The Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas has denied a motion by the Texas Department of Housing…
Category: State issues
From following laws changed through the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Legislature to programs and procedures of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, we’re exploring statewide issues here.
Existing statewide housing program should be the vehicle for assisting Hurricane Ike survivors
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) has received criticism from elected officials over the slow pace of…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 12/9/2008
The axe continues to drop on home buyers who bought more than they could afford. Federal and private bank efforts…
Texas disaster recovery plan is based on bad data and faulty assumptions
Today I continue the analysis begun yesterday of the draft plan developed by the Texas Office of Rural Community Affairs…
Texas disaster plan – an ill conceived pork barrel
Texas’ just released plan for $1.3 billion in federal Community Development Block Grant funds for Hurricanes Dolly and Ike fails…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 12/2/2008
Eight years of mismanagement and corruption have left the nation’s top agencies gutted: the bright and ethical left early as…
Is federal disaster assistance an entitlement?
The back-and-forth between the Texas governor and the US Secretary of Homeland Security over who will pay for the removal…
Closer scrutiny will follow Texas expenditure of $1.3 billion in hurricane relief
HUD has allocated Texas $1.3 billion of the $2.1 billion in Community Development Block Grant funds that Congress has recently…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/25/2008
Among the many daunting tasks for the Obama Administration is the revamping of HUD that has languished under poor leadership…
Texas must learn from Mississippi CDBG fund misuse
Abdicating its responsibilities and caving to political pressure HUD has allowed the State of Mississippi to redirect $570 million of…
President Bush considers pardoning former Texas housing agency board member
ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, is reporting that President Bush is considering…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/19/2008
Foreclosures continue to soar across the nation as housing starts dwindle. Cities are laced with vacant, unaffordable houses as the…
Houston uses local housing funds to replace disallowed federal housing funds
Houston Chronicle reporter Mike Snyder has uncovered a move by the City of Houston to repay over $15.5 million of…
Seeking solutions to providing low-income housing in rural Texas
Hereford, a Texas Panhandle community of about 15,000, will host an important meeting today to consider how to overcome the…
Texas cities should place derelict apartments in receivership
Heather K. Way, director of the Community Development Law Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, read my…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/12/2008
As the general economy sinks, foreclosures continue to soar and new housing starts dwindle. In California, foreclosures devastate whole towns.…
Rough outlines of Texas $178m Neighborhood Stabilization Program emerge
In an attempt to deal with the foreclosure crisis Congress has allocated substantial funding to cities, counties and states to…
Texas State officials and FEMA in open war over Ike recovery
It sounds increasingly like open warfare has broken out between Texas officials and FEMA over the Hurricane Ike recovery efforts.…
Louisiana extends its sympathies to Texas regarding FEMA
Our neighbors from Louisiana have offered some sympathy to Texas in the problems we have been experiencing with FEMA. Here…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 11/5/2008
The consequences of an unregulated housing finance industry continue to hammer the American middle class: soon a quarter of the…
Confusion and delays plague temporary housing programs for Hurricane Ike survivors
I have been spending some time this week trying to understand the way the FEMA temporary housing assistance programs have…
New report profiles loan delinquencies and foreclosures in Texas cities
A collaboration between LISC and the Urban Institute has produced a data set with “foreclosure needs scores” within Community Development…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 10/29/2008
Administration of the $700 billion bailout has already taken new and questionable turns. While the “Main Street versus Wall Street”…
We endorse Texas Attorney General Abbott’s call for mortgage deferment legislation to help struggling homeowners
The Texas Low Income Housing Information Service (TxLIHIS) applauds and endorses Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s proposal today for a…
Brooke Boston, state housing deputy director, is stepping down
Brooke Boston, who has served as Deputy Director for Programs at the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs for…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compliation – 10/22/2008
This week we learned how Freddie Mac administrators thwarted a bill that would have provided the oversight to possibly avoid…
Nearly 306,000 Ike damaged properties in Texas have been reviewed by FEMA inspectors
Five weeks after Hurricane Ike made landfall, state and federal financial assistance to help Texas homeowners, renters and businesses recover…
Homeowners rebuilding from Hurricane Ike have basically no consumer protection in Texas
Houston Mayor Bill White threw in the towel this week, ending his modest effort to provide rudimentary consumer protections to…
Southeast Texas elected leaders demand temporary FEMA trailers despite health risks
Some local elected officials are downright furious with FEMA because FEMA will not put travel trailers on the property of…
Gov. Perry picks Eckels, Newby to lead Hurricane Ike recovery and coordination effort
Governor Perry has designated a former Harris County Judge and the Governor’s current chief of staff to “co-lead an effort…