How Much Money In Federal Aid Has Fema
Of the more than 300,000 homes in Texas damaged by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, none were in Coryell County.
Located 220 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, this small agricultural county was not the identify Congress had in listen when it sent Texas more than than $4 billion in disaster preparedness money six months following the storm, said U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston.
"We wanted to help people who were hurt by Harvey and had the potential to exist hurt once again, as opposed to people who were inland and non likely to have suffered dandy damage," Green said.
Nevertheless, Coryell is slated to receive $3.four one thousand thousand under the program by the Texas General Land Function and its commissioner, George P. Bush.
After the land role awarded $1 billion of the assistance last year, giving the city of Houston aught, the federal Section of Housing and Urban Development accused Bush'southward office of discriminating against Blackness and Latino Texans. The land office had an opportunity to correct these inequities as it adult a new spending plan.
Just an analysis by The Texas Tribune found that the land office is on track to follow a similar pattern equally it prepares to allocate the next $1.2 billion of the federal aid. The bureau's revised plan will once again transport a disproportionately high share of coin to inland counties with lower take chances of natural disasters.
Residents in the counties that volition benefit about are also significantly whiter and more conservative than those receiving the to the lowest degree aid, an outcome some Democrats view with suspicion every bit Bush-league competes for the Republican nomination for attorney general this month.
Neither the state function, nor Bush's entrada for attorney general responded to interview requests. Bush also did not respond to specific questions emailed to his part for this story.
Just his spokesperson said last year that inland areas are vulnerable to extreme weather condition, too, and also serve as rubber havens for coastal evacuees.
John Henneberger, co-director of the low-income housing advocate Texas Housers, whose complaint ready off the federal investigation, said the land role is failing to meet the almost basic requirement for the money: to spend disaster aid in the areas at highest gamble for disasters.
"Why does some community 200 miles from the coast become a new water organization when you've got neighborhoods that have flooded 4 or five times in the concluding decade in a coastal community?" Henneberger said. "It'due south a very cynical — and we think illegal — use of the funds."
Numerous studies have shown poor people and people of color are most likely to exist impacted by disasters, said Kevin Smiley, a professor of folklore at Louisiana Country Academy. Planning for hereafter calamities should address that disparity rather than make it worse, he added.
"It'due south weird to think about disasters as i of the fundamental mechanisms widening social disparity in the United States, only they are," said Smiley, whose research focuses on Harvey recovery efforts. "And it'due south through nitty-gritty governmental processes that are disbursing mitigation funds that are partly doing it."
An influx of aid
Harvey killed 103 Texans and dumped an estimated 19 trillion gallons of water betwixt Rockport and the Louisiana declension.
The following twelvemonth, Congress gave $4.3 billion in disaster mitigation assistance in response to the storm, as well every bit floods in 2015 and 2016. Of that full, Texas reserved $two.six billion for preparedness projects in Harvey-damaged areas. Gov. Greg Abbott tapped Bush-league and the land office for the job.
Bob Daemmrich
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The Texas Tribune
HUD designated 20 counties, mostly on the coast, to receive the aid — including major population centers that were ravaged past Harvey similar Houston, Beaumont and Corpus Christi.
The task of dividing upwards that money would exist difficult considering demand for disaster mitigation money — for projects like drainage systems and stormwater detention basins — far exceeds the available dollars.
One of Bush's first decisions was to designate an additional 29 counties, more often than not inland, as eligible recipients. The new counties invited into the process had populations that were whiter, more than rural and packed with a higher proportion of Donald Trump voters than the original grouping of counties picked by the federal authorities.
Though permitted by federal rules, the move decreased the likelihood that projects in coastal counties would be funded.
Texas counties picked by federal government have more disaster risk
In 2018, Texas received $4.3 billion from Congress aimed at preparing for future disasters afterward Hurricane Harvey. The U.South. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the state made 49 counties eligible to receive roughly $2.6 billion of those funds reserved for mitigation projects in Harvey-damaged areas. The General Land Function also hired the UT Eye for Space Enquiry to develop disaster risk ratings for every county.
Carla Astudillo
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Carla Astudillo
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General Land Role, UT Center for Infinite Research
To divide up $1 billion of the pot, the land part held a scoring competition which asked local governments to submit project proposals. The results, appear in May 2021, left disaster recovery experts and urban politicians of both parties stunned.
Harris Canton, home to more residents than the other eligible counties combined, received 9% of the funds. That's despite its ranking as the 4th most disaster-prone canton by the country'due south own metric — the Composite Disaster Index, which ranks all 254 Texas counties based on their history of seven types of disasters over the by 2 decades.
Michael Stravato
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The Texas Tribune
HUD-picked Nueces and Aransas counties, where Harvey made landfall, received naught despite ranking as the state's 10th and 39th most disaster-prone counties, respectively. Jefferson County, which ranks seventh and recorded the highest rain totals during Harvey, likewise received zero coin. Sabine County, ranked 141st, was designated by the country as a recipient and received $14 one thousand thousand.
