City’s sluggish Harvey repairs worry GLO
State says it’s positioning itself to take over housing program unless the pace picks up
The Texas General Land Office is seeking proposals from companies interested in taking over Houston’s sluggish Hurricane Harvey housing repair program, but state officials say the inquiry will be moot if the city begins serving homeowners at a quicker pace.
The request for “housing program implementation services” would require the chosen firm to staff offices in Houston
with case managers, perform community outreach, process storm survivors’ aid applications and oversee construction of the repairs — in short, start the immensely complex, $428 million program over again.
GLO spokeswoman Brittany Eck stressed that the Land Office has not decided to initiate a takeover of the city’s program, but said the agency needs to put itself in a position to act if the program — and its sister ef
fort at Harris County, which has served even fewer homeowners — continues to lag.
“We are still hopeful that the city of Houston and Harris County both will see drastic improvement in their programs and that this will not be necessary,” Eck said, “But at a certain point we’ll have to make a decision if that progress is not made, and what we’re trying to do right now is minimize the disruption that would come from having to take over those programs.
“It would not be a decision we’d take lightly,” Eck continued, “because that’s a lot of additional work for our agency. We’re already implementing all the programs across 48 counties.”
That the GLO did not seek vendors to take over the county’s even-slower program is due in part to the city and county’s differing reactions to the GLO’s late-October decision to send “strike teams” of experts to assist both governments in processing applications.
The county welcomed the idea, Eck said, but the city rejected the proposal. As of Dec. 2, when the GLO issued its request for proposals, the city had no such team on site, she said.
City officials initially were concerned about having to pay for the experts and about the imprecise scope of their proposed work, said Alan Bernstein, a spokesman for Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Since then, the two sides have come to an agreement, a rare note of harmony between the entities during the lengthy Harvey recovery.
“The city of Houston welcomes the opportunity to partner with the Texas General Land Office on housing recovery,” Bernstein said. “Working together, the city and the GLO can enhance the time-consuming work of getting housing aid to even more Harvey survivors in Houston.”
Eck echoed that, noting a “high level of participation from the city,” and cheering “very productive meetings” GLO staff had with city and county leaders on Wednesday.
The GLO’s request for proposals from housing contractors, which the Houston Chronicle obtained through an open records request, was circulated among a group of disaster recovery firms that had participated in a prior procurement as the state agency was implementing its own Harvey programs last year. The document, which was issued Dec. 2 but not posted online, projects that a contract could be signed with the chosen vendor on Feb. 1.
Zoe Middleton, Southeast Texas co-director of the nonprofit Texas Housers, said there is universal agreement that the city and county housing programs need to improve, and said it would be far better that they do so with the help of embedded experts than through a state takeover.
“The lack of progress is unacceptable, but I do think people having access to local decisionmakers and local control is important,” she said. “It’s much easier for survivors to try to interact with the city than it is to try to interact with the state.”
Chrishelle Palay, executive director of the Houston Organizing Movement for Equity (HOME), a nonprofit focusing on housing, flooding and access to jobs in underserved areas, said an intervention by yet another disaster consulting firm could further disrupt the already difficult aid process for survivors.
“It would be more helpful for the state to provide more support to really try to find a good working relationship between the state and the city to get the process really moving and to actually get people back in their homes,” Palay said. “It’s really disheartening that people who still need desperate help are caught in the crossfire of a political fight.”
Turner, a Democrat seeking a second term in Saturday’s runoff election, has traded intermittent barbs over the Harvey recovery for a year and a half with Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, both Republicans. Turner’s mayoral opponents also have blasted the recovery during the campaign this year.
Pointing to the city and county’s slow housing repair pace, Abbott announced in October that $4.3 billion in federal flood control aid expected to arrive next summer would be administered entirely by the GLO.
As of Nov. 29, the city had begun or completed repairs on 51 homes and had issued reimbursements to 30 homeowners who had paid for repairs themselves. As of Dec. 5, the county had issued three reimbursement checks and begun no home repairs.
By contrast, the GLO — which began its program several months before the city or county — had, as of Dec. 6, finished work on 367 homes and had 714 under construction.
Representatives with the county’s Community Services Department, which runs all county housing programs, declined comment.
Of the $5.7 billion Texas received for Harvey housing programs from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city got $1.3 billion, the county got $1.2 billion, and the GLO got the remaining $3.2 billion to serve the other 48 affected counties.
Though the request for housing proposals is broad enough to cover multiple housing activities across the city’s billion-dollar program, Eck said the city’s main repair program is the matter of greatest concern to state officials.