Take our houses, not our dignity
We have to speak out about how this program is being implemented.
No one came to help us during Hurricane Harvey. We were on our own. Left behind.
We are sisters who live across the street from one another. When Dolores’ house got nearly 10 feet of water, her brother-in-law hotwired a boat floating in what used to be her backyard to get us out of harm’s way. As we left our subdivision by boat, the water covered the top of street signs and neighbors on jet skis were checking each house for evacuees.
The absence of outside help during Harvey is part of a long pattern of neglect for our neighborhood. There are only two streetlights, which we had to fight to get. Streets don’t get fixed, garbage doesn’t get picked up on time and the police rarely come when we call.
A month ago, we learned that our homes in the Allen Field neighborhood in north Houston near Greens Bayou is part of a new mandatory buyout program led by Harris County’s Community Services Department.
We are not against a buyout program. While some of our neighbors are indeed opposed to it, others have been through enough floods. We know we’re in harm’s way and want to get out, but we have to speak out about how this program is being implemented. Not just for our own sake, but for the many others who will share our fate.
Make no mistake, more buyouts are coming in Harris County. Our flooding issues will only get worse with climate change.
Harris County has an opportunity to be an in
novator for these types of programs. The mandatory buyout program we’re a part of will set the tone for how future buyouts will be handled and how people will be treated. This matters in a place that calls itself one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the country and the energy capital of the world.
Harris County officials say no infrastructure solution can solve the problem — they have to buy our house. If proper investments had been made to protect us from flooding in the first place, maybe we wouldn’t have to lose our homes. If Harris County is asking some to give up their homes for the benefit of the region, it has to be done in a way that doesn’t heap the most burden on the places that got the least help in the first place. All we are asking for is an equitable buyout program.
Harris County’s current mandatory buyout program covers eight areas across Aldine, north Houston and Highland Shores. The county will purchase over 400 sites, 34 of which are commercial, and turn that land into permanent green space and detention. The seven areas in the buyout program area include several residential neighborhoods, four mobile home communities, small businesses, and even the retreat center for the Missionary Carmelites of St. Teresa. The program impacts about 2,000 people and 682 households.
Our family’s ties to this neighborhood run deep. Relatives on both our mother’s and father’s sides make up 13 households who live in this subdivision, and every one of them is a part of Harris County’s new mandatory buyout program. Our family has lived and grown in this community for six generations. Our great-great-grandparents met here, fell in love and started a family. We all rely on one another and continuously work to make this community better.
Displaced by Zoom call
The timing of this predicament couldn’t be worse. In the middle of hurricane season and a global crisis in which sheltering in place is vital, we have to face the realities of losing our home. The county says buying our homes and moving us into a new one will take about 18 months from start to finish. That might seem like a generous time frame, but the thought of losing our homes in the COVID era, when we’re already dealing with job loss and worried about putting food on the table, is almost unbearable.
The county program website describes the number of households and people who will be displaced along with their demographic data. In the census tract for Allen Field, 86 percent are nonwhite. Of the eight buyout areas only one is predominantly white. Because the program uses federal disaster recovery money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, non-citizen residents don’t qualify for relocation benefits. They will only be reimbursed for the cost of the property, so relocation costs will be passed onto families or prorated for the number of citizen residents. Some will be forced to pay out of their own pockets for movers, rent deposits, new mortgage costs and many other expenses.
They can’t get a straight answer on how much relocation money they’ll get, how straightening out things like deed or title issues will be handled and how property appraisals will be fair. The circular conversation (not getting a satisfactory answer on Zoom or getting different answers depending on who you talk to) doesn’t give people confidence to submit their paperwork to start the process. Dolores has all her paperwork filled out but she can’t get specifics on even the range of relocation benefits she may receive.
The county has sent letters and hung fliers with information. They have held virtual meetings in English and Spanish, but that’s not enough information for a mandatory buyout. When we call the number the county provides, it’s answered only in English, and the person who answers doesn’t know anything about the program. They just take down your information and say someone will call you back. But they don’t call you back. You have to call over and over to get answers about them taking away your home.
A recent town hall held over Zoom just repeated the same information we’ve heard before. We ask questions and get no clear answers. Nearly 80 residents in the town hall shared the same concern.
Our neighbors are confused, anxious and worried. We’re not sleeping from all the stress. We’re afraid we’ll be left behind once again.
In some other places, the community is involved in creating the handbook for these kinds of programs from the start. Other counties and cities across the country take a human rights approach to buyouts. This model is working in Mecklenburg County, N.C., and a Greenway Master Plan in Des Moines, Iowa, where they’ve adopted an equity lens. Harris County missed this step.
The fact that we flood as severely as we do connects back to environmental racism, systems that have put us at the bottom of the list for mitigation programs and allowed irresponsible development to increase our vulnerability after storms and heavy rains.
Harvey’s high waters impacted high-income neighborhoods, low-income neighborhoods, white neighborhoods and communities of color. While floods don’t discriminate, recovery often does.
Relocation with dignity
As we organize with our neighbors, we have also begun working with nonprofits, including the Coalition for Environment, Equity and Resilience, a local environmental advocacy group that is connecting us to experts and engineers who know about buyout programs.
The current program fails to take under consideration the fact that our property values have been depressed by a lack of infrastructure and because of discrimination against our mostly Latinx population. The county keeps telling us they will take our homes, but they have not asked us what we need. They are only telling us what the economic calculations say they can provide. We are asking for a program based on human rights so that we can be bought out and relocated with dignity.
Last year, NPR ran a story showing how buyout programs grow inequality nationwide, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. This is especially true in communities of color. We will be repeating the same pattern here in Harris County if we don’t wake up and change this program and future buyout programs.
The county is looking into creating a fund with general county dollars so that mixed-status households can be made whole. Right now, they’re conducting a study to understand how many households would need that help to determine how much money to set aside in the fund. That is the kind of solution we need.
We ask Commissioners Court to charge all departments with incorporating the 1998 U.N. Commission on Human Rights’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and immediately establish a fund for mixed-status immigrant families. Hire more bilingual case managers and benefits specialists so qualified staff can answer our calls. We also ask Commissioners Court to establish formal partnerships with nonprofits that can provide legal services and educate us about our rights.
The county should connect with the community to ensure the correct information reaches all of us. Ideally, these would be in our actual neighborhood and not just online. Many of our neighbors say, “que nos den a la cara,” meaning “come face us.” During the pandemic, we know it’s not safe to gather, so this makes the confusion, frustration and misinformation even worse. Communicating difficult information like eligibility of benefits or the process to relocate your entire life over a video call is so unsatisfactory.
My family has watched this neighborhood change over the course of nearly 70 years. It always flooded, but never this badly. The repeated flooding began when new development along Homestead Road and all around us left our neighborhood a low spot where floodwaters pool. Ever since Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, the flooding has gotten worse every year.
Our community is not just buildings on a map; it’s where lives and memories and connections exist. The home where my mother lives is the same one my great-grandmother bought in 1953. Every generation of my family has lived in that house at some point.
It’s also the gathering spot for our annual Halloween party. Dolores’ husband fills a trailer with hay and hooks it up to an ATV to take kids on a hayride and trick or treat throughout our neighborhood. Our mom prints fliers and invites all the neighbor kids to join in on the fun. It seems those gatherings, and many others, are at an end.
My family invested in this place, even when the county didn’t. We just want to make sure they keep up their end of the bargain as they move us out. No one should be left behind.