The best (and worst) performing Texas public housing authorities according to HUD

In the course of updating our databases of all the multifamily subsidized housing in Texas this week I manually extracted the public housing agency management scores from the HUD website for each Texas PHA.

I thought some folks might be interested in the scores that HUD has assigned.

[A note of caution: you have to take these scores with a grain of salt because they do not give sufficient weight to the evaluation the residents of public housing would give the housing authorities. That would be a more useful test as to how well the PHAs were doing.]

The Public Housing Management Assessment Program (PHMAP) is HUD’s primary tool for measuring housing authorities’ performance.

HUD uses certain indicators, including vacancy rates and the percentage of rents uncollected, to assess the management performance of local housing authorities.

HUD developed PHMAP to annually obtain data from each housing authority on basic indicators of management performance, such as vacancy rates and operating expenses.

HUD calculates a score from 0 to 100 for each authority and assigns one of the following three designations: “troubled performer” for a score less than 60, “standard performer” for a score between 60 and less than 90, and “high performer” for a score 90 or above. [Although for some reason I do not understand a grade as low as 87 is often enough to get HUD to designate a Texas PHA as a “high performer”.  Maybe HUD is grading on a curve. 🙂 ]

There are 416 public housing authorities (PHAs) in Texas. One hundred twenty-five PHAs operate public housing. The rest only operate Section 8 voucher programs. Only housing authorities that run public housing get a PHMAP score.  

Thirty-seven (thirty percent) are high performing including three large PHAs (Austin, El Paso and Fort Worth)…

• Austin (95)
• Baird (96)
• Beckville (92)
• Brady (92)
• Burnet (94)
• Cameron (91)
• Cisco (95)
• Cuero (96)
• Devine (97)
• Donna (90)
• Edgewood (92)
• El Paso (95)
• Fort Worth (89)
• Galveston (91)
• Georgetown (95)
• Grapevine (96)
• Harllingen (92)
• Kenedy (91)
• Killeen (94)
• Kyle (89)
• Livingston (96)
• Marble Falls (96)
• Nacogdoches (90)
• New Braunfels (92)
• Odessa (89)
• Pearsall (92)
• Pharr (96)
• Pittsburg (92)
• Poteet (94)
• Roma (88 )
• San Marcos (95)
• Schertz (94)
• Slaton (97)
• Temple (95)
• Uvande (95)
• Hidalgo County (93)
• Weslaco (90)

.

There are five (four percent of the total) low performing Texas public housing authorities…

• Baytown (66)
• Cotulla (61)
• Floydada (72)
• Plano (70)
• Quanah (66)

.

The PHMAP should not be viewed by PHAs, the Department or other interested parties as an all-inclusive and encompassing view of overall PHA operations. When viewing overall PHA operations, other criteria, including but not limited to, the quality of a PHA’s housing stock, compliance issues, Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity issues, Board knowledge and oversight of PHA operation, etc., even though not covered under the PHMAP, are necessary in order to determine the adequacy of overall PHA operations.