Women’s center to build housing for domestic violence survivors
Four days before Mayor Sylvester Turner came out against a proposed affordable housing development in the Galleria area, backers of another subsidized housing project — this one for some particularly vulnerable residents — scored a major victory.
On July 28, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs board approved tax credits worth about $15 million for Magnolia Gardens, a planned 104-unit apartment complex in Fort Bend County. It would house survivors of domestic violence struggling to regain their independence after leaving abusive relationships, as well as their children.
The Fort Bend Women’s Center and its development partners found a site in a wooded area near Long Meadow Farms, a master-planned community carved out of former ranch land. The average price of its houses for sale is about $376,000, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.
The location in a “highopportunity area” with good schools and high incomes gave the project a better score in the competition for low-income housing tax credits, state housing agency spokesman Gordon Anderson said. Also beneficial were statements of support from state Rep. John Zerwas, the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court and the Houston City Council (the site at West Bellfort and Skinner is in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.)
But now an obstacle has emerged. The municipal utility district, or MUD, that serves the unincorporated area has not agreed to annex the development and provide utility service. If it declines, the women’s center will have to bear the additional costs and regulatory burdens of digging a well and building a sewage treatment facility.
Denying utility service may be a novel strategy for blocking affordable housing, though the ingenuity and determination of opponents is often impressive. In this case, though, it won’t work, the leader of the project told me on Monday.
“We’ll do it one way or the other,” said Vita Goodell, the women’s center’s executive director.
Goodell said the center has
been providing rental assistance to clients since 1999. She noted that some abusers forbid their partners from developing careers or getting an education, which limits their earning potential when they leave the relationship. “Abuse,” she said, “isn’t always just a fist hitting a face.”
Finding enough safe, affordable units for clients to rent has become increasingly difficult, Goodell said. Any whiff of “lowincome,” even when a third party like a nonprofit is paying, scares off certain landlords, she said. So the women’s center decided it must build its own facility.
Goodell told me that the MUD board has not explicitly rejected the development; it just hasn’t acted yet. An attorney for the MUD board confirmed late Monday that the request to annex Magnolia Gardens was still under review.
Neighborhood opposition to Magnolia Gardens, Goodell said, emerged relatively late in the process. The issues cited in an online petition signed by more than 2,000 opponents might have been lifted from the playbook of those resisting the Galleria-area development or countless others aimed at serving low-income people: traffic congestion, flooding, overcrowded schools. The Magnolia Gardens petition does hint at some other concerns, however:
“No such low-income rental properties are currently in the nearby surrounding area. Properties fronting the east edge of the existing tracts are deed restricted, acreage lots with property values up to approximately $750,000. … This high density project would negatively impact the country aspect along Skinner Road.” And there are “concerns about future expansion or other support for low-income families.”
The women’s center has been a trusted institution in Fort Bend County for 36 years; its development partner, Stephan Fairfield of Covenant Community Capital, has a long track record in successful nonprofit development projects. “We’re not throwing up something with cinder blocks and a tin roof,” Goodell said.
Turner’s refusal to place the Galleria-area development on the City Council agenda may doom that project. But the Fort Bend County proposal has cleared all the big hurdles: Its funding has been approved, and it has the support of local officials. And the development is in line with federal policy encouraging the placement of housing for the poor in neighborhoods where their kids can see and aspire to something better.
Poverty is not contagious. And in this case, the usual arguments about the effects of affordable housing are obscuring the urgent need for this development. As Goodell noted, unless safe, affordable options are available, survivors of domestic violence often return to their abusers. Surely no one wants that outcome.