The Atlantic hurricane season, which started June 1 and ends Nov. 30 every year, has begun.
Houston is bracing for another stretch of unpredictable weather. For the city’s underserved neighborhoods, hurricane preparedness remains as much a question of equitable resources as infrastructure.
Mayor John Whitmire assured residents that the city is prepared with plans to install 100 emergency generators at city facilities like fire stations and libraries before the end of his first term in 2027. However, the city has not yet disclosed the facilities.
Residents like Huey German-Wilson of Kashmere Gardens, founder of the nonprofit Northeast Houston Redevelopment Council, are not convinced of the city’s hurricane preparedness.
“They’ve got some plan they’re working on, but they haven’t disclosed it, which means for us there’s no plan,” she said.
This year, CenterPoint is using AI and advanced modeling to forecast storm damage better. The utility company, which came under fire for its handling of power outages during Hurricane Beryl, said it has made improvements under its Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, including:
- Upgrading 26,000 storm-hardened poles
- Installing 5,150 automated grid devices
- Clearing vegetation from 6,000 miles of power lines
- Moving over 400 miles of power lines underground
- Deploying 100 new weather monitoring stations
CenterPoint added that it has completed a large-scale emergency response drill with local and state officials and installed backup generators at critical sites like medical centers and community shelters across its 12-county service area.
Preparation and access
The city’s pledge to install backup generators in all multi-service centers, a crucial step after last year’s Hurricane Beryl, which left several centers inoperable due to power outages, is pending. Residents noted installation in the Kashmere Gardens’ multi-service center, which received funding to install a permanent generator worth $899,000, but it has yet to receive the generator despite hurricane season already beginning.
Linda Scurlock, a senior resident of the Hiram Clarke area, recalled losing power for days during past storms.
“We need to know these places will actually work when we need them,” Scurlock said. “I think we were out of lights for nine days during Hurricane Ike. This time with Beryl, my lights went out and my son and I went to a hotel downtown.”
Resident Diane Iglehart said community members relied on churches for refuge during Hurricane Beryl.
A draft plan with $0 toward housing and small businesses
In response to the widespread devastation caused by the 2024 Derecho windstorm and Hurricane Beryl, Whitmire’s administration released a draft action plan outlining how it intends to spend $314.6 million in federal disaster recovery funds. The Houston City Council will vote on the plan on June 25.
The dollars were allocated through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program to address Houston’s long-term recovery needs. Both the derecho and Hurricane Beryl impacted the city’s infrastructure, housing stock and the economy, knocking out power to more than two million people and causing extensive damage.
Houston’s action plan designates a majority of the funds, totaling over $216 million, on infrastructure improvements. This includes $151 million on generators at facilities like fire and police stations, and multi-service centers, $56 million on purchasing new equipment like emergency communications systems, ambulances and police vehicles, and the remaining $8.8 million on FEMA’s Public Assistance program for short-term and long-term work done to recover from a major disaster.
Additionally, $41 million is set aside for public services like homelessness support and another $41 million for long-term resilience strategies like vegetation management.
However, the plan allocates $0 for housing recovery, despite housing representing the single largest unmet need, with housing-related damages totaling $229 million. These include affordable housing units managed by the Houston Housing Authority. Small businesses also faced an estimated $186 million in losses, but no funding has been assigned to economic revitalization programs.
Food, shelter and communication gaps
Beyond power, communities are also concerned about food, shelter, and outreach. German-Wilson said residents showed up at the Northeast Multi-Service Centers during last year’s storms but did not receive amenities such as warm food, like those at other centers, such as those designated as Red Cross shelters.
Additionally, she expressed worry that the current federal administration’s funding freeze to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will impact state and local assistance to those impacted by this year’s hurricanes.
“The funding cuts to the cities meant a lot of institutional knowledge went out the door with those people,” she said. “We’re further behind than we were because they didn’t leave a playbook for people to follow.”
