U.S. builder hopes Mexicans will want homes made from shipping containers Company targeting poor factory workers in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico…
Category: Disaster Recovery
From preparedness, planning, and equity to rebuilding and mitigation, disaster recovery encompasses issues deeply important to the rehabilitation and recovery of low-income communities living in disaster-prone areas in Texas.
FEMA rejects Mayor White’s request to allow Houston to begin immediate emergency housing repairs
Speaking about the need to take quick action to weatherproof houses damaged by Hurricane Ike, I earlier recommended a concerned…
Lessons from Kartina and Rita about rebuilding permanent housing for low income hurricane survivors
We learned valuable lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita about providing post-disaster housing assistance to low income families. This is…
How to judge the success of Hurricane Ike housing relief? Count the blue roofs in six months.
They are called blue roofs. The roofs are blue because FEMA pays contractors to stretch blue plastic tarps over the…
A New Orleans obituary has lessons for Galveston
They have their hands full right now, but someday before the plans for rebuilding are set the city leaders in…
Our ten point plan for rehousing low income Hurricane Ike survivors
There are many critical housing needs facing Hurricane Ike survivors of all incomes. Our focus is on the area of…
Apply the lessens of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita to the Ike relief efforts
We learned a lot of valuable lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita about providing post-disaster housing assistance to low income…
We could have been better prepared for Hurricane Ike
At this hour the Houston-Galveston area is bracing for a forecasted direct hit from Hurricane Ike. Once again the impact…
Houston: The Real Texas? I pray not based on these attitudes
In the late 1990’s the marketing motto of Houston was “Houston: The Real Texas.” Based on what I have been…
When the next hurricane hits most low income Texas homeowners will not have any insurance
Many people were shocked in the wake of Hurricane Rita at seventy percent of the homeowners (who were overwhelmingly low…
Three years after Katrina: from compassion to racist stereotypes
Today marks the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The images of the suffering poor left behind in New Orleans caused…
The toll from Hurricane Dolly is not in and we’re not prepared for a low income housing disaster
At this hour we still don’t have a full account of damage from Hurricane Dolly which hit Brownsville and the…
Houston’s fair housing failure segregates Katrina evacuees in SW slum apartments
Today’s dangerous housing problems in the Southwestern part of Houston have been greatly exacerbated by the actions of Houston city…
Katrina evacuee’s Habitat success story greeted by cheers and jeers
Reading the story in the Houston Chronicle on July 4 about Andrea Lee who moved to Houston after Hurricane Katrina…
Lingering concerns about Texas Hurricane Rita home rebuilding
I am supporting the the Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs Round 2 plan for CDBG housing assistance for…
National fixes for post disaster housing programs
I have posted the testimony I presented to Congress regarding how the federal government can betterprovide long-term housing disaster assistance…
At least we are better off than Mississippi and Alabama
Watch my testimony before the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Financial Service Committee, or, better yet,…
Texas tempts fate and courts disaster
Is it that we Texans like living dangerously? Are we just slow to learn? Or are we the victims of…
FEMA and HUD: not who you would want to depend on to throw you a life preserver
The House Financial Services Committee called HUD and FEMA to testify about when the lead federal agencies for hurricane relief…
We have not learned the lessons of Katrina
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we wondered what we could do to help. We settled on four things: 1)…