Note to Chron: Houston agency is not the same as Harris County agency
Having been late to the story, the Chron's Mike Snyder has now written a follow-up to the news that the Harris County Housing Authority has taken national responsibility for most folks still displaced by Katrina.
The only problem is Snyder is still referring to the Harris County agency as a Houston agency:
Houstonians hit ground running in New Orleans
[snip]
About a dozen staff, contractors and board members of the small Houston agency traveled to New Orleans on Friday to review the enormous task confronting them. Here in the city that embodies all that went wrong after the nation's worst natural disaster, they are preparing to oversee the final chapter in a long, contentious effort to house thousands of displaced storm victims.
[snip]
Here, Rankin and his staff have duplicated procedures they created in Houston for enrolling and counseling clients, ensuring that landlords are paid on time and apartments are in decent condition.
Why the nit-picking? Because Harris County's agency worked hard (and displayed competence!) to achieve success dealing with what has turned into a long-term situation. As Snyder notes about halfway through, Houston's agency hasn't been "given" the same responsibility:
Even before the Harris County Housing Authority was assigned to the New Orleans project, it had been given a greater share of the Houston program than the much larger Houston Housing Authority, which is assisting about 2,400 families.
Would the Chronicle appreciate it if we just started calling it the Press whenever we felt like it? They are two separate agencies, and a professional journalist should be able to make that distinction.
But just to take the weirdness one step further, Snyder then gets a reaction from Houston's Mayor White, not Harris County's Judge Emmett:
Mayor Bill White, who appoints the Houston Housing Authority's board, said the county authority's decision to take on the New Orleans program and others around the country required political courage.
Yes, the Harris County agency took on the program, but the feds first had to ask the HC agency to take it! And that offer wasn't extended to Houston's Housing Authority, for reasons we can guess.
UPDATE: A reader notes that the last link, which is an audit of the Department of Housing, does not relate to the Houston Housing Authority. Apologies for the confusion. There's no confusion, however, that the Houston Housing Authority is a different entity than the Harris County Housing Authority, and the HC agency should be credited for the capable job it has done.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/13/08 04:37 AM | Print |
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