At the Acres Homes Multi-Service Center in north Houston, customer service representative Renata Chambers acknowledged the concerns but assured residents the center is prepared for the storm season ahead.
“We have done this so many times. We are incorporating new things each time that make us better,” Chambers told the Defender. “During the last storm, we opened up so that residents can stay cool and also to power up all of their electronics…but, we cannot keep the centers open all night as a cooling center. We don’t have cots, ’cause we’re not a shelter.”
She added that communication remains challenging while the Acres Homes center is generally prepared. Outreach to seniors and vulnerable populations often relies on word-of-mouth, press and community groups, but not on a systemic notification.
During the 2024 Derecho and Hurricane Beryl, none of the City’s multi-service centers had backup power, which diminished their usefulness. Additionally, out of Houston’s 90 fire stations and five police stations, none have backup power generation.
“These facilities house our public safety officials and provide critical services to our communities during a disaster,” read the city’s Draft Action Plan for Disaster Recovery report. “Fire and Police stations left without power during both the Derecho and Hurricane Beryl put our public safety officials and the City’s residents at an elevated risk by not having appropriate emergency response capacity.”
Illegal dumping and infrastructure
Infrastructure plays a major role in disaster resilience, and residents say it has been long neglected. Acres Homes-based real estate agent and youth mentor Yvonne Barrett pointed out that several homes in the city have not had any inspections in “decades.” In neighborhoods like hers, illegal dumping has contributed to a weak drainage system and aging pipes make flooding inevitable.
“There’s a lot going on in our community, and people don’t pay attention,” Barrett said. “It’s an overlooked problem because they feel as if, for the minority neighborhoods, they don’t have to pay attention as long as they keep the richer neighborhoods looking rich. If they start paying attention to the minority neighborhoods, then of course we will have the resources we need.”
Residents in Independence Heights, North Forest, Acres Homes and Fifth Ward voiced their concerns about the city’s service to underserved communities, adding that seniors’ homes still need repairs from the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
“We’ve been waiting a long time. We know how much food is needed in what place, how the seniors are gonna be affected, who’s flooding, where the lights are likely to go out,” Mardie Paige, super neighborhood president from Independence Heights, told Whitmire. “We have so many studies and plans done, yet not one has been implemented…You need to listen to me, and I know what we need. We’ve done our due diligence for the past 17 years. We’ve come to the table as you asked. Now we request you come to the table and let us tell you what we need.”
A mayor’s assurance
Whitmire has assured Houstonians that changes are underway and historic “neglect” will be reversed.
“All of Houston’s been unprepared because it’s been neglected for years,” Whitmire told the Defender. “We didn’t have generators across Houston in our most sensitive location. It’s not just the Black community, but Houston has suffered years of neglect, particularly the underserved community, which suffers from city neglect worse than anybody because they don’t have resources.”
He added that he is holding community meetings to list residents’ concerns and will soon be “rolling out 100 generators across Houston.”
“We’re gonna make sure every multi-service center has a generator, every library has a service,” Whitmire added. “We’re fixing Houston, and the people understand it. I inherited a lot of neglect,…I’m all fired up.”
Still, community members like Shirley Carney aren’t swayed.
“You keep saying we are broke. That’s not true,” Carney said. “You’re sitting on a $2.4 trillion economy in Texas, and you have a $3.4 million rainy day fund the governor is sitting on. We can use those for disaster relief.”
Lack of federal representation, lingering vulnerability
Adding to the uncertainty is the absence of federal representation in the 18th Congressional District since the death of Congressman Sylvester Turner in March.
German-Wilson noted that without a voice in the White House who would advocate for this district’s constituents, federal dollars might not be distributed in underserved neighborhoods.
“We have state senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and we get nothing from them,” she said. “They don’t talk to us. They don’t interact with us.”
As hurricane season fast approaches the city, the question looms: Is Houston ready? For many of its Black and underserved neighborhoods, the answer is not yet.