A Houston Chronicle investigation last year revealed the land office developed distribution criteria that discriminated confronting populous areas. Every bit a result, aid flowed disproportionately to the grouping of inland counties selected by the country.
Eager to claim credit for how his office distributed the federal aid, Bush's office published 39 news releases the 24-hour interval the competition results went public, each tailored to a different county that had projects funded. Eleven days later, Bush announced he was seeking the Republican nomination for attorney general. The timing struck some on the declension as more than a coincidence.
"If I'm his campaign team, I say 'hey, allow's roll this out around this time,'" said Joseph Ramirez, an adviser to the Nueces County Autonomous Party.
Dark-green, the Democratic Congressman from Houston, said he does non wish to believe Bush-league funneled disaster assist for his political benefit, but he strains to call up of a improve explanation.
"It'due south and then casuistic to practice what is being done that I can encounter where some people might conclude information technology'due south all a part of an effort to curry favor with a certain group of voters," Light-green said.
Whatever goodwill Bush may accept built inland came at a cost. Republicans in Houston were irate at how petty coin Harris County received. Republican Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey, a retired civil engineer, said that before the land role proclamation, he had "never seen a more dysfunctional effort to evaluate projects than this." He accused Bush's team of inventing criteria to justify diverting aid from Houston.
Marjorie Kamys Cotera
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The Texas Tribune
The Republican canton commissioners were specially irked because they had convinced their constituents to pass a $2.five billion flood protection bond based on the pledge that it would exist used to secure billions in matching federal dollars, including from the pool Bush controlled. Bush'southward suggestion to a reporter that Harris County had submitted sloppy applications didn't help matters.
Sparring with Houston's Autonomous mayor was zip new, but now Bush was facing angry members of his ain political party. Ken Paxton, the Republican incumbent attorney general, would later cite Bush's handling of the Harvey aid as evidence that he lacks the competence to hold statewide office. Bush and Paxton volition face each other in a May 24 runoff.
Bush sought safer political ground. After claiming, falsely, that the Biden administration was to blame for the outcome, he decided to give $750 million of the remaining funds directly to Harris County.
The move did not mollify Houston Democrats, who felt Bush had pulled that number from sparse air without evaluating the surface area'southward actual needs, just it did provide cover to Republicans taking heat from their voters.
Bush-league's impromptu program for Harris Canton meant scrapping a second $1 billion scoring competition. And HUD would need to OK any changes to the original plan it had approved, a monthslong procedure that delayed the distribution of further aid.
Still, coastal county officials hoped the country office would recognize the mistakes in its original program and correct them before distributing the rest of the federal disaster dollars.
A second run a risk
The state function's new proposal for determining which counties would get funding, submitted in August, eliminated its old scoring metrics and instead opted to give $1.2 billion to nine regional councils of government, which would determine how to spend it inside the HUD and country counties. These groups are political subdivisions of the state that help programme regional projects like infrastructure.
The country function argued the revisions would allow aid distribution to be tailored more closely to regions' different mitigation needs. Simply although the strategy is different, a Tribune assay of the programme establish a fundamentally similar consequence: far lower spending per capita in the counties with the highest disaster run a risk.
The funding has not nonetheless been allocated, simply the land'south methodology all simply guarantees the less disaster-prone counties selected by Bush would even so cease up with 2 to 4 times more than funding per resident than the more littoral counties called past HUD.
This is because a sizable clamper of the councils of government'southward $1.2 billion will flow inland. Even if the country office spent all of it in HUD counties — the programme only requires the councils to spend half their allotment in that location — it would still not shut the per-person spending gap created by the initial funding competition.
Including the awards from the outset funding competition, two councils composed of state-picked inland counties that rank no higher than 66th on the disaster alphabetize will finish up with $752 per resident nether the new plan.
The quango which includes Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties — HUD-selected counties on or nearly the declension that rank in the top 8 for disaster risk — will receive $441 per resident.
When federal investigators reviewed the original plan, these kinds of outcomes were a problem. HUD'southward fair housing role on March iv concluded that the initial scoring competition discriminated against Texans on the footing of race and national origin, since the littoral areas information technology steered aid away from have high concentrations of nonwhite residents.
Of the 9 states that received disaster mitigation funding from the same federal appropriation, only Texas has received such a sanction. HUD gave the state two options: Enter into a voluntary agreement to correct the disparity or face up a civil rights lawsuit from the Section of Justice.
And then, two weeks afterwards, HUD approved the Bush squad'southward new spending program.
In a letter to the state office on March 18, HUD Office of Block Grant Assistance Director Jessie Handforth Kome said the bureau was required to approve the new programme because it was "substantially complete." She warned, however, that HUD would closely monitor how Texas spends the rest of the aid and could address new violations by requiring the state to give coin dorsum.
The advocacy groups who pushed HUD to investigate possible discrimination were shocked. They felt the all-time strategy would have been to withhold approval of the plan until Texas had demonstrated future aid distribution would be fair to Black and Latino residents in communities almost at run a risk for disasters.
