GALVESTON — Landry’s employees and their families put Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier workers to the test Sunday as they prepare for the official opening.
The Galveston Housing Authority’s vote Wednesday was described as a change. It’s a big one. Perhaps it’s a revolution. For those interested in the official documents, here they are.
Critics of the housing authority have said the city ought to challenge the Conciliation Agreement, which required the rebuilding of 569 public housing units destroyed by Hurricane Ike, in court. No one dreamed that the housing authority might be the first to take the steps to force a legal showdown.
But that’s what this looks like from here. What do you make of it?
The Galveston City Council is going to consider a resolution Thursday that could halt the Galveston Housing Authority's plans for mixed-income developments. Update: See Amanda Casanova's related story:
The resolution, backed by council members Elizabeth Beeton and Steve Greenberg, calls for the suspension of tax credits for low-income housing development for three years. The argument in the proposed resolution is the one that’s been going around for months: The housing market is saturated. The island doesn’t need more housing units.
This is a serious threat to the housing authority’s proposal for a $100 million-plus development with McCormack, Baron, Salazar, a corporate giant based in St. Louis.
The company is proposing to develop a mix of market-based, tax-credit and public-housing units. The federal government would pay for the public housing units. The company has its own resources to finance the market-rate units.
But the elimination of the tax credits for the affordable housing units would make the project less economically viable — perhaps not viable at all.
There are two kinds of tax credits for these projects. The 4 percent credits are noncompetitive and require little public involvement. The 9 percent credits are highly competitive and require more in the way of public involvement. It’s anybody’s guess whether the company could get a 9 percent credit with a council resolution against it attached to the application.
It’s an ingenious way to try to put a bullet in this project.
There are several interesting issues.
One is whether Councilman Rusty Legg, a likely supporter of the resolution, will have a vote. Conflict of interest provisions are spelled out in Section 171.004 and 171.002 of the Local Government Code. As a Dec. 11 article by Michael A. Smith pointed out, state records show Legg is a principal in a real estate firm that has been paid a lot of money through programs managed by the housing authority.
Another question is whether the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will see this as an effort to get around complying with the Fair Housing Act.
A third question is collateral damage, including the new market tax credits that would go along with the McCormack Baron Salazar plan. Those credits are still being negotiated, but the best guess is that they would top $10 million and would be used to give incentives to lure day care facilities and grocery stores to serve the housing developments.
Is opposition to mixed-income housing strong enough to make that kind of loss an afterthought?
The most interesting part of the argument over the plan to rebuild 569 public housing units in Galveston is this: Must all 569 units be built on the island or can some be built in other parts of the county?
Those who say the units don't have to built on the island want a definitive ruling from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, not from attorneys who have argued the other side.
Critics of the Galveston Housing Authority’s plans do not believe that the federal government would withhold hurricane recovery funds to the entire region while this question is resolved in Galveston. Can you imagine the furor that the Houston delegation in Congress would raise if the Ike funds were shut off?
However, Mayor Joe Jaworski says the question of where those 569 units must be built has been answered. He cites a legal memorandum written by Kevin Hamby, senior counsel for the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.
Mayor Joe Jaworski said it’s not true. Toombs is one of several candidates for the post, which was left vacant when board chairwoman Sharon Strain resigned, citing family and health. Among the other candidates are Betty Massey, who ran against Jaworski in the race for mayor, and Chula Ross Sanchez, who ran unsuccessfully for city council.
Jaworski said he would fill this vacancy soon. He plans to take a bit longer filling the place on the board reserved for a public housing resident. That position became vacant when Suzanne Choate resigned, calling the new board a “dysfunctional mess.”
One of the hot topics on the island is whether the Galveston Housing Authority will apply for HOPE VI funds. The application would be for a $22 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Those funds are generally leveraged into much larger projects. The range seems to be from $80 million for small communities to more than $500 million in big cities. The city would put in infrastructure, and developers would be offered incentives to build private housing in the area. There is some public housing, but models in other cities include mixed-income housing and commercial space. In Galveston, we seem to be looking at anywhere from 150 to 400 units of housing.
What I hear most is interest in the old Magnolia Homes area. The idea is that a grant would be a spark to redevelop the area between downtown and the University of Texas Medical Branch.
The grants are highly competitive. There’s no guarantee the Galveston Housing Authority would land one. But despite the debate over public housing, I’ve heard people say that Galveston simply cannot afford to pass on an opportunity to develop affordable housing in Galveston.
Do you agree? If you do, is that corridor between the medical branch and downtown your priority? And what would you want to see in such a development?
1. What is the housing authority going to do to involve the public in discussions about what the final plans will look like?
2. Will the public have a meaningful role in the design? Will people in surrounding neighborhoods be consulted about whether the units are apartments in complexes or townhomes? Will they have any say in how the buildings are placed on the site? And how does that process of being open to the public work out in detail?
3. The housing authority’s conceptual plans called for mixed-income developments. What if people in the higher income brackets aren’t interested? What would the housing authority do to keep the new projects from becoming pockets of poverty?
4. And what about the 179 units that will be scattered at sites around the island? What is the plan for involving the public in those developments?
The Daily News complained more than once that the Galveston Housing Authority was slow to provide information on its plans to rebuild after Hurricane Ike. We recently asked a series of questions in an editorial.
To their credit, officials with the housing authority replied. The answers have been the subject of news stories and editorials, but we thought you might be interested in the full text.
Incidentally, some of those questions were asked by readers. If you have a question you’d like us to ask, please post it. We hope to continue this dialogue.
Heber Taylor, a native of Abilene, is editor of The Daily News.
He got his first job on a newspaper at age 14, collecting scores from high school games for a regional newspaper. He's been working for newspapers ever since.
As a reporter, he visited Cuba and Eastern Europe before the fall of the Iron Curtain. He joined The Daily News in 1991 and enjoys reading.
