The Galveston County Daily News

The state is not allocating enough money to poor- to moderate-income families to repair their hurricane-damaged houses, an Austin-based social justice advocacy group told the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this week.

In a formal complaint, Texas Appleseed claimed that Texas’ plan to spend the second round of money allocated for Hurricane Ike recovery does not meet federal requirements, specifically because it allows regional councils of government to decide how federal disaster recovery dollars are spent. Those regional councils, including the Houston-Galveston Area Council, are not spending enough money on housing for low- to moderate-income families, staff attorney Madison Sloan said.

Because Texas lacks an adequate plan to spend federal dollars, the state has been unable to ensure municipalities will spend the money to further fair housing practices, a key federal requirement, Sloan said. This lack of oversight has led to problems in Galveston, where opposition to rebuilding public housing is “an egregious example” of race-based housing discrimination, she said.

Texas Appleseed has asked the federal housing agency to reject the plan the state submitted Sept. 30 to spend the second round of $1.7 billion. The advocacy group wants the federal agency to require the state to revise and resubmit its plan, this time giving priority to low- to moderate-income families and deeply analyzing impediments to fair housing.

Texas Appleseed’s complaint will not hold up the first round of funding, which already approved was by the federal housing department, Sloan and state officials said.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could force the state to resubmit its plan for the second round of funding, or it could ignore Texas Appleseed’s complaint altogether. The department approved in March the state’s plans for the first round of funding after Texas Appleseed complained about the plan in February.

Slowing Dollars

The Texas Department of Rural Affairs, which administers the federal disaster recovery dollars flowing to Texas, received a mandate from Gov. Rick Perry to allow local municipalities to decide how the money is spent, Heather Lagrone, department project manager, said.

Sixty-three counties — an area the size of 13 East Coast states — are receiving disaster recovery funding, Lagrone said.

“Who are we to be sitting in Austin and mandating priorities across such a diverse region?” she asked. “We did the exact same thing with Rita funding and did a similar thing with the first round of Ike funding. Our position is that decisions should happen locally because locals definitely know their needs.”

Texas Appleseed argued giving local governments control over spending decisions delays federal money from trickling down to those who need it most.

Officials at municipalities that never have administered federal dollars must create additional layers of bureaucracy to administer recovery money, Sloan said.

Galveston County has been delayed from spending federal dollars because the county had to “build from scratch” a housing program to divvy up the funds allocated in round one, County Judge Jim Yarbrough said.

Although the federal government approved the state’s round one spending plan in March, the county doesn’t expect to start repairing houses until spring, almost a year after funding was approved and 18 months after Hurricane Ike struck Galveston on Sept. 13, 2008.

Lagrone said she did not think the state’s funding process was slowing the flow of federal dollars to hurricane victims.

Affordable Housing Needed

Texas Appleseed also accused the state of underfunding housing, Sloan said. The state plans to spend 50 percent of the $3 billion allocated by Congress for housing. The other 50 percent will be spent to repair and harden damaged roads, electrical grids and sewer and water systems in counties and cities damaged by Hurricanes Dolly and Ike.

The state should be spending at least 70 percent of federal dollars on housing repair, Sloan said.

The state said regional councils of government should be allowed to decide how much money to allocate for housing versus infrastructure, Lagrone said. Some regions may need to spend more money on repairing and improving infrastructure than repairing damaged housing, she said.

Sloan disagreed, saying the state should set a standard for all regional governments.

“Texas, as a general rule, needs affordable housing so badly,” she said. “We didn’t have enough affordable housing by a long shot before Ike and Dolly, and we have even less now. We’re in a recession, and people desperately need housing they can afford.”

The state also has a responsibility to further fair housing, and that doesn’t seem to be happening in Galveston, Sloan said. The reaction to rebuilding public housing has been racially charged, she said, citing a petition signed by 2,000 people, unruly public hearings and editorials in The Daily News.

In response to the criticism, Galveston Housing Authority abandoned its plan to rebuild destroyed public housing units and develop 1,500 additional affordable housing units across the island.

The comments from Galveston residents depicting public housing residents as criminal, lazy, undesirable and an impediment to creating a middle class are similar to the kinds of camouflaged racism used in prior housing discrimination cases, Sloan said.

The federal government should not allocate any more money to the state until it can prove how it plans to protect fair housing standards across the state, Sloan said.

Galveston Housing Authority Executive Director Harish Krishnarao could not be reached for comment Friday.

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GHA Critics Meeting Tuesday

Attorney Tony Buzbee is organizing a meeting with David Stanowski and other critics of the Galveston Housing Authority on Tuesday to discuss suing the agency to stop it from rebuilding public housing. The meeting is not open to the public, Stanowski said. Organizers have invited middle-class islanders, business owners and politicians.