Houston Officials Claim $2B Needed For Overlooked Neighborhoods

The assessment was conducted by a team of data scientists, flood engineers and staff of the Houston Housing and Community Development Department over an eight-month period to assess the full extent of damage.

A recently released assessment conducted by the city of Houston claims an additional $2 billion in federal resources is needed to meet its most serious housing needs after Hurricane Harvey.

Flooding from Harvey devastated areas in Houston with high levels of social vulnerability and with low-income residents who have the least amount of resources to recover. The study suggests that a different measure is needed to accurately measure those losses.

The assessment was conducted by a team of data scientists, flood engineers and staff of the Houston Housing and Community Development Department over an eight-month period to assess the full extent of damage.

The existing methods for assessing residential damage after a disaster have the potential to severely underestimate recovery needs as those calculations are based only on individual assistance claims filed with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for FEMA-verified losses.

The city’s new methodology more accurately accounts for residential damage and identifies people the old model missed.

Houston officials identified 12 neighborhoods that featured at least one census tract with very high social vulnerability and damage above 50 percent of the estimated annual income of residents in damaged buildings. Of the damage from Harvey, 59 percent occurred outside the 500-year floodplain.

Mayor Sylvester Turner says he will continue to fight for more accurate damage assessments because the city chronically receives less funding for recovery as damage from storms is not accurately and fairly assessed.

Houston residents, as of February 2018, have received about $3 billion in federal assistance through the National Flood Insurance Program, FEMA assistance programs and loans from the Small Business Administration.

An additional $1.17 billion for long-term housing recovery from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is expected to become available in December 2018.

A fact sheet about the assessment is available on the Housing and Community Development Department website. Public comments on the local needs assessment may be submitted by email to: Fatima.Wajahat@houstontx.gov.

This article was originally published by Strategic Partnerships, Inc.