The City of Houston will receive $314.6 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to fund recovery efforts following the derecho and Hurricane Beryl in 2024 if it spends the dollars on eligible efforts. The funding will prioritize administration, housing and disaster mitigation. The City Council is expected to vote on the plan in the upcoming weeks.
The funding, which comes from the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR), kicks in when other assistance means are exhausted.
“If you remember those times…we had trucks full of debris and an inefficient way of doing away with those debris,” said Michael C. Nichols, director of the Housing and Community Development Department (HCD). “There was a time when we had inadequate public safety vehicles and ambulances. The key problem during those times was the loss of power, including power in our most critical public facilities.”
The city’s plan
Mayor John Whitmire’s administration released a draft plan outlining how to spend the HUD funds.
The city’s draft, released in early June, initially allocated $0 toward housing and economic revitalization. However, during a public comment session, residents immediately resisted the proposal. Following public outcry, the administration revised its proposal to include $50 million in housing recovery funds.
“It’s important to emphasize that this change is a direct result of the feedback that we, our department and the mayor received from community members and stakeholders like you,” Nichols said. “Your voices are being heard…many times we feel like maybe we’re not being heard by our government leaders.”
The allocated dollars act as a reimbursement grant, rather than a “big check.” The Houston city government is required to spend the funding on eligible activities, obtain approval of the action plan from HUD, implement the plan and then seek reimbursement.
For context, eligible activities include planning, administration, housing infrastructure, public services, economic revitalization and mitigation.
Public pressure spurs housing funding
The city now has to adjust the new plan after taking residents’ concerns into account, which includes:
- $15.7 million: Administration costs, staff time and management of the grant
- $151.3M for a power generation resilience program, including the installation of natural gas generators
- $8.8M for FEMA assistance
- $56.5M for emergency response and public safety equipment, such as ambulances and high-water vehicles
- $41M for homeless services
- $32.8M for debris repository acquisition and development, including land acquisition and security measures
- $8.25M for vegetation management
Northeast Houston resident Shanza Branch emphasizes the need for home repair funding, especially for those still recuperating from previous natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.
“The City of Houston should prioritize programs that support the recovery efforts of community members, ’cause my house still has a leak, cracks and crevices from the storm [Hurricane Beryl],” Branch said. “It [the city] should cut the programs that are not responding to the direct disaster recovery needs, like purchasing cop cars and ambulances and buying gas generators for public facilities that are not used for mass sheltering during a storm.”
Although the city has identified core capability gaps exposed by the 2024 storms, some believe $50 million is not enough to address residents’ housing needs.
While appreciating Whitmire’s adjustment to the plan, Noel Denison, a representative from the Metropolitan Organization of Houston, said an additional $50 million is needed that can be carved out from the Power Generation Resilience Program.
“We support keeping the funding at multi-service centers and water facilities, but we don’t believe that generators are needed at every fire station and other city facilities,” Denison suggested. “We should cut from emergency response vehicles and…the homeless program and put that additional funding into repairing homes of people who, if their homes are not repaired, will be homeless.”
What’s next?
The proposed budget was presented to the Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee. The city’s application for disaster recovery funding must have the City Council’s approval before it can be submitted to HUD by July 20. Following this, HUD will review and approve the application by Sept. 3.
For now, advocates say the shift toward housing recovery is an important, if overdue, step toward rebuilding storm-battered neighborhoods.
“I would expect that the City of Houston does handle infrastructure issues, but handles them out of its own fiscal budget,…particularly in a climate where so many soft sources have dried up and housing is getting more and more difficult to develop,” said Emily Alin with Brinshore Development. “Meanwhile, the costs of living and housing are severely burdening the citizens of this city.”
