The Galveston County Daily News

Editor’s note: The following is the text of a speech given by Galveston resident Harris “Shrub” Kempner to Galveston Housing Authority’s meeting Thursday.

I’m here to address this board and workshop primarily in response to a number of shrill and loud voices that recently have opposed what Galveston Housing Authority is trying to do. Those people seem to be dogmatically negative based on their apparent desire to have Galveston become some sort of “gated community.”

I rise to both object to that concept of the island and to encourage you, GHA, to continue going forward in certain major areas.

Since the 1900 Storm, we have been a city that has gained strength from its income, racial and ethnic diversity. Those who drowned together learned to live together, I think. We have welcomed the poorer from different countries, regions, of different skin colors, ethnicities and religions.

These different kinds of people have been part of the warp and woof of this community for more than a century. Most of them and their kin have participated in building the city and creating an example of toleration and cosmopolitanism for the rest of the country.

What I hear now in some quarters is an expression that translates as “we want this place for ourselves and anybody of a significant earnings class difference from us should be excluded.”

I don’t agree with that exclusionary approach to our city. The usual fears of the different have been disproved by our history. You here represent the housing needs of some of the least economically favored among us. Thank you. I commend your policy of making a place for the poor who need to rent but, as importantly, urge you to stick to your newfound emphasis on reducing the concentrations and mixing uses and incomes so they can be merged in with fewer of the problems that have taken place before.

Equally, I recognize what an extraordinarily positive effect the other major aspect of your long-term program, home building for homeownership, can have on the economic development of this community.

A major requirement of any successful economic development of Galveston Island is to bring some of the people who work here back here to live in their own places and, in so doing, to eventually make us a community that has a higher percentage of homeownership than rentals. We have a lot of daily jobs per capita, more than most people realize, but the moderate-income workers in those jobs have not been able to afford to live on the island as readily as they could elsewhere.

Many of us have beaten our heads against this problem for years. You, the Galveston Housing Authority, can now be the primary mover in changing that fact and, therefore, changing the city for the better.

The Hope Six Program and other sources have the estimated potential of building more than 150 homes, on an in-fill basis, to be owned, to go on the tax rolls, and which are geared for families with incomes between $21,000 and $71,000 per year. That last is the income sweet spot for many, many people who work here but live elsewhere — pressmen and reporters at the newspaper, nurses, medical technicians, secretaries, welders, teachers, bakers on and on and on.

It is largely unrecognized, but you, the GHA, are probably the only developer extant:

1) Who could provide the resources to do a lot of in-fill homeownership;

2) Who has already done some here — see The Oaks;

3) Who knows how to use local contractors; and

4) Who could subsidize the cost to your purchasers.

That’s a quadrifecta that simply doesn’t exist, in my opinion, anywhere else.

Instead of opposing these build-to-own programs, as some loud voices do, I raise at least one voice strongly in favor of them. If you succeed, other developers likely will follow.

To make this work best, I also urge GHA to rapidly partner with our present employers to help develop what they think they could need in housing for their employees, over time.

I also believe that the GHA board does need to be expanded somewhat, particularly with some more financial and real-estate expertise. However, above all, I commend your home-ownership initiative as positive for the city. Despite the voices of doom, many think what you’re doing is important and positive for our future.