The Houston City Council approved the use of $30 million from the city’s stormwater fund (roughly $167 million) to demolish 343 dangerous and abandoned buildings, a move Mayor John Whitmire framed as a necessary response to illegal dumping and drainage problems.
At the same time, City Controller Chris Hollins warned it could weaken fiscal oversight.
The decision followed a tense public exchange between Whitmire and Hollins, with council members split over whether demolition can legally qualify as stormwater maintenance.
A heated exchange
Hollins said his office flagged the proposal because it expands an existing contract from zero dollars to $30 million without what he described as proper fiscal review. He argued that the stormwater fund can only be used to plan, build, and maintain stormwater-related programs and facilities, and using it to demolish buildings would be “illegal” and would “gut the city charter.”
“Instead of engaging honestly with our office and working toward a legal solution, the administration repackaged that same work to evade the financial oversight of the controller’s office,” Hollins said. “If that interpretation is accepted, it will allow any administration to bypass fiscal oversight at any time simply by expanding an existing contract…It is not the government that Houstonians can trust.”
Whitmire rejected the controller’s characterization, calling it offensive. He said the dangerous buildings are predominantly located in Houston’s low-income and minority communities, such as Sunnyside, Fifth Ward, and the Third Ward.
“Words matter,” he said. “I’ve been in the legislature for 50 years…never ever heard someone publicly chalk what a legislative body’s doing is illegal. I’m offended for this body. If it was illegal, it would not be on this agenda. It’s just wrong for the controller to try to assume the responsibility of the city attorney.”
City Attorney Arturo Michel said he was “confident” the city would be working within the law.
“If you just look at the word ‘maintenance’ and the dictionary definition, the case law is very clear,” he said.
How the debate unfolded
In December, when the agenda item was first discussed, Councilman Edward Pollard framed the core concern as the stormwater fund having “very specific purposes… primarily maintaining our drainage system.” Pollard warned it could become a precedent, allowing future proposals to shift money “from pots that are particularly designated for one purpose” toward something “many would consider not its intended purpose.”
Randy Macchi, Houston Public Works director, laid out the administration’s case for what he called a “direct nexus” between certain dangerous structures and stormwater infrastructure. Macchi said the city was tackling a backlog of more than 2,300 buildings that had been reported, but acknowledged the number was far higher.
These structures, he argued, often become “ground zero for illegal dumping,” and that dumped material “ends up in our open ditches and then later on in the storm systems.”
He argued that blighted buildings often serve as dumping grounds for trash that ends up clogging ditches and storm drains, worsening flooding in nearby neighborhoods. It would be better, he said, to clean them up “once and for all.”
What council members said
Several council members echoed the mayor’s stance, saying the city has allowed thousands of dangerous structures to linger for years without adequate funding to remove them.
“We put cameras down in the drainage systems; half of those drains were filled with water bottles and debris,” said Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Martha Castex-Tatum. “What’s illegal is the tremendous amount of dumping that’s happening in the city. The process that we are looking at in order to demolish these buildings, in my opinion, is not illegal because it can be proven that there is a correlation between the dumping and how water moves products that are on our streets.”
Others remained unconvinced. Council Member Abbie Kamin, who opposed the plan, said the city was “kicking the can down the road” on drainage infrastructure by diverting money.
“There’s not anybody around this horseshoe that doesn’t want to address dangerous, blighted homes that are public safety risks,” she said. “But, where the money comes from does matter…it’s also certainly not enough time to engage with engineers to see if this is the proper type of criteria…But the way in which we have laid out this criteria in no way gives me comfort that this is actually going to the intended use of the stormwater drainage fund.”
What happened?
The ordinance ultimately passed, clearing the way for the city to begin using stormwater funds for qualifying demolitions.
The debate repeatedly returned to Houston’s history with lawsuits over restricted funds. Council members referenced prior legal fights and public backlash when money was perceived as diverted. Last year, the city resolved a lawsuit filed by two engineers who claimed that the city was not allocating enough property tax revenue to the Dedicated Drainage and Street Renewal Fund (DDSRF).
The city was forced to pay up, and Whitmire’s administration reached a settlement with the plaintiffs.
“We’ve been here before very recently, we lost a lawsuit related to misappropriation of drainage fund dollars,” Hollins reminded the council. “These shortcut shortcuts compound risk.”
