Hurricane Harvey Buyouts Could Take Another Year

The project to buyout and demolish the Hurricane Harveydamaged homes on Country Club Drive could take another year to complete. Fayette County Commissioners voted on Monday to approve an extension to the County’s grant application for the buyout project.

The homes were ravaged by floodwaters during the 2017 storm and have stood vacant ever since. Fayette County floodplain regulations prevented property owners from rebuilding their homes. Instead, the County promised buyouts funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The County partnered with the City of La Grange to apply for the grant. The State of Texas tasked the General Land Office (GLO), led by Land Commissioner George P. Bush, with distributing those funds. The County hired the company Grantworks to administer the buyout project. The project is supposed to involve demolishing the homes and returning the property to greenspace with deed restrictions to prevent future construction there.

Now, four years later, the flooded homes near the Frisch Auf! golf course are still vacant with windows and doors open to the elements. Angela Hahn, the County’s grant specialist, told Commissioners on Monday that the holdup is due to some “finger pointing” between GLO and Grantworks.

“GLO says Grantworks has not filed the paperwork appropriately, and Grantworks says GLO is not reviewing things in a timely manner,” Hahn said. “They all agree the County is doing everything we can.”

Last month, County Judge Joe Weber asked staff to investigate whether the County could begin buying out and demolishing the homes on Country Club Drive on its own without the grant from GLO. Hahn said on Monday that moving forward without the grant would likely negatively impact homeowners in the City of La Grange who are awaiting buyouts since the City and County applied for the grant as a joint endeavor.

Hahn said she spoke with an official at the GLO who advised the County could expect “another year of this.”

Assistant County Attorney Blake Watson said the GLO advised the County to apply for a one-year extension to the grant application process.

“(The GLO said) we can buy out the homes, demo them and be done with this project within a year,” he said. “I know we’ve heard that a lot. At this point, personally, that doesn’t hold a lot of weight for me. But they were very clear that the County has done everything we need to. We have been done with our part for an extended period of time.”

Hahn said the County has worked with four different GLO project managers since applying for the grant.

“They have a lot of turnover,” Hahn said.

“The people in charge of our project are swapping all the time,” Watson said. “Then someone else has to come in and get acquainted with it. Then they get moved. That also has apparently been part of the problem.”

Brittany Eck, a spokesperson for the GLO, blamed the holdup on an environmental review.

“The Fayette County Local Buyout and Acquisition Programs contract has experienced delays due to the environmental review (executed by the county) not beginning at the appropriate time in the overall grant process,” Eck said. “If the broad review had begun at the local level shortly after contract execution, it could be completed concurrent with the Housing Guidelines. This would have allowed the program to proceed through intake/case management, site specific clearance, and project approval at a faster rate. These are all components of the contract mandated by HUD for use of CDBG-DR funds. This was the original guidance provided by the GLO to communities and their vendors for how to coordinate the program.”

Another local GLO project took a much quicker pace. In a seperate program following Hurricane Harvey, the GLO was tasked with distributing $588 million in Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds from HUD to help rehabilitate, reconstruct and construct multifamily rental units. Dubbed the Affordable Rental Program, GLO petitioned private developers to apply for those funds. $8.7 million went to a group who built the new “Marquis at Fayette” 36- unit neighborhood on the north side of Schulenburg. The funds were distributed in 2018 and the neighborhood was completed earlier this year. The group that built the Marquis neighborhood included Beau Yarbrough, son of former Galveston Mayor Jim Yarbrough. The elder Yarbrough even spoke at a Schulenburg City Council meeting on Jan. 6 last year when the City approved the plat for the project.

“The Affordable Rental Program is a completely separate program with different requirements and guidelines,” Eck said. “However, it is similar in that the GLO provides technical assistance to the grantees – in this case apartment developers, managers, or other eligible applicants – on how to perform the steps required by HUD to meet federal eligibility requirements.

“The funds are conditionally awarded, then a contract is signed to move forward,” she added. “The grantee must then complete all of the steps required and submit draw requests for reimbursement of the work done. HUD does not provide grant funds up front. Once construction is complete, the final funding is drawn down and the grant can be completed – however, monitoring of the grant continues to ensure they continue to meet the terms of the grant, which include the stipulation that 51% of the units must target residents with income levels at 80% or less of the area median income for 20 years.”