Council delays vote on Ion deal amid community’s opposition

Six council members delayed a vote Wednesday on a city deal with Rice Management Co. to invest in community projects to help offset displacement in Third Ward from the Ion development on South Main Street.

District D Councilmember Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, a Third Ward native, led the effort to use a procedural motion known as a tag to automatically delay the vote for a week.

Organizers have argued the city and Rice left the community out of the $15.3 million “community benefits agreement,” which is supposed to be negotiated directly with the neighborhood that has something to lose. This pact was ironed out by the city and Rice, which also commissioned its own 13-member community group to form recommendations.

Student groups and other organizers for more than two years have called for a community benefits agreement to protect Third Ward residents from rising housing costs and gentrification associated with the $100 million tech hub. Those organizers ultimately were not involved in the formal drafting or negotiating process for the deal, which would invest funds for minority and women entrepreneurs, job training and affordable housing, among other initiatives.

The Houston Coalition for Equitable Development without Displacement, which has organized around a CBA for years, repeated has argued the deal before City Council is not a community benefits agreement because it was not negotiated with the community. Legal experts and researchers who have worked on pacts in other cities backed them up.

Rice had invited four members of that group to participate in its working group. The coalition countered asking to include all eight members of its negotiating team and to drop the “community benefits agreement” label. The Rice group carried on without them.

Rice, which has a $6.3 billion endowment, has said the deal marks a direct investment in the community that is unprecedented in the city’s development history.

There was no further discussion Wednesday. Evans-Shabazz said Tuesday, after several organizers argued against the deal, that the exclusion of HCEDD was a problem for her. The council member had attended early organizing meetings before her election in 2019.

Councilmembers Martha Castex-Tatum, Tiffany Thomas, Tarsha Jackson, Letitia Plummer and Edward Pollard also tagged agenda item.