Texas gets 3,111 Section 8 vouchers for hurricane survivors

Now here is some really good news for Texas, and especially for the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

As part of the Supplemental Appropriations Act for 2009 Congress appropriated $80 million for Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers to be administered by public housing authorities (PHAs) in areas impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. HUD was charged with dividing up the $80 million between housing authorities with top priority going to PHAs in disaster areas that agree to give preference to families displaced by Katrina and Rita.

Texas will receive vouchers for 3,111 housing units totaling $27,705,558 or 35 percent of the available funds.

TxLIHIS and other have been calling on Congress to appropriate funds for permanent Section 8 vouchers for the low-income families made homeless by the hurricanes for almost four years now. Finally some of these vouchers are coming.

But before we get too excited let’s realize that this amount to fewer than ten percent of what we estimate Texas needs to house the families put out of their homes by Hurricanes katrina and Rita who are living in Texas. Further, this does not speak to the tens of thousands of very low income families who lost homes to Hurricanes Dolly and Ike.

But at least this is a start.

Here are the Texas entities getting the vouchers.

Houston Housing Authority - 500 vouchers
Galveston Housing Authority - 303 vouchers
Port Arthur Housing Authority - 500 vouchers
City of Grand Prairie 500 vouchers
Rosenburg Housing Authority - 75 vouchers
Nacogdoches Housing Authority - 50 vouchers
Fort Worth- 257 vouchers
Housing Authority of the City of Texarkana - 50 vouchers
Mercedes Housing Authority - 48 vouchers
San Marcos - 8 vouchers
Kingsville Housing Autjorty - 41 vouchers
Georgetown Housing Authority - 11 vouchers
Housing Authority of Alto - 6 vouchers
Abilene - 145 vouchers
Grayson County - 26 vouchers
City of Amarillo - 51 vouchers
Texoma COG - 26 vouchers