HUD Housing On Kingsland Blvd.

[Gary]

Lol.... all I can say is LOL.... You have no idea what you're saying boy do you? LOL

I'm not sure what your saying here. In the future, it might help if you make your posts clear. I know that's a lot to ask, but it helps when discussing or debating an issue.

Now, can you answer my initial question?

[AK123]

If you go by the ratios of population to bad apartment complexes, I'd expect the City of Houston to have almost 700 complexes that are similarly in need of attention, and not on the TDHCA list.

But the TDHCA still encourages developers to go out to Katy, to build new low-income housing on virgin fields next to angry neighbors.

Not if they displace those bad people to jail instead of just sweeping them from neighborhood to neighborhood. 'Weed and seed' programs actually do this. They combine efforts on revitalization with parallel efforts on crime prevention and law enforcement. Sorry I wasn't more explicit about it 18 months ago, but I have always envisioned 'weed and seed' as being integral to fixing these bad complexes.

Finally, someone else who gets it!

[TheNiche]

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In and around my Super Neighborhood we have:

- Le Promenade Condominiums at 7400 Bissonnet*

- Houston Westlake (formerly known as the Kingsgate Village)**

- The St. James Place on Fondren Road.

- The Ridgestone Apartments on Fondren Road.

- The Rockport on Nairn off South Gessner

- The Woodscape Apartments on South Gessner

- Braes Hollow on South Braeswood

- Stoneriver Apartments at the intersection of South Braeswood and Bissonnet.

* Le Promenade Condominiums are primarily owned by a man named Guo 'Peter' Li from Bellaire, and are rented out as apartments. They are by far the worst in our area. General consensus is that they should be demolished.

** The Houston Westlake (formerly the Kingsgate Village) was actually getting long overdue repairs. But the owners ran out of money, and work has been stalled for the last six months. The Houston Buildings and Standards Commission has given them until February to get working again. I don't know how they'll do it without money, though.

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Again, this is just for one Super Neighborhood - a small portion of Southwest Houston. We have a population of a little over 22,000 people - and I could easily find eight apartment complexes that are in desperate need of repair and reinvestment. None of these properties show up on the TDHCA list. In fact, I couldn't find anything on there in this zip code!

I apologize that I didn't expand the list city-wide. Oh if only I were back in grad school and had the time. :-) If you go by the ratios of population to bad apartment complexes, I'd expect the City of Houston to have almost 700 complexes that are similarly in need of attention, and not on the TDHCA list.

But the TDHCA still encourages developers to go out to Katy, to build new low-income housing on virgin fields next to angry neighbors.

I'm going to guess that you're interested in 77074 and 77036, which encompass most of Sharpstown. There are six Tax Credit apartment complexes in that area, with 1,531 units. Greater Katy, encompassing the area of zip codes 77449, 77450, 77493, and 77494, a geographic area about twenty times as large also has six Tax Credit apartment complexes, coming in at a total of only 785 apartment units.

In particular, you might be interested in the Premier on Woodfair Ph. I & II, which was built in 1977 and rehabbed in 2006. Or Silver Leaf, built in 1976 and rehabbed in 2001. Those properties alone, following the model that you advocate, total nearly as many units as exist in any form in that generously vast "Katy" area.

This brings me to thesis #1. You don't know what you're talking about. What you advocate already is happening, only you don't realize it because what you want doesn't work (or you would've noticed it by now).

Continuing on...

Not if they displace those bad people to jail instead of just sweeping them from neighborhood to neighborhood. 'Weed and seed' programs actually do this. They combine efforts on revitalization with parallel efforts on crime prevention and law enforcement. Sorry I wasn't more explicit about it 18 months ago, but I have always envisioned 'weed and seed' as being integral to fixing these bad complexes.

...wait, no. Actually, I'd let RedScare take it from here. ...except that he's already given you a stern lecture on your proposal to institute fascism. He may not want to waste his voice on the deaf. I wouldn't blame him.

