Harris County's Housing Authority takes on national responsibility

Image credit: Pixabay

KUHF-88.7’s Jim Bell reports that as Harris County’s Housing Authority has done such a capable job managing the local Katrina housing assistance and voucher program, it will now administer the program for 37 states:

The Harris County Housing Authority has taken over the job of providing housing assistance for Louisiana hurricane victims in New Orleans and more than three dozen other states. Houston Public Radio’s Jim Bell explains.

Click to Listen

A New Orleans newspaper reports HUD handed this job to the Harris County Housing Authority to improve the rent voucher system, do a better job of finding housing for storm victims and paying landlords on time. Director Guy Rankin is now in charge of Disaster Housing Assistance in New Orleans, Houston, and in all the other states where storm victims were sent.

“The Harris County Housing Authority has been charged with helping those 250 housing authorities in 37 states take care of persons involved in Katrina and Rita. We’re here to help people move back to New Orleans, and also those people who are here with their rental assistance through the Disaster Housing Assistance Program.”

Rankin says the Harris County Housing Authority was placed in charge of the New Orleans and national housing assistance programs because it’s done such a good job of helping storm evacuees in the Houston area.

“We dealt with it in Houston well, so it gained credibility, then we opened the DHAP center in Houston and that gained us more credibility. And then, quite frankly, they were having troubles in New Orleans, and they looked for who’s the closest, who’s the best, who can turn that project around and house people quickly.”

What’s interesting about this story is what’s lacking: any mention of Houston’s Housing Authority [edit: This is not criticism of the reporter; it’s criticism of the city’s Housing Department, as I try to explain here]. There was a time when Houston’s Housing and Community Development Department (recently headed by FoB David Mincberg, currently a candidate for Harris County Judge) was involved with Harris County in administering the housing assistance program for Katrina evacuees.

Is Houston no longer involved in the program? Are there still problems with the city’s housing authority, as brought to light by this April, 2005, audit?

These would be interesting questions for local media to investigate, as the answers may tell us something about candidate Mincberg’s ability to manage public institutions.


(Old) Forum Comments (10)

About Anne Linehan 2323 Articles
Anne Linehan is a co-founder of blogHOUSTON.