"HUD is making this harder on themselves," said Maddie Sloan, an chaser who works on disaster recovery bug for public interest nonprofit Texas Appleseed. "It would make much more sense to ensure the coin gets where it's needed in the first place instead of doing a retroactive look at where it went and whether that violates the law."
How the Texas counties with more residents lose out on Harvey help
Roughly $1.7 billion of federal funds reserved for mitigation projects in Harvey-damaged areas have been awarded to 49 Texas counties. The U.South. Section of Housing and Urban Development picked 20 of those counties while the land designated an additional 29 counties.
Carla Astudillo
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General Country Function, U.Due south. Census 2020 statistics
Carla Astudillo
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General Country Office, U.South. Demography 2020 statistics
The mixed messaging from HUD, however, creates the impression that Texas tin can simply ignore the agency'southward discrimination claims and spend the aid as it sees fit.
The land office has since shown few signs it is open to compromise. In a blistering 12-folio alphabetic character in April responding to the bigotry findings, attorneys for the bureau called HUD's objections "politically motivated" and "factually and legally baseless" and noted that HUD had approved the country'south programme for distributing the money.
How thoroughly HUD may vet the new land office plan is unclear. If investigators apply the same rigor they did to the original, said Texas Housers Research Manager Ben Martin, they volition likely conclude information technology also violates federal ceremonious rights laws.
"The jurisdictions that were hardest hit past Hurricane Harvey remain the jurisdictions at the highest risk of hereafter disaster," Martin said. "They're being severely underfunded by GLO."
Michael Gonazales
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The Texas Tribune
Waiting for the next storm
Residents in Nueces County are hopeful they're not going to get snubbed a 2nd time as disaster coin is doled out.
The county sustained harm from hurricanes Harvey and then Hanna in 2020. It ranks 10th in the disaster alphabetize of Texas counties only received zero dollars from the country office scoring competition.
Canton Judge Barbara Canales had submitted a $98 million breakwater projection to protect Corpus Christi from tempest surges that was specifically modeled after a like New Jersey proposal that won federal dollars after Hurricane Sandy.
Canales is still belongings out hope she tin fund the thought with a chunk of the $180 million the new land office plan awards the Coastal Bend Council of Government, which includes Nueces and six other eligible counties.
Canales said the land office was wise to designate inland areas equally eligible for disaster assist considering she said they have been historically ignored. She said aid distribution, even so, should flow proportionally to areas that are nigh vulnerable.
"My merely concern is that by not recognizing who's really getting hit [by storms] outset and where the damages are, yous're really not fully addressing the fiscal responsibleness of it all," Canales said. "If you look at our damage assessments, they're not inland."
Michael Gonazalez
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The Texas Tribune
Longtime Nueces County residents view the new subdivisions that are being built with dread. The county is growing quickly, developing westward abroad from Corpus Christi and the coast, replacing subcontract fields by the acre — which used to hold stormwater — with paved streets and slab foundations. Owners of older homes believe this has fabricated flooding in the surface area worse.
Dan Zamora'south home had never flooded in his 29 years on County Route 52B until iii inches of water poured in during a tempest this past May. Cleaning upwardly was a fool'south errand; 5 inches filled the single-story habitation during a storm 6 weeks later.
"We were seriously considering selling, simply subsequently we got the whole business firm remodeled my wife and I decided to concord off," Zamora said. "If it happens once more, we're out of hither."
Peggy Balderdash'southward home has flooded iii times and now worries about her son, who recently bought a house that promptly had stormwater spill into the garage. Bobby Chesnutt, who likewise lives in the floodplain, worries if he'll be next. Eddie Aguilera, who in 2019 caught a 3-foot gar in floodwater in his front yard — and has a photo to prove it — mostly frets about his parents. They're 84 and shouldn't have to wade through floods to go to doctors appointments, he said.
Aguilera is also dismayed by the county'southward focus on the breakwater proposal because information technology too benefits expensive commercial property on the shoreline.
"I get it — they're looking at tourist dollars downward there," Aguilera said. "Just you have people out hither who have been living for years and years in flood zones."
Sergio Flores
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The Texas Tribune
Unmet rural needs
Coryell County ranks 78th by the state's disaster index score. It was eligible for federal aid the land office distributed for flood events in 2015 and 2016, though it received none. The $iii.4 1000000 it is slated to receive will come from the Harvey allotment to its quango of government.
Canton Judge Roger Miller said the Commissioners Court has nonetheless to decide how to use the money but that information technology would probable be for flood mitigation. He said the highway section has identified 76 low-water crossings that should be raised for schoolhouse buses and emergency vehicles and noted that residents have drowned on county roads during flood events.
Asked near frustration amidst littoral residents that disaster assistance is directed inland, Miller acknowledged the population disparity. But he said counties like his experience disasters, likewise, and also deserve amend protection.
"We don't accept the density of a Harris County, and so we're not going to accept hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people affected," Miller said. "Merely a life in Harris County is no more than or less valuable than a life in Coryell Canton."
Source: https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2022-05-16/new-texas-plan-for-federal-hurricane-harvey-aid-yields-same-old-result
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