[WAZ]

I'm going to guess that you're interested in 77074 and 77036, which encompass most of Sharpstown. There are six Tax Credit apartment complexes in that area, with 1,531 units. Greater Katy, encompassing the area of zip codes 77449, 77450, 77493, and 77494, a geographic area about twenty times as large also has six Tax Credit apartment complexes, coming in at a total of only 785 apartment units.

You’re looking at it the way the TDHCA looks at it. Their view is that 77449, 77450, 77493, and 77494 have fewer subsidized housing units than 77074 and 77036; so they need to build more out in 77449, 77450, 77493, and 77494. It’s a bureaucratic approach that ignores the reality on the ground.

The reality is that 77074, 77036, and other zip codes in Houston have way more than six substandard apartment complexes. There are four substandard apartment complexes on the same block as the Premier on Woodfair! These slums aren’t going to demolish or renovate themselves. Either someone needs to demolish them (which doesn’t seem to happen much) or someone needs to renovate them.

My suggestion is they do the latter. More specifically, I want them to stop giving tax credits for new housing on open land in the Houston metro area; and increase the tax credits available for the renovation and replacement of substandard housing in the area. It’s a Win-Win-Win-Win. The TDHCA gets more units of low-income housing on their books. Neighbors in suburbs like Katy are spared from subsidized housing that they don’t want. Neighbors in Houston get repairs to the surrounding slum apartments. And most importantly, law abiding, poor people get better places to live.

The only losers are developers, since you guys won’t get tax credits for new housing on open land. (And criminals, of course, since it'll get harder for them to find no-questions-asked slums to live in).

You may counter that this could go against HUD’s rules. My response is that if this is the case, then it just shows that HUD has a one-size-fits-all approach to low-income housing – and it really doesn’t acknowledge the unique problems facing Houston and its suburbs.

What you advocate already is happening, …. what you want doesn't work (or you would've noticed it by now).

I have showed you locations where it HAS worked. In fact,the Premier on Woodfair is one where it has worked remarkably well. Another success story is the Reserve at Bankside – though the TDHCA had nothing to do with that one. In general, complexes that have been renovated and maintained, are better places to live, and have less crime than those that have been neglected.

The reason we’re not seeing a huge improvement in whole neighborhoods, is that they aren’t doing it nearly enough. This is why I originally thought the TDHCA wasn’t doing it at all. 6 complexes and 1,531 units of renovated apartments is barely a drop in the bucket for 77036 and 77074. (Not to mention the fact that they’re all in 77036).

[TheNiche]

You’re looking at it the way the TDHCA looks at it.

Actually, no. I was looking at it in just such a way as reveals that your whining is nonsensical. TDHCA allocates tax credits from the HUD's limited budget on the basis of a point system that tends to favor the neighborhoods that you would prefer are targeted. That system is by no means perfect, in my opinion because it does too much of what you want, but for motivations that are beyond you. The TDHCA's tends to favor your approach because it is more politically convenient to undermine the spirit of the federal Tax Credit program than to piss off affluent voters in Katy.

The TDHCA only fails to do nearly enough of what you want, which is why your plan could never work, because there's not anywhere remotely enough HUD money to accomplish that without narrowly targeting very particular neighborhoods to the exclusion of others. And yeah, the feds would stop that pretty quick.

The only losers are developers, since you guys won’t get tax credits for new housing on open land. (And criminals, of course, since it'll get harder for them to find no-questions-asked slums to live in).

Tax Credit developers know how to renovate too. It's no skin off their back.

The big losers by your plan (which is necessarily beyond the scope of HUD's budget) are people who live in places like Spring and Katy, which will have to absorb the populations that won't qualify to live in Tax Credit housing.

The reason we’re not seeing a huge improvement in whole neighborhoods, is that they aren’t doing it nearly enough. This is why I originally thought the TDHCA wasn’t doing it at all. 6 complexes and 1,531 units of renovated apartments is barely a drop in the bucket for 77036 and 77074. (Not to mention the fact that they’re all in 77036).

77036 had close to 90 apartment complexes when I pulled a query last night; 77074 had a fraction of that, maybe a dozen. Even still, southwest Houston is not the only location in Texas that has lots of apartments. It deserves equitable treatment (within the constraints of the HUD budget), as do those other places.