Watching history repeat itself...
The Mayor's press shop has started promoting the city's latest, greatest plan to help the poor: The city is launching an initiative (backed with federal dollars) to remodel apartments that rent to the poor.
Here is an excerpt from KUHF-88.7's reporting:
Houston city officials are taking several approaches to improve areas with high concentrations of older apartment complexes. It began with a new law that requires owners of apartments with higher than average crime rates to pay for improved security measures. Special Assistant to the Mayor David Mincberg says next the city is launching the "Better Neighborhoods" program that gives grants to apartment owners to significantly renovate their property.
"The city is committed to putting in enough money to make a real difference in the renovation and rehab of these projects."
Two areas of the city will be targeted the Fondren southwest area and the Hobby area around Broadway. Mincberg says the goal is to rehab 2,000 units in 2007 and expand to four-thousand units in the following year.
"I think you see a lot of projects that are very run down. You see low occupancies and you see a number of projects that are boarded up. What I envision in two years is we are going to see new elevations on those buildings, we are going to see them cleaned up and we are going to see places people are proud to call home."
Apartments built between 1975 and 1996 will be eligible for the upgrades.
And here is an excerpt from KHOU-11's reporting:
Decades ago they were cool apartments where people wanted to live.
Now thousands of them are marginally habitable.
“When you’re driving either to or from Hobby you kind of just put your eyes over your head until you get to 45,” said City Councilwoman in Dist. I, Carol Alvarado.
Mayor Bill White is now backing a major effort to fix up the falling down. “That again can be tens of millions of dollars.”
Apartment owners can apply for federal money, up to $30,000 per apartment.
The first targets are Fondren Southwest and that area right around Hobby.
All of this came about in the last five or six months when the mayor and a couple of others went to New York and drove around Brooklyn and the Bronx and were impressed with improvements that had happened in the last 30 years or so.
Put your eyes over your head? That doesn't sound quite right, Councilmember Alvarado.
In any case, it's almost certain there will be no careful consideration of this latest, greatest program to help the poor in Houston. And it's just as nearly certain that we'll be discussing all sorts of allegations of fraud and non-performance related to the program in a few years. But hey, as long as progressive-technocratic politicians mean well (and those fine folks in New York are happy with their programs), why should anybody worry about accountability and the best use of taxpayers' funds?
UPDATE (12-07-2006): The Chronicle's coverage completes the Mayor's successful press blitz.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/07/06 12:07 AM | Print |
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
ADVERTISING
DISCLAIMER
All content © 2004-09, blogHOUSTON and the respective authors.
blogHOUSTON.net is powered by Nucleus.
Site design and Nucleus customization are by Kevin Whited.