prosperity that has lifted so many other areas of the city.
St. Elizabeth has become the center of the fight over the direction of the neighborhood as newer, wealthier residents with eyes trained on property values contend with poorer, longtime residents increasingly worried whether the Fifth Ward’s future holds a place for them. At issue are not only the familiar concerns and conflicts around gentrification but also the very nature of economic development in historic and underserved communities, an undertaking fraught with complications and contradictions.
The catalyst for the dispute is a proposed $53 million renovation of the former hospital into mixedincome rental housing, with a little over half the units set aside for lowincome households. Some newer residents oppose the project, arguing it will further contribute to economic segregation in Houston (most of Houston’s public low-income housing inside the Loop is
on the east side, while the west side rapidly gains in economic power and prominence). They say the Fifth Ward doesn’t have the services to support more low-income residents.
Older residents, however, support the redevelopment, glad it will preserve affordable housing in an area where people are struggling. They fear getting pushed out by young professionals and developers seeking lower prices and greater appreciation for real estate inside the Loop.
When the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation proposed the renovation, the nonprofit thought it would turn St. Elizabeth into a symbol of hope, one that would restore a decaying eyesore, spur jobs and economic activity in the neighborhood, and provide affordable housing. Instead, it has become a source of division.
Revitalizing aging properties has proved tricky for the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, as it has for developers in other historic, struggling communities where residents want to preserve the character — and people — of the neighborhood while encouraging new commerce. As developers contend with these competing desires, they often find it’s damned if you develop, damned if you don’t.
“It’s a difficult balance because no matter what you propose, somebody’s not going to like it,” said Bill Fulton, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, a research center at Rice University. “If you propose market-rate (housing), somebody’s going to say you’re fostering gentrification. If you propose low-income (housing), people are going to argue you’re concentrating poor people.”
Past and future
Boarded up homes and businesses line the once-thriving Lyons Avenue that was sliced and diced by the expansion of Interstate 10 and U.S. 59. The highway expansions initiated the deterioration of the neighborhood in the 1960s as population loss accelerated by black migration to the suburbs meant businesses had fewer customers to frequent their stores.
While most of Houston has grown rapidly, the population in the area surrounding the hospital has declined in recent years, falling about 3 percent since 2016, according to the Census Bureau. The neighborhood, today about 40 percent Hispanic, had a median household income of $22,190 in 2018, less than half the Houston median of $51,140.
Sitting on 3 acres of land, St. Elizabeth Hospital, at 4514 Lyons Ave., remains a lingering ghost of its failures — or of its contributions, depending on whom you ask. Some residents in the historically black community were born in the hospital, which closed at the end of the 1980s due to insurmountable debt.
A younger generation remembers when it was an addiction treatment facility, the Barbara Jordan Recovery Center. That failed, too, in 2014 after executives of its parent company were indicted in a Medicare fraud scheme, finances ran dry, and state regulators shut it down.
Is the third time the charm? The Fifth Ward CRC plans to begin construction on the project in the fall but has run into challenges.
The project stalled in 2018 when opponents blocked developers from obtaining tax credits from the state on a technicality. The Fifth Ward CRC, however, was able to obtain a nearly $24 million award from the City of Houston under Hurricane Harvey recovery funds, as well as a federal grant and private financing.
The developers, amid increasing opposition, adjusted the proposal to reduce affordable units and significantly increase marketrate apartments by constructing another building on the site. The proposal initially set aside 98 of 110 units as affordable; now it calls for 92 of 179 units to be reserved for low-income households.
Gentrification or segregation?
The main complaint of residents is the lack of — or disappearance — of community amenities such as grocery stores, restaurants and banks. The question is whether that lack of resources is a reason to block a new housing development.
“Why not bring businesses in before this project?” said Hector Torres, who owns a home a few blocks away from the hospital and moved to the area five years ago because it was near downtown and seemed to have potential. “To me it seems like (the developers and the city) want to keep this area low income.”
Opponents claim that placing more affordable housing in an im- poverished area with few busi- nesses will simply bring more of the same problems, such as drugs and prostitution, into the neigh- borhood. It’s a sensitive argument to make in Houston.
In 2016, Mayor Sylvester Turner killed an initiative to place an affordable housing complex near the Galleria, which got the city in trouble with federal regulators, who said the decision contributed to economic and racial segregation in Houston. Houston was listed as one of the most economically segregated cities in the United States by a Pew Research study in 2012. Only New York and Philadelphia were more economically segregated.
On the other side of the debate, several longtime residents don’t want the area to change too much and fear gentrification.
“I really prefer (single-family homes), but I realize the dilemma we have in the city,” said Joetta Stevenson, president of the Greater Fifth Ward Super Neighborhood Association and whose family has lived in the area for generations. “I’m worried about the displacement of people in this community. Where do they go?”
The Fifth Ward CRC has targeted projects on Lyons Avenue to help revitalize the strip, including the Deluxe Theater, which was restored in 2015 in a $5.5 million project, and the Houston Independent School District’s Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men, now one of Houston’s highest performing schools. But the nonprofit maintains the Fifth Ward has a housing shortage and needs greater population density to attract more businesses and services.
Taking care not to displace longtime residents and providing housing that attracts more robust economic development, all while nodding to history, pose dilemmas for the Fifth Ward CRC. For example, H-E-B typically needs 7 acres to build smaller stores in urban areas. But in the Fifth Ward, where much of the real estate is already occupied by homes and historic buildings, such as St. Elizabeth, finding the space H-E-B or other grocery stores need presents a daunting challenge.
“We are in a community that is 150 years old, where you have existing structures with sentimental value, and those things discourage new development from coming into the community, because in order to put the land together, somebody has to be displaced,” said Kathy Payton, CEO of the Fifth Ward CRC. “We need to focus continuously on increasing the density of the neighborhood so that retailers and grocery stores would be able to sustain their business.”
Historic challenges
Opponents, however, are skeptical that those renting at St. Elizabeth Place would help stabilize the neighborhood. They want bigger units designed for families rather than one or two bedrooms, because they worry only single people transitioning from unstable economic situations would want to rent small units.
St. Elizabeth Hospital is designated as a historic structure and, for the Fifth Ward CRC to receive tax credits, the architects must leave the walls where they are, restricting units to one or two bedrooms. Still, Payton said, she believes the complex would attract working-class individuals and families.
Opponents also claim that those leading the redevelopment have conflicts of interest. Payton is a member of the board of the area’s tax increment reinvestment zone, which finances redevelopment and allocated $100,000 to the project, according to city records. Opponents argue the city will remain economically segregated as long as developers have incentives to build low-income housing in low-income areas.
“The Fifth Ward will continue to experience stunted pockets of growth where prosperity circumvents the masses and lands in the hands of (developers),” Erica Hubbard, president of the Progressive Fifth Ward Community Association, the neighborhood group opposing the project, wrote in a letter to the state housing authority.
Payton waves aside such concerns. She said she avoids any conflict of interest by removing herself from tax increment financing decisions for projects on which she is working. Critics, she added, are missing the bigger issue.
“The question really becomes: Do you want a vacant, dilapidated building that is a harbor for crime to stay there?” Payton said. “We have to figure out where the most beneficial opportunity with the least amount of harm to the community